Would my laptop slow down
closed account (ozUkoG1T)
I have had an qusetion in mind that does you're laptop slow if you play text based games online not anyway 3d atall or 2d like like :spaceinvasion
Interpretation 1: "Will my computer eventually become slower if I make it run simple rather than complex programs?"
It's a machine, not a muscle. It won't get out of shape if you don't exercise it.
Interpretation 2: "Does my computer run slower while it runs simple programs?"
Depends. In general, no, it always runs at the same speed, and at every cycle it has the choice of doing something or doing nothing. If the programs you're currently running aren't very demanding, most of the cycles will be spent doing nothing and using relatively little power.
Some CPU+motherboard combinations can be configured so that if the CPU idles for some time, the MB will temporarily lower the voltage and the frequency. This way, less power is wasted on useless clock cycles and on generating waste heat. When you finally do give the CPU something to do, the motherboard brings the voltage and frequency back to normal.
It's a machine, not a muscle. It won't get out of shape if you don't exercise it.
Interpretation 2: "Does my computer run slower while it runs simple programs?"
Depends. In general, no, it always runs at the same speed, and at every cycle it has the choice of doing something or doing nothing. If the programs you're currently running aren't very demanding, most of the cycles will be spent doing nothing and using relatively little power.
Some CPU+motherboard combinations can be configured so that if the CPU idles for some time, the MB will temporarily lower the voltage and the frequency. This way, less power is wasted on useless clock cycles and on generating waste heat. When you finally do give the CPU something to do, the motherboard brings the voltage and frequency back to normal.
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closed account (zb0S216C)
Text-based games, in comparison with 2-D/3-D games, are by far less resource intensive, and are unlikely to slow down your system. Naturally, 3-D games, such as Crysis 2, or Witcher 2, place such tremendous strain on a system, a text-based game wouldn't even register on a chart which measures resource usage during the game's run-time; irrespective of on-line game-play.
Wazzak
Wazzak
One thing to keep in mind, is that no matter how large the program is, your computer is just processing numbers. Text based programs have very little math involved so the processing is pretty slim. But a 3D world like crysis or battlefield has a ton of math involved dealing with all the various moving objects in a 3d world, along with rendering the entire scene at 60 FPS.
So, for your question if you're just running a text based game (offline or online), your computer is going to be idle most of the time. There's a thing called a CPU I/O burst cycle where essentially the CPU alternates between processing and waiting for I/O. Text based games are almost always going to be just waiting for I/O, so the CPU will be pretty idle
So, for your question if you're just running a text based game (offline or online), your computer is going to be idle most of the time. There's a thing called a CPU I/O burst cycle where essentially the CPU alternates between processing and waiting for I/O. Text based games are almost always going to be just waiting for I/O, so the CPU will be pretty idle
Some CPU+motherboard combinations can be configured so that if the CPU idles for some time, the MB will temporarily lower the voltage and the frequency. This way, less power is wasted on useless clock cycles and on generating waste heat. When you finally do give the CPU something to do, the motherboard brings the voltage and frequency back to normal. |
True. E.g. Intel i7 2.4 GHz works typically at 800 MHz when idle, but when loaded it can clock up a core to even 3.5 GHz (it is called TurboBoost). And each core can have a different clock frequency.
As for games - most games, even the most 3D ones, are pretty terrible at using multiple cores of CPU. Usually they are single-threaded and run everything in a single game loop (interleaved - physics, AI and rendering). However, they usually use GPU cores very well. So I'd expect a high end game warm your GPU more than high end CPU.
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| As for games - most games, even the most 3D ones, are pretty terrible at using multiple cores of CPU. Usually they are single-threaded |
I think most games are dual threaded at this point. I can't pull any stats out, but I can tell you SC2 is dual - threaded, and that's pretty non intensive. I'd imagine most higher end games are dual threaded also
Because they specifically mentioned online games, I think the OP is buying into the myth that playing games online causes everything on your computer to run slower even after the game is closed.
Your computer may slow down after you played a game online but just playing the game isn't the real reason for the slow down. Because internet browsers really just receive and interpret text in a very procedural fashion, prior to HTML 5 it wasn't really possible to get them to do anything cool like render graphics1 and allow users to play games. The work around that was adopted a long time ago was to use frameworks, browser extensions and plug-ins to run files that the browser downloaded to your computer when you accessed a site.
Plug-ins and browser extensions, Adobes Flash and Unity 3D are two examples, would be reasons your Internet Browser would slow down. This is because they are loaded into memory when your browser starts so that they can start doing their job as soon as they are needed. A flaw in this design is that they have to be loaded even when you're not doing anything that requires them.
Frameworks, like Java VM and Microsoft's Silverlight, are usually loaded into memory as a service when your computer starts up or when you log in. This means that they are taking up memory in your system even when you don't have a browser open. These also have an annoying habit of checking for updates far more often then is necessary because they are historically a common attack vector for malware.
This is by no means a complete list of reasons that your computer might slow down but the list is impossibly extensive. It could be something as simple as file fragmentation due to how NTFS writes to the disk, or it could be as complex as a malware infection. It might not even be software related, every device ever built has a failure rate and parts ware out. A damaged capacitor on your motherboard for example might not be enough to cause a blue screen error but more CPU cycles would need to be used to correct the errors that it would cause. The bearings on the motors for spinning platter hard drives ware down from everyday usage, and if it isn't spinning fast enough then any data saved to the disk, including data that is paged out, would take longer to access. In this later example CPU time is not deferred to another process like you might expect, the core will usually wait for the disk before continuing on.
I'm going to stop writing now because I have to draw the line somewhere.
1: There is a difference between rendering graphics and displaying an image.
Your computer may slow down after you played a game online but just playing the game isn't the real reason for the slow down. Because internet browsers really just receive and interpret text in a very procedural fashion, prior to HTML 5 it wasn't really possible to get them to do anything cool like render graphics1 and allow users to play games. The work around that was adopted a long time ago was to use frameworks, browser extensions and plug-ins to run files that the browser downloaded to your computer when you accessed a site.
Plug-ins and browser extensions, Adobes Flash and Unity 3D are two examples, would be reasons your Internet Browser would slow down. This is because they are loaded into memory when your browser starts so that they can start doing their job as soon as they are needed. A flaw in this design is that they have to be loaded even when you're not doing anything that requires them.
Frameworks, like Java VM and Microsoft's Silverlight, are usually loaded into memory as a service when your computer starts up or when you log in. This means that they are taking up memory in your system even when you don't have a browser open. These also have an annoying habit of checking for updates far more often then is necessary because they are historically a common attack vector for malware.
This is by no means a complete list of reasons that your computer might slow down but the list is impossibly extensive. It could be something as simple as file fragmentation due to how NTFS writes to the disk, or it could be as complex as a malware infection. It might not even be software related, every device ever built has a failure rate and parts ware out. A damaged capacitor on your motherboard for example might not be enough to cause a blue screen error but more CPU cycles would need to be used to correct the errors that it would cause. The bearings on the motors for spinning platter hard drives ware down from everyday usage, and if it isn't spinning fast enough then any data saved to the disk, including data that is paged out, would take longer to access. In this later example CPU time is not deferred to another process like you might expect, the core will usually wait for the disk before continuing on.
I'm going to stop writing now because I have to draw the line somewhere.
1: There is a difference between rendering graphics and displaying an image.
Last edited on
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