Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Technical Issues [Mac] Extreme heat, very rapid battery drain

Game version: 1.0.78.0
Computer: MacBook Pro 15-inch, Late 2011
Processor: 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB
Operating System: OS X Version 10.9.4
Other Software: avast! Free Antivirus

Divinity: Original Sin at its default settings makes my computer unusually hot. After a few minutes of playing I hear the internal fans spin up to very high speeds and feel intense heat radiating from inside the machine. It get's almost hot enough to burn my fingers, much hotter than any other game I've played.

I can play for about 1 hour 10 minutes before my battery is drained completely. For comparison, I can play other games for 3 hours or longer with a fully charged battery. When not gaming, I can start with a fully charded battery and browse the web and watch videos for most of the day.

I have made changes in the options menu to address these problems, but the results are not much better. Here are the new settings I customized in Options attempting to address these problems:

Video ->
Full Screen Display: Color LCD
Resolution: 1024x640 (16x10)
Display Mode: Fullscreen
V-sync: Off
Alternative Video Mode: not checked (disabled)
Frame Cap Enable: checked (enabled)
Frame Cap: 30
Quality Preset: Very Low
Model Quality: Low
Texture Quality: Very Low
Texture Filtering: Trilinear
Shadows: not checked (disabled)
Anti-Aliasing: none
Ambient Occlusion: not checked (disabled)
Screen Space Reflections: not checked (disabled)
Depth of Field: not checked (disabled)
Motion Blur: not checked (disabled)
God Rays: not checked (disabled)
Bloom: not checked (disabled)
Audio ->
Sound Quality: Low

I would appreciate some suggestions as to how I can extend my play time on battery and reduce the heat. Thanks for reading.

I'm not a specialist but maybe, check your video driver settings (not in the game but in your computer). On my pc + nvidia, I need to configure the driver for "use game settings only" for this game or I have some bugs. Maybe your driver force high antialiasing or other options that use more power.

I don't know if the Intel Core i7 on MacBook has an integrated gpu (Intel HD Graphics) like on pc. It's possible that the game uses this and not your ati, and that could explain why it's so hot. In this case you can try to disable this driver video card (I don't know if you can force the game to use the ati)

Hope this helps

Indeed, the laptop does come with integrated graphics and, by default, it automatically switches to it whenever it runs on battery.

To ensure your MBP is running on the discrete GPU even when on battery:

• Launch System Preferences
• Go to Energy Saver
• Turn off Automatic Graphics Switching

You should be all set. Not sure your battery life will improve, though. Games aren't usually conceived with energy conservation in mind. Always playing with you laptop plugged in might be the better solution.

@ Zorgi
I don't know how to configure the driver on OS X. I'm ashamed

@ RDD
I don't keep the laptop plugged in because I fear the charger will be incapable of charging the battery while powering the computer under gaming conditions.

As suggested, I have unchecked (disabled) Automatic Graphics Switching. I hope this will help reduce heat and possibly extend batter life. I'll be observing carefully.

try using the vsync and force frame limiting options in the video options panel for the game.

set vsync to on, and force the frame rate to something below 60. I use 50 for mine, and that fixed all the problems with heat generation.

for a game like this, that isn't a FPS, you don't need high framerates. even 30 might be good enough for some, though that low does tend to bother my eyes a bit.

the Graphics Switching is intended to reduce power in normal use I suppose (when not playing).
I know that in 3D games the Intel HD Graphics increases considerably the cpu heat, so the fan speed, and so the battery drain. I don't know if you can configure the game to not use the Intel, but I found a tool that is supposed to monitor such things and select one video card. But be carefull I'm not a mac user and I don't know if it's safe : http://gfxcardstatus.en.softonic.com/mac

The recent 2.1.0 release on GOG may complicate things. I'm hoping the fine devs at Larian have made some optimizations to improve things for us. Rest assured, I'm reading carefully all your comments, and all the input is appreciated.

I have to wonder where you might be that you have the time to spend hours playing the game but you cannot for some reason plug the power adapter into the wall socket instead of running on batteries. You might want to think about that for a minute. Maybe you need to take the power brick along with you--that would completely solve the battery problem, of course.

More to the point, though...laptops are the worst possible platforms for gaming--they are designed for small, work-related tasks that don't require a lot in the way of power. Every component inside a laptop is designed around power conservation (to extend battery life) *not* around performance. Games, however, are designed to run without regard for power conservation, some games requiring more performance than others, and thus more power than others--there's scant room inside for ventilation, and the more power a game demands the more power goes to your components and the *hotter* things get inside the case. That's why your batteries drain so quickly.

Simply put: laptops are not designed to run 3d games on batteries. Period...;) And they aren't much better when you plug them into the wall. What you are experiencing is par for the course with a laptop. Running games on a laptop is very much trying to hammer the proverbial square peg into the round hole...;)

Best gaming platform: desktop, hands down. No batteries, powerful components, great ventilation, lots of room in the case, etc., makes for a much better gaming experience all around. You can also service your desktop and upgrade your desktop component by component at your convenience--no can do any of that with a laptop. I know this isn't what you're really asking, but it's just the truth--"You can't make a silk purse out of a sou's ear," etc...;) Put a desktop together and enjoy life...be nice to yourself...:D

It's true. It doesn't happen only on Mac. It happened on high end graphics card on Windows as well. What Divinity Engine are they using? It's really darn unoptimized.

Hello Waltc,

I am at home, in my living room. I could plug the power adapter into a wall socket, but I choose not to. I have thought about it, and my conclusion is that the charger is not capable of maintaining a charge on the battery while simultaneously powering the CPU and GPU at high demand.

You are quite correct in stating that laptops are not well designed for gaming. I am uncertain of your definition of "performance" in the context of this discussion, but since we seem to agree on the rest I don't see a problem.

I was unaware that D:OS is considered a "3D" game. FPS and TPS games are better examples of what I think of as "3D". Maybe I have something to learn in this regard?

I won't be building a desktop computer any time soon. The computer I have is not what I asked for, but it is what I was given. I am grateful for it, and I intend to get the best use of it for as long as it lasts. In the mean time, I would gladly entertain your suggestions as to how to put together a desktop system well suited to Divinity: Original Sin.

Thanks for your reply

Archraven,

I read this thread, but it doesn't show whether or not the problems were resolved:
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=519133

It would be great to find some commonalities among the systems experiencing unusually high energy consumption and heat dissipation. At least then we'd have something specific for the devs to look into.

Thanks for your reply.

That sounds like an awful reason not to plug your laptop in.


Letç—´ suppose that your laptop is using 85W (the max your power adapter can provide) at all time during your play sessions. Then:

• Given that your battery is 77.5Wh, you won稚 be able to play on battery even for one hour at a time. No miracle there.
• Worst case scenario, your SMC is providing all available power to the circuits and not charging the battery. Leaving a battery untouched is not an issue as long as it is not for weeks or months.

In any case, I would expect decreased battery life when using your discrete CPU over the integrated one.

RDD,

I have noticed that if the charger is plugged in when I play Minecraft, the battery will sometimes discharge. The few times this happened, the machine became very hot near the Magsafe connector. It concerns me, because I can not imagine the hardware is designed to discharge the battery while it is connected to power.

I don't think the AMD GPU would cause more battery drain than the Intel GPU. My reasoning is that the Intel GPU is not designed with gaming in mind. The features it lacks must be provided by software libraries which run on the CPU. The CPU is not optimized for graphics rendering calculations, and can not perform the work as efficiently as a hardware device designed specifically for that purpose.

Thanks for the input.

As a general update, I have achieved 1 hour 30 minutes of playtime on a fully charged battery. The heat seems to be somewhat reduced. It is difficult to judge whether this very small improvement is due to disabling automatic graphics switching. I'd be much happier if I could get two hours of play, and the computer would run less hot while playing.

Thanks everyone for reading and making suggestions to this point. I will update when things get better or worse.

You're welcome

It's possible that the game forces the use of the Intel bypassing the gpu switch. I don't know how to check that. Maybe in log files ?

Additionally, you can try to raise the laptop, to allow air to pass under the machine. If you have a desk fan, try to refresh the laptop with (be careful not to block the computer evacuation air flow ). If you lower the temperature the internal fan will run less and you will get more battery time

I find this worrying; you may have a charger or battery issue. You could always try to reset the SMC and see this issue remains.