Diablo 2 Eats my CPU

T

Tac

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 3, 2006
Messages
192
I been playing this game since it was released. back then I was young and had a crappy prebuilt P3 500 Mhz 64Mb RAM E-Machines now that I'm older I pay attention to how much my memory and CPU are being used by the apps I run. Well recently I got back into playing D2 and I've noticed it takes 100% of my CPU I would expect this if I was still playing it on the 6 year old E-Machines. That is not the case though my computer might not be bleeding edge but I would say it's decent.

Specs
P4 2.9 Ghz 1.5 Gig RAM 7600gt

Would the only way to change this be upgrading to a C2D setup?
 
D2 will always eat 100% CPU, doesn't matter how powerful your machine is. Just the way it's programmed.

However, I'm not sure this exists in the regular exe, but if you use certain loaders, they have extra shortcut arguements that can reduce this.

Try adding -sleepy in your shortcut path, ie
Target = "<D2 Path Here>" -w -res800 -sleepy
(as you can see, I also run windowed and in 800x600)

However, I am not sure if -sleepy is a valid switch on the original exe.
 
Some games just reserve the full amount of the CPU regardless of how much they actually need. It probably would do the same on a C2D setup, but only for one core.
 
Thats a shame :( as i'm some what of a multi-tasker. What I wanted to do was run the game and play music through Musicmatch but ever time I did this the songs would puase and skip when i took a waypoint, enter a portal or the screen is full of monsters. (I'm kinda anal when it comes to music)

Don't get me wrong the D2 soundtrack is awesome but after 10-11 hours of it I kinda want a change ya know?
 
You should be able to multitask just fine...

Back when I played D2 still I had all kinds of stuff running, Adobe Audition, Winamp, Firefox etc...
 
The -sleepy command from those loaders simply sets the process's priority to low. You can do the same thing via the task manager. It will still use 100% of the available cpu cycles but it will also be more willing to yield to other processes.
 
yea i played d2 and listened to mp3's on winamp with ease back on my shitty computer.
 
Well I can listen to music and surf the web if I really want but when alot is going on in the game or I load a new screen the music slows down or just stops for a few seconds.

I'm using the onboard sound which I suspect to be the problem after reading some of the replies. I'm going to pick up an X-Fi Sound Blaster. I hope that will fix the stuttering.
 
Tac said:
Well I can listen to music and surf the web if I really want but when alot is going on in the game or I load a new screen the music slows down or just stops for a few seconds.

I'm using the onboard sound which I suspect to be the problem after reading some of the replies. I'm going to pick up an X-Fi Sound Blaster. I hope that will fix the stuttering.
Click to expand...

Have you made sure that your chipset drivers are up to date? It seems like whenever your computer needs to access the drive it just drops the ball on the music. Otherwise you could also setup a buffer to load for your music in Winamp.
 
I have not checked if it was driver related I will do that first. As for buffer I'm not using Winamp could I still get one(using Musicmatch)?
 
Tac said:
I have not checked if it was driver related I will do that first. As for buffer I'm not using Winamp could I still get one(using Musicmatch)?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if Musicmatch offers it (most do). Just check out the options menu, I'm sure there is a slider somewhere there.
 
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