Titan Quest CPU usage

[IvanRhys]

I purchased Titan Quest today. It installed fine but when I start it up my cpu usage hits 100%. This is going from an average of 4%. The mouse slows and skips, but the video is okay. Voices are also unaffected.

I have an AMD 64 3000+ 1800 MHz
1 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600

I'm Running XP Home Edition 5.1.2600 with service pack 2 etc etc.

Anyone had a similar problem? I contacted tech support but they seem to be dead. Possibly a zombie breakout at the local mall.

[Siberys]

A game using 100% of your CPU is about right.

When booting up a game you pretty much shut down your desktop so your processor can focus all of its attention on the game, thus if your processor is using 100% on that game, then it's doing it's job. And if all the problem is, is that your mouse is lagging every so often, then it's doing just fine.

[IvanRhys]

Not every so often... my mouse is lagging to a point that makes it almost impossible to even click on menu options.

Edit: So I checked with another game and you are right, the cpu usage at 100% is normal. However, my game has still been rendered unplayable. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

[Siberys]

You aren't playing windowed are you?

[IvanRhys]

I had the same problem windowed and non.

Siberys, because of what you said I searched for mouse lag issues instead of cpu usage issues. I discovered a fix on the IGN boards.

Quoting a godsend named Techyon:

Problem:
Mouse is extremely laggy. Graphics otherwise run smoothly (or appropriately for your system's specs). Sometimes the mouse may become 'un-stuck' for a second or two, but quickly returns to a highly choppy state.

If you have tried any other possible solutions, but they still aren't fixing your problem, I have found via searching around the Internet (unfortunately I cannot remember exactly who came up with this solution) that setting the Titan Quest.exe priority to low fixes this - and it does on my computer. However, it is extremely inconvenient and time consuming to actually make it to the Task Manager window to accomplish this, as the game doesn't seem to want to give way to any other windows while it is in this glitchy state.

I have written a very simple batch file that will automatically start Titan Quest on low priority. Bear in mind, this solution will take a little effort, but it's quite easy, and well worth it for this nice game.

Open Notepad and copy-and-paste the following exactly as written:

@echo off

start "" /low "Titan Quest.exe"


As you can see, this does not contain any malicious code that will send your computer into critical meltdown. Save this file as anything you want within the same directory as Titan Quest.exe (I believe this is usually C:\Program Files\THQ\Titan Quest), as long as it ends with .bat - in my case I have named it "tq_low_priority.bat", and change the desktop shortcut so that it points to this new file instead of Titan Quest.exe directly, so that you may still use the desktop shortcut (you may also change the shortcut icon via right-click -> Properties if you get the yellow gear icon and would like the TQ icon). Double-click it and see if your problem is solved. I hope it works for you as well!

So yeah, my problem is solved and anyone else who has this issues (noth that they would be looking at this thread) can use this as a fix. It works wonders.

Thank you, Siberys, for your help. You pointed me in the right direction, or away from the wrong one. Cheers!