Retrofrogg Posted August 27, 2018 Share Posted August 27, 2018 (edited) Odd problem I've just noticed today. Using the latest beta. After the image caching is done for a platform, things seem to be OK - I can scroll through the games and CPU activity (i7-6700) remains between 10 and 60%, depending on scrolling speed. I'm wondering if this is also too high as there is a slight delay before some thumbnails appear, but this is not the main problem I am describing here. If I edit a game, and then return to browsing, I get a prolonged CPU spike at around 80-90%, as if it is caching all the images again. When I browse at this point, game thumbnails are slow to load. There is no green progress bar appearing again however. Once the CPU goes back to normal, I can browse OK again. This is most noticeable for platforms with large numbers of games - e.g. Arcade/MAME with 3658. After editing a game the CPU stays up at around 85% for a few minutes - maybe roughly the amount of time it took to cache the images in the first place. Also happens if I open another Launchbox window, like the options Window - on returning to platform browing, the above problem recurs! Any help appreciated! Edited August 27, 2018 by Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted August 27, 2018 Share Posted August 27, 2018 I'm guessing what's happening is that games are re-caching or refreshing. Any game that is edited automatically clears its cache and then the cache is rebuilt. It's possible that the progress bar at the top isn't updating in that scenario. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted August 27, 2018 Share Posted August 27, 2018 I just tested it myself editing a single game. I think what you're seeing happening in the background is just simply the data saving procedures. Any time data is saved, the process happens in the background and it's very good these days at maxing out the CPU, as it should be. On my system it takes around 5 seconds for the CPU activity to calm down, which is normal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted August 27, 2018 Share Posted August 27, 2018 A few minutes isn't normal though, but this could be due to a bunch of different factors, including the size of your collection and your hardware specs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 Hi @Jason Carr - thanks so much for your reply. Thankfully, the problem has disappeared with the latest beta! So I'm left wondering what was going on, but happy that using Launchbox is again smooth. Will keep an eye on things to make sure it doesn't recur. My collection isn't huge at the moment by the standards here - 17,682 games. And my hardware specs are OK I think - i7-6700, 16gig RAM, SSD for all the Launchbox stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 (edited) Actually @Jason Carr I spoke too soon - it seems to be still doing it! Just edited a MAME game to add a 3D box, and on clicking OK and returning to the (already cached) platform, my CPU load for Launchbox goes up to 85% with the fan becoming audible. It remains up there for around 2 minutes before the CPU load for Launchbox drops down to around 1% (with Launchbox still idle). Task manager shows the GPU at about 4% total. Memory is at 25%. Also, just not it is re-caching (the green progress bar is showing) my MAME/Arcade platform; I'm not sure why, as it has been cached already. As mentioned above, I would be surprised if it was due to my hardware or collection size - as this problem wasn't happening until recently. All I had done recently was remove all my MAME roms and then run the new MAME importer on a new (0.200) MAME set. I don't believe that I had made any other particular changes - other than keeping pace with the latest betas of course! Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this problem makes the browsing & editing experience somewhat poor. I've not really any ideas myself what is happening. I do notice that when scrolling through the MAME games after the cache, some take 1-3 seconds to appear (some of the thumbnails I mean). I wonder if this suggests that things have not been cached properly? Edited August 28, 2018 by Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 I'm still not quite certain what's going on, so I guess if you PM me your LaunchBox\Data folder I can look to see if I can replicate it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted August 30, 2018 Share Posted August 30, 2018 Hi Dan, I tested with your data. I'm not seeing long CPU spikes on my end, but it could be because I don't have your media, or it could be because of something like an anti-virus app interfering. Do you have any kind of anti-virus or anti-malware programs installed? For some reason I didn't think of that before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted August 30, 2018 Author Share Posted August 30, 2018 HI Jason - I have Windows defender that came with Windows 10, though looking at it just now, I don't think that I have any "virus and threat protection" enabled. The other options under that menu say "no action needed". I don't have any other antivirus, antispam or antimalware apps running I don't think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted August 31, 2018 Share Posted August 31, 2018 Okay cool; it's not an anti-virus issue then. What are your computer specs and collection size? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted September 8, 2018 Author Share Posted September 8, 2018 (edited) Sorry for the delay in my reply. The problem is still happening unfortunately. Main problem is with MAME - likely due to the larger number of games. Computer specs: Machine: Macbook Pro 2016 model 17" CPU: Intel i7-6700HQ; includes Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU: Intel Radeon Pro 450 RAM: 16GB OS: Windows 10 (running on a Bootcamp partition) Monitor: external LG 27UK600 4K monitor Collection size: 25,968 games - but I think this includes duplication as the total count seems to include both platforms and playlists Thanks again @Jason Carr! Edited September 8, 2018 by Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted September 8, 2018 Share Posted September 8, 2018 1 hour ago, Dan said: Sorry for the delay in my reply. The problem is still happening unfortunately. Main problem is with MAME - likely due to the larger number of games. Computer specs: Machine: Macbook Pro 2016 model 17" CPU: Intel i7-6700HQ; includes Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU: Intel Radeon Pro 450 RAM: 16GB OS: Windows 10 (running on a Bootcamp partition) Monitor: external LG 27UK600 4K monitor Collection size: 25,968 games - but I think this includes duplication as the total count seems to include both platforms and playlists Thanks again @Jason Carr! Okay, I did a test with my Arcade platform myself, and I can confirm that the CPU usage does go up for around 10 seconds or so while it saves the Arcade.xml file and does some other cleanup stuff. It does seem to be longer with bigger platforms. As far as why it would be taking multiple minutes though, I still don't have any good ideas on that. So I'm at a loss currently, as your hardware doesn't seem like it should be performing that poorly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted September 8, 2018 Share Posted September 8, 2018 I guess one thing I should mention is that laptops in general (and Mac Books do have a history of this) will tend to under-perform on purpose either for heat reasons or battery-saving reasons. I have no idea if that has anything to do with this, but I guess it's worth mentioning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted September 9, 2018 Author Share Posted September 9, 2018 (edited) Many thanks for your replies @Jason Carr. If you haven’t come across this problem elsewhere then it is likely something specific to my machine. The funny thing is that I’m fairly sure that the problem didn’t exist up until around a month ago, and I have been using Launchbox (including with MAME) for around 2 years now. Interesting thought regarding the under-performing. The CPU does seem to be almost maxing out though - with LB using around 85% on average at these times. Is it possible that it is an image caching problem? I have wondered about this as my LB seems to re-cache images fairly often. Does caching use CPU or GPU? Also, if I "narrow" the windows contents in MAME by doing a search for a game and then editing, the problem doesn't occur. Edited September 9, 2018 by Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted September 10, 2018 Author Share Posted September 10, 2018 Further to my post above, the problem has currently disappeared. No idea why The only thing that I have done is an image cleanup. Whether that was related to it, I don't know. Glad the problem has gone away for now. Will let you know if any more developments. Thanks for the input 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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