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| Thread: laptop nearly hot enough to give burn while playing homm3 complete | |
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c0ldshadow
Known Hero
ig chr0meice91
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posted March 11, 2005 09:02 PM |
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laptop nearly hot enough to give burn while playing homm3 complete
y0 sup, i have been having an severe laptop overheating problem ever since ive been playing homm3 complete on my laptop.
i have posted a thread regarding this problem in a forum just about computer cooling.
please check the following link to see the problem in detail:
http://forums.devshed.com/t235402/s.html
since i am not sure if this is a homm3 complete problem i have no control over or a problem with my laptop i figured i'd post this in a spot where both homm3 experts and cooling experts could take a look.
my gut feeling is that this game is simply getting old and as windows slowly changes the game will run worse and worse over time... i hope this is not the problem.
any advice would be greatly appreciated..thanks a ton,--avery
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sirzapdos
Promising
Famous Hero
Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
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posted March 12, 2005 02:00 AM |
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I play H3 on a laptop, and H3 does indeed get the old girl goin'. I wouldn't say it's enough to burn, but it does get pretty warm.
What I usually do is close all other programs that eat away at the memory. IE, MSN (big gobbler), internet browsers, P2P programs, etc.
I find also that after playing for a bit, say 30 minutes, that it doesn't sound as bad as when it first loads up.
Hope this helps.
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So I try to live a complicated world...
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draco
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted March 13, 2005 10:45 PM |
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I dont know whats going on for you, but I have a laptop that runs with about the same specs
Toshiba A70
P4 2.80GHZ
512MB DDR (448 after my video card eats 64)
XP home
and my H3 only eats up tops 65% of my processor power. so I dont know what to say to you? maybe you have more problems then you think, I would contact Sony.
my laptop does have 2 CPU's though and Hyper Threading, maybe thats what makes the difference.
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dimis
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Digitally signed by FoG
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posted March 15, 2005 08:40 PM |
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Hi c0ldshadow,
A friend of mine experienced the same problem with homm3 after playing for about 5 hours with an IBM computer last summer. Moreover, if we didn't shutdown the computer then the computer automatically would shutdown itself (probably programmed by BIOS to do so in order to preserve chips from high temperatures). So, the only solution we came about was the following:
Give your laptop "enough air" when playing games for hours. I believe that the hot part of your computer is the "underneath" part (opposite side from keyboard, correct?). If that is the case (which I believe it is ;-) ) then find a way of settling down the computer and at the same time allow fresh air to flow on that "crazy" burning side of your laptop. (If I am correct, then I can verify that you are not exaggerating with what you say. Sometimes it is even hard to touch that side with your fingers for more than a few seconds ... :-( ) Perhaps you can place your laptop's left/right ends on the top of some books and allow air flow on the "hot part". We also used a small fan that would maintain a steady flow of fresh air on that part, but again it was summer and we didn't mind... To give you an idea, see the following ascii drawing:
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| Screen |
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|______________|
| Laptop |
____|______________|____....
| | | |
| Book | AIR FLOW | Book |
|______| |______|
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I don't know whether my friend did find another way of handling this problem, but he doesn't play heroes that often...
==============================
As far as 99-100% use of your processor it is perfectly natural to expect that on a computer when playing games. A very useful programming technique on interactive programs is something i use to say "busy waiting" (it's been a long time though since I last used it on programs I develop) and makes coding much easier. That's the reason nearly all games take up 99-100% of your processor time. It is usually a while (TRUE) {} loop in code which contains a line that generates events (For example in Visual Basic it is called "do_events ()" procedure, if my memory doesn't play tricks to me right now...) and makes it very easy to handle exceptions in programs (If you don't have a clue of what I mean, please accept my apologies, all I am trying to say, is that it is perfectly natural for your computer to behave that way when playing games).
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Another reason for that is what Drako says:
It takes up 65% of his processor time!!!
And he is using a single processor (not 2 as he believes and the control panel seems to believe ! - But that is another question) with hyperthreading technology. (For further reading on hyperthreading technology search intel's homepage and you'll find out what I am talking about and the reason that a system "seems" to recognize 2 processors {Task Manager, control panel, etc.}). This is a certain indication that you should always use about 100% of your processor time (though the events during that time perform absolutely nothing!)
Another way of viewing your 100% of your processor time is by 2x 50% of the time spent on a processor with hyperthreading technology. So 65% is a way too high!
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I know that my advice is not at all technologically oriented (download that patch, buy that cooling stuff, etc.) but perhaps you should contact your manufacturer on matters regarding cooling. After all you are not the only person on earth who plays games on laptops! :-)
Hope my temporary solution works for you too. The bad news is that problem will not disappear, but your computer needs simply more time to reach those temperatures... :-( Hope your climate is colder than Greece!
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The only thing I didn't comment on is your M-processor. All I know about them is that they have a much lower power consumption than p4, but this seems controversial. A possible explanation is resistances are less Ohms than those used on p4, so that these processors actually get hot much faster than p4s. But I am only speculating right now... If you are going to search on Intel about that, please remember to refer your results here as well.
good luck and have patience with your problem.
- Dimis -
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dimis
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Digitally signed by FoG
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posted March 15, 2005 08:50 PM |
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Hope drawing is ok now... :-(
(Just ignore `s, ~s and #s)
````` ______________
`````|``````````````|
`````|``````````````|
`````|``` Screen ```|
`````|``````````````|
`````|______________|
`````|####Laptop####|
____|______________|____....
|~~~~~~|``````````|~~~~~~|
|~Book~|`AIR FLOW`|~Book~|
|______|``````````|______|
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- Dimis -
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dimis
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Digitally signed by FoG
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posted March 15, 2005 08:51 PM |
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Hope drawing is ok now... :-(
(Just ignore `s, ~s and #s)
````` ______________
`````|``````````````|
`````|``````````````|
`````|``` Screen ```|
`````|``````````````|
`````|______________|
`````|####Laptop####|
____|______________|____....
|~~~~~~|``````````|~~~~~~|
|~Book~|`AIR FLOW`|~Book~|
|______|``````````|______|
-----------------------------
- Dimis -
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c0ldshadow
Known Hero
ig chr0meice91
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posted March 15, 2005 10:00 PM |
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thanks a ton for the info dimis... i already have been using the book setup thing like you advised.. its definatley better than leaving it on a blanket or something.. i am a c++ programmer so i understand what you are saying regarding the while(1) thing. lately things have been working better ever since i did a bios update from sony. again, i really appreciate your detailed help. happy gaming, --c0ldshadow
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lionharte
Adventuring Hero
Paladin of Light
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posted March 16, 2005 08:07 AM |
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Quote:
I play H3 on a laptop, and H3 does indeed get the old girl goin'.
I play homm3 on a laptop and it runs perfectly.
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gravity
Hired Hero
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posted March 18, 2005 12:20 PM |
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If the CD is spinning up a lot (I think the game uses Safedisc or some other similar irritating POS?) that could contribute. I don't know if there are any cracks still around though.
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draco
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted March 21, 2005 03:42 AM |
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Quote:
Another reason for that is what Drako says:
It takes up 65% of his processor time!!!
And he is using a single processor (not 2 as he believes and the control panel seems to believe ! - But that is another question) with hyperthreading technology. (For further reading on hyperthreading technology search intel's homepage and you'll find out what I am talking about and the reason that a system "seems" to recognize 2 processors {Task Manager, control panel, etc.}). This is a certain indication that you should always use about 100% of your processor time (though the events during that time perform absolutely nothing!)
Another way of viewing your 100% of your processor time is by 2x 50% of the time spent on a processor with hyperthreading technology. So 65% is a way too high!
heh. I dont know, my resourse use mesurements are pretty unstable, i hit ctrl, alt del to get my task manager open, then start up the game. while playing hit alt-tab to check my processor usage, it only gives you a split second to see how much usuage is being used before heroes hits 0%. so I had it in the performance tab this way I can see the graph to see how high it gets during this time.
on my P4 (celeron) 2.4 in the basement doing this I hit 100% every time, but on the laptop as I said highest usage ive seen was 65% in total "CPU usage history"
to be perfectly honest, I didnt have the slightest idea what HT even was, but this laptop was in my budget (1399$ CDN) and it looked cool HAHA. Thanks for the info.
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