CPU Usage 100%

Hello there,

1 or 2 weeks back the game started to run poorly on my system. I already checked everything mentionend in the “How to improve your performance” of the fatshark sides.

I turned off all addons, checked the steam files, lowered everything to the minimum (even when the game runned without problems before), deactivated the steam overlay, tried the launcher bypass and so on. I even downloaded and installed the game again.

I still can’t get above 40 FPS anymore. It will drop to 15-20 FPS with every horde spawning.

In the end i checked my CPU usage and 1 of the 4 cores is always at 100%. Even when i am just in the main menu or standing the in keep. That’s when ich checked the game on my girlfriend’s system. Same result. 1 core is always at 100%. She can’t even get above 20 FPS anymore.

I checked a few other games like Doom, Elder Scrolls Online, Borderlands 3 and Deep Rock Galactic. The core usage will normalize on these game. Just vermintide will turn to 100% on 1 core all the time.

Maybe someone else with performance issues can check their system to confirm if it’s not just us?

Is there a fix to that? I sadly can’t play the game like that anymore. Same for my girlfriend.

Intel Core i5 4570
16GB RAM
GTX 960
Win 10 64

PC1

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What are you using to monitor the CPU ? Cause I don’t havee the values in windows’ Resource Monitor, only graphs.
Edit : I had posted graphs of my cores but they just showed a normal, split usage. I thought there was a peak on one core but it was very probably due to this browser window running on it, as it was the only core that still had some activity after I closed the game.

I used Core Temp. Thought my CPU could be slowing down because of overheating and wanted to check the temperatue. That’s when i noticed the CPU load was stuck on 100% at just 1 core and only when playing vermintide.

in the launcher, select settings, then check the “Worker Threads” number.
If this is 1, only 1 thread will be created on a single core, bumping that core’s usage to 100%

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Yes that’s what I was looking for, I knew there were discussions about the number of threads around here.
Thank you for the info, even though I’m not really concerned in this particular case.

Thanks for the information.

I checked it and tried to set it to 2 threads (max i could choose) and tried it with directx 11 and 12.

Sadly still the same problem. 1 core is stuck to 100% usage.

I even tried to switch the affinity of the cores, just to check if i can disable the problematic core for the game but i just getting an access denied message. And starting Vermintide in Safe Mode isn’t possible. At least when i tried i got an error message from EAC and couldn’t start the game.

Don’t even know if it’s a problem of the game or my system since i got the same problem on 2 different systems. 1 is running with an intel and the other one is running with an amd cpu.

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It wouldn’t be an issue if your 100% of your CPU was being utilised if your performance was stable, which I understand it is not!

I recall a while back, somebody noticed Windows Defender was interfering with Easy Anti-Cheat and somehow causing the CPU to spike.

I’m not sure if that would explain your issue here, but perhaps worth considering, along with any other Anti-Virus you’re using.

Also, perhaps you have something installed on both PCs that could be interfering with your CPU usage? In which case, I love a ‘Selective Startup’:

  1. Press the Windows key
  2. Type ‘msconfig’ and select ‘System Configuration’
  3. On the ‘General’ tab, select ‘Selective Startup’
  4. Deselect ‘Load startup Items’
  5. Reboot your PC
  6. Launch Vermintide 2 as normal, and see if the issue persists

Failing that, I can see if anybody from Engine is available tomorrow to chat about this with, but with the Swedes celebrating Christmas on the 24th, I may be out of luck!

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I tried to start the game with antivir and windows defender deactivated. Sadly no change.

I also used the selective startup as you described and deactivated windows defender and antivir on top of that. Still no change.

I already checked for CPU heavy programs that may is interfering in the background but couldn’t find anything.

The only programs that are installed on both systems would be the antivir, but i already tried to start the game without it.


Core Temp

Just for the comparison. That’s my CPU when playing Doom instead of Vermintide.

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I tested around to get the game running anywhere near to playable and found some little things to get the game running again to a certain degree.

Not anywhere next to the performance i had before but at least i were able to get the 100% core usage fixed. Tested it on both systems. And it works, just not as good as it should be compared to the performance before.

I started the game without any addons, deactivated the steam overlay and used the launcher bypass. At that moment i still got 1 core with an usage of 100%. That’s when i deactivated the problematic core for the eac_launcher.exe process.

I waited until the game was set and switched the affiliation back to normal. The cpu usage went back to normal in that process.

Tested the same on the second system and the 100% core went back to normal too. Seems to be a problem with the eac_launcher.exe there? Not sure about that. Maybe someone with more experience than me should look into that.

Anyway, the game is running “okay” again. Not as good as before. And i still have deactivated the overlay, deactivated all addons and lowered the graphics to the lowest possible but that does not seem like a problem i am alone with. It seems there are a lot of performance issues at the moment.

That’s my CPU usage right now (even with firefox opened in the background)

And just the steps i made to fix the core problem.
I first had to start the game and went to the task manager - details and searched for the eac_launcher.exe. Right-clicked and went to affiliation (don’t know how it’s exactly named in english)

Afterwards i unchecked the problematic CPU3 core, confirmed the change and waited 2-3 minutes to make sure it was set. CPU usage went to normal and i turned the affiliation back to normal. Problem is still solved right now.

Still FPS drops below 30 but at least i am getting FPS above 30 again. Maybe it’s helping someone else too.

Thanks for everything.
Maybe the game can get back to 100% playability for me as soon as the other performance problems get fixed.

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I’ve nothing to add other than kudos to @GoliathGalbar for going through the time and effort to post things properly. I think the performance issues are hitting everyone, but some are suffering more than others.

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i’ve also noticed same thing today

Thank you for your detailed post. I’ll chat with our Engine Developer about this when he’s back in the New Year!

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I might not followed this completly.

Is the issue that the CPU is using 100% or that the FPS is low. Regarding why performance has decreased I can’t answer that at all but I might explain why 100% might be reasonable for one core.

But regarding 100% uthilization I would assume this is expected when you are CPU bottlenecked. Which VT2 oftens is due to heavy CPU usage.

The model is that we have 2 main threads, game and render thread that are the heavy lifters. We then have worker threads. If one of the main threads is the bottlneck it will likely be working ~100% of the time unless you cap the frame rate. if you would be GPU bottlenecked, these 2 threads would be idle in the end of a frame and thus not be working 100% of the time.

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The problem had been, that 1 core were used up to 100% even when just standing still in the keep on 2 different systems. None of my other gamers caused similar issues.

Wasn’t the case before and seemed to be at least one of the problems. I am not an expert, but after the workaround the core usage went from 100% all the time down to 60-80% usage with a FPS increase of around 10-15. I don’t know anything about game development but that seems to be at least some kind of a problem. Maybe its affecting others too?

I have played the game over 1100 hours and haven’t had any problems like that before. Even with all extras (launcher bypass, disabling all addons etc.) we weren’t able to get our old performance back right now.

While this has been a fix for my girlfriend and me (at least to some degree) there seem to be a lot of other performance problems around right now.

I really love the game but i have stopped playing for now, waiting for some performance fixes.

There is nothing else i could say. Thanks for your answer anyway. Appreciate that.