Sounds like it needs some modern asynch handling which pretty much eliminates most message que pipeline message polling by completely separating the 2. The past few years a new asynch programming method was introduced which replaces previous synchronous and asynchronous methods, so the messages are only sent when action happens, not when nothing is being done or nothing has changed in the actual window graphically, cutting down on calls, the new asych method was introduced between 2012 and I think late 2013 so it’s fairly recent.
i have my CPU at 60% in the launcher.
windows 7 64.
For what it’s worth, it’s pretty bad with Unreal 4.1 on Mavericks running an Intel Core i7 3.1GHz. Editor CPU usage remains at above 90% when idle. Closing the launcher did not help.
Yeah I am seeing much worse behaviour in 4.1. Its all good if the Editor is in the foreground (well at least its under 50%) but if I bring another app forward I see UE go up into the high 90%'s.
In 4.2.1 I closed all the windows, including the toolbar, and I get about 20fps.
However! If I click the file menu, and then click the file menu a second time to close it, I get 120fps.
MacBook Pro 13" i5 16gb
On my late 2013 13 inch retina Macbook Pro its the same. Constant CPU load of 60-70% on one core and worst of all the fans spin up badly and the load sucks the battery dry in no time.
Now i understand this is a high end gaming engine we talk about here, but Unity4 for example idles at around 5-15% and only taxes the GPU when i actually do something in the scene view, otherwise it seems to not tax the GPU at all.
This results in normal temperatures and also much better battery life. Currently thats the main factor holding me back from switching to UE4, would be so cool if you could fix that somehow!
We’re working on improvements, as well as changes that’d set better defaults on laptops. For now, if you disable realtime updates in viewport’s menu and use t.MaxFps console command to limit UI refresh to 30 (or even 15), you should see a huge difference in battery life and CPU load.
Hi , would you be able to point me to instructions on how to use the t.MaxFps to limit the UI refresh? I’m also having the extremely disappointing problem of high CPU usage when idle (even with realtime off), as it completely determines whether I can continue my subscription or not… Thank you, .
Specs:
PC - Win 7 Pro - i7 3.5GHz - 2x 3GB GeForce GTX 780
I think I got it. I entered “t.MaxFPS [int]” in the console command line and that made a substantial difference… Of course, it’s still suboptimal. There’s nothing like this problem with Unity Pro. But in the long run I don’t want to use Unity Pro; I want to use UE… I concede that UE might be doing something more than Unity Pro in the background that the experts would appreciate. If so I’d like to know what that is so that I can continue with UE (if only with blind trust presently).
Glad you found it. The way editor’s UI is written requires it to refresh and render all the widgets at least few times per second. In practice, to be responsive, it needs to be processed at least 30 times per second. If you have realtime viewports enabled, it just updates every time a new frame of the viewport is drawn. With realtime viewports disabled, UI is refreshed at t.MaxPFS (which is 120 by default).
As I mentioned earlier, we’re working on improvements to this and in UE 4.3 you should see a first batch of them.
I honestly still don’t really get it though. Just about all programs I work with, whether it’s an IDE or 3D modelling software or an internet browser, just anything, the UI reacts to events only as they happen. There’s absolutely no noticeable increased CPU or GPU usage most of the time. They only spike up if there’s, for example, navigating in a 3D scene or 2D/3D manipulation, and then they go back to “idle” as they should, just waiting for the next event that requires more “hard” processing (which shouldn’t include mouse movements, among other things). But again, I concede that I haven’t had time yet to familiarize myself with UE to possibly understand what I’m getting and why the UI has to refresh continuously like it’s a video game.
Before I wrote the first time, I did read that you said they’re working on that for the next patch. Thanks again for the update, .
As I said, our UI system works differently from others. Making it event-driven etc. is not a trivial task, but a while back we started focusing on improving the experience on laptops and changing how the UI works internally is one of the areas we’re improving. I hope that you’ll be able to notice some of these improvements very soon.
I got MacBook Pro M1 Max 64 GB Ram 14 inch 2021
When Unreal Engine launched CPU used on 142% and GPU on 98% and after a while fans become crazy and I’m afraid that something wrong might happen.
Is there any plans on moving Unreal Engine to Apple Silicon?