SWBFII slows down/ high cpu usage (AVG the problem!)

[deadmeow]

I hadn't played SWBF2 much in the last few months, but I started playing it for a while yesterday, and it kept getting choppy and slowing down.

Eventually the CPU usage went from about 45% at start to the 87% and then into the 90's %'s after a few minutes of playing, (1 hour or more). I have a Phenom IIX6 1090T, and GTX260, which has always been plenty powerful enough. I checked the CPU temps, reinstalled windows, and same thing.

So then I rebooted to a 2nd (old install from 18 months ago) of Windows XP on another drive, and SWBF played just fine, CPU usage at about 24% jumping to 29% sometimes. Perfect play. So I figured it must be a windows xp update or AVG causing the problem.

So on the original drive and new brand new install of XP, I uninstalled AVG, and now it works perfect. No choppyness, and CPU usage in the 25% range. So now I just need to find a new antivirus.

Just wanted to post this here, in case anybody else starts having issues, because AVG is a widely used antivirus. They recently put in some CPU-usage-monitor, which seems to be the culprit that is eating up the CPU in game!

[WD-40]

One of the things I use that helps by cutting out another 40% of useless CPU usage, is GameBooster (Version3). I activate it when gaming. Another thing you need to do is turn off xFire, Steam and any spyware/anti-virus protection. Beyond that, you just may need to reboot your computer once the ram/CPU gets clobbered. Hope it helps.

[(SWGO)Minas_Thirith]

AMD= Fail

[(Rogue).ltc.dan]

SWBFII must h8v you because that problem never seems to happen to me

[toad]

AVG is the best! I can't tell you how much money I have made removing maleware/virus it missed and selling people a proper anti-virus. GO AVG!!!!

AMD= Awesome

Fixed that 4 u. AMD is for people who don't need to spend extra money on the same processor just because it says Intel.

[(SWGO)Minas_Thirith]

AMD is for people who are too cheap to spend extra money on the same processor that is more reliable and made of higher quality materials

Fixed that 4 u.

To add here, AMD can tell you how much they want, they say a processor will run at 2.55Ghz and it won't get to that, why?
Because "technicly" the processor runs at this speed but since the processor will run unstable at this speed, instead of stabalizing the processor they lower it's preformance altough they announce their processor speed the way it was meant to be.....wich obiosly it isn't, my general AMD cores alwayes run around 0.2Ghz less then their supposed to do, so your paying for something you aren't getting...it's like buying a 10MB/s Connection that's connected with a cable that suports up to 5MB/s

The only other theory i can compare this with(wich is something that happens with me in real life)
I'm a shoe destroyer...if shoes last over 3 weeks their just lucky....and they normally never do, i personally don't give a [poo] about brands(wich doesn't make me too popular )
So i can buy a pair of brandless nice looking shoes for around 20Euros and they won't survive the month, or i can buy the same looking shoes that cost 40Euros of the brand Puma wich i generally wear(Nike and Addidas will come close to 2 months) but these Pumas instead of lasting 1 month they can well last over 4months
So if you calculate this over short times 20*4months= 80Euros or 40Euros for the Pumas...of course their the same looking but it doesn't mean they are the same.

MT

Every i know in Real life have had problems with AMD, and everyone who went intel for a little more money was sadisfied...of couse here will be comments about things that happened to you with intel wich will only say half a story and not the full condition of what the state their product was in, in wich case garantee could be denied wich would lead to the conclusion intel's technical service stinks wich erradicates the idea intel is better then AMD, or something similar to this statement.

[deadmeow]

I never had any problems with AVG either, for years, until yesterday. One of the latest updates hogged resources, so now AVG is history for me. I had the same problem with Norton AV (garbage) before (a long time ago), as have friends of mine. AVG does everything but make coffee for you now, thats the problem.

As far as AMD and Intel it is about what fits your needs. Each person is different. I spent 1100 dollars on a single core Celeron system in late 2005. In 2010 I bought a AMD 1090T hexacore system for the same price.

For my needs, I play SWBF2, and do lots of H264 video encoding, which benefits from more cores, and the 1090T hexacore was nearly the best, only falling behind the Intel thousand dollar hexacore i7-980x. This processor even competes with the new Ivy bridge processors in h264 encoding.

No er what you have for your CPU, bad programs can ruin your experience. Hopefully my experience will prevent someone else from pulling their hair out, trying to diagnose a similar problem.

[Draigun]

Be smart, be nimble, and don't use any anti-virus.

Even though 99% of the statistics that humans say is completely made up, I can say that 75% of the people have an anti-virus when they don't even need it. If you are smart and know where you are and where to go in the Internet, there is no need for an anti-virus.

[deadmeow]

These days you can get viruses from web sites, so it doesn't er what you do or don't download. If you get a trojan on your system that is quiet and only steals data, then there is no way to know this without having antivirus.

I have installed Avast antivirus now, and no problems. CPU usage is just fine while playing SWBF2, in the mid 20%. Perfect! Goodbye to resource hogging, noob friendly AVG. AVG has gone the way of bloatware, just like Norton :P

[Corpse]

I use Microsoft Security Essentials. :P

And sure, intel CPUs are better. But not for the same price. You'd get [m'kay] all from intel for the same price you'd get a pretty good CPU from AMD.