What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened:
I expect GoW to not eat up my computer while it is idle! Even when not playing and leave it running in the background the game consumes a lot of resources for no reason.
For comparison warframe uses 25% cpu and 29% gpu idle. A 3d shooter …
How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
All the time. Sometimes more sometimes less but all the time way to much.
Steps to make it happen again
Start the game and leave it running
Limiting the game to 60 fps via nvidia driver puts it at ~3% gpu and minimizing the game instead of leaving it in the background puts the cpu from ~21% to ~6%.
I think what ever happens when the game is minimized should although apply when it has not the focus or is in the background.
Or you could implement something like Path of exile with background fps. With 1 fps in the background it frees a lot of gpu.
At current energy prices it is cheaper to close the game and buy the gems instead of collecting tribute XD but I think this should not be the goal because steam player charts would drop
I reported this a few years back happening to the “sister game” of PuzzleQuest 3. I think this started appearing with the last Unity update.
Using the Nvidia or AMD control panel’s functionality to limit FPS is indeed the best option here. I would argue that even 30 fps is good for GoW, it doesn’t need more than that.
If you don’t want to mess with that, simply enabling the ‘power saving’ option will limit the game to 30fps automatically.
Also, turn high quality water off, blur off and graphics to low, seriously, you don’t need all that stuff.
That does not match up with my measures. See the bottom left of the screenshot for the fps measure, while having Power Saving switched on. Power Saving does reduce the fps by 50% though - which is ~72 fps for me, since I’m running 144Hz. If you run 60Hz it will result in 30 fps.
I downloaded “Rivatuner Statistics Server” added Gems of war and limited it to 60 fps
Then I updated the file “GemsOfWar.exe.cfg” under “C:\Program Files (x86)\RivaTuner Statistics Server\Profiles”
with “IdleLimitTime=1000000” under “[Framerate]” like this:
[Framerate]
Limit=60
IdleLimitTime=1000000
This limits the background fps to 1. 100000 would be 10.
Background CPU is now ~4% and GPU <1%
PS: I use power saving mode from Gems of war now but I am not sure how this works with my Nvidia settings maybe you have to play around with it.
I use HWiNFO to check power consumption in watt for CPU and GPU
