STEAM performance troubles and how mitigate them

[Dwarden 1125]

about performance drops caused by STEAM and how mitigate them

from my own experience this is what eats most CPU from highest to lowest

• 1. STEM friend-list (even while online, just closing friend-list saves most CPU usage)
• 2. STEAM chats (the more of them active the worse the overall load)
• 3. STEAM updating (as uses checksums it needs some CPU and I/O, so make sure nothing is updating)
• 4. STEAM overlay
• 5. STEAM IM (switch yourself to OFFLINE for lowest CPU usage)
• 6. STEAM website (if you keep website open and minimize, it still keeps playing the flash animations for example, so ideally you visit e.g. your profile page as last)

+ then set STEAM to lower priority than arma3.exe

+ Avast! antivirus users (but same rules can be used for other AV) shall read : http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=116952.0

 

+

 

this is what i use
```
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -silent -nochatui -nofriendsui -console -no-browser
```
it allows run STEAMclient w/o new UI/chat/friends/popup/browser bloat
(especially those 200+ popups i can't disable about group/friends invites)

it's very effective for fast testing (as someone who is game industry it's double important)

for advanced gamer it saves some CPU / GPU cycles and some RAM /  VRAM space
even less stressing your SSD 
it avoids the STEAM browser cluttering the disk space with cache growing out of control

when i want buy / discuss something i use reliable web browsers 
and when i want to join the chats/friends i just start it w/o those switches

there are some more compatibility switches like
-complete_install_via_http
-tcp

which may help in more firewall strict networked environment

[gliptal 25]

Great, will try these tips!

Yay!

[k3lt 3]

Can i ask how did you tested this? I mean the steam cpu usage?

I just tried few things and pretty much always steam is not using cpu at all, also i'm pretty sure if you have game running any steam updates will be paused.

With steam overlay and some chats open i have 0-1% cpu usage from steam process, so i'm not sure if this going to help..

Edit: Is there any way to turn off physx completely?

Edited March 6, 2013 by k3lt

[Dwarden 1125]

the list is my 9+ years experience with STEAM ...

you need to have 300 friends on the friendlist, most of them online to see visible fraction of cpu usage, same goes for chat, try some 'active' ones with dozens people talking

note: you can't turn PhysX off, it's key part of the engine (CPU physics) ...

[Leon86 13]

When you start a game via steam it stops all the updates right?

[k3lt 3]

When you start a game via steam it stops all the updates right?

Yes it does, AFAIK you cant even unpause updating if in game.

[Cepheus74 2]

Doing this will not work for everyone. Not everyone has 300 friends online at once and talking to dozens of people whilst trying to play a game. Bit of a mis-guided guide if you ask me.

[Nicholas 5]

Here's how to set process priority:

[Dwarden 1125]

Doing this will not work for everyone. Not everyone has 300 friends online at once and talking to dozens of people whilst trying to play a game. Bit of a mis-guided guide if you ask me.

the effect is still there, if you think You don't need it then why You bother ...

[tonygrunt 10]

Yes it does, AFAIK you cant even unpause updating if in game.

If you Alt-TAB to steam you can resume updating and then continue playing. Helpful if you play a single player game.

[white 1]

to me steam changes absolutely nothing unless it bugs out and downloads something while im playing online.

[dannynickelov 1]

Doesn't work at all... hopefully there will be a patch soon. (:

[WalkerDown 1]

Since there's no way to turn it off, and i won't be forced to load something running in the background (that is annoying as hell), i've found my own solution to completely get rid of it. Sadly i've find these "exotic" (and someway dangerous) solutions, when i've bought the game. Sometime you feel very frustrating of knowing that those "on the edge" guys are having a better life than us, legit players... bah.

[stk2008 14]

I bet there will be an update befor the ARMA3 alpha lite ;)

For reason I cant be botherd to explain but bet there is

[EmirSc 10]

willl try it, thanks

[NeuroFunker 11]

since we spoke about process priority here, what was that launch parameter to set arma to high priority at launch?

[EmirSc 10]

since we spoke about process priority here, what was that launch parameter to set arma to high priority at launch?

PD: the -high command doesn't work. i use the others to start the game faster.

you can alt+tab and set it to high on the task manager.

[metalcraze 290]

Yep closing steam and chat windows nets me +2-3 fps at times.

[tet5uo 4]

Can't we just set steam to use one of the 5 other CPU threads I have that your game can't use? :D

[stk2008 14]

Can't we just set steam to use one of the 5 other CPU threads I have that your game can't use? :D

LOL better yet give steam 3 cores ARMA3 only uses one any way :P

[TangoMikeFive 1]

Things like Windows Sidebar, and Chrome "services" also tend to hog some CPU and memory.

[tet5uo 4]

Why worry about extra CPU cycles and free memory when the game doesn't even use close to 30% of what a modern PC can give it? I don't understand how this should help my performance but I'm desperate.

[Hotelz 1]

Even though ArmA 3 does a horrible job at using my entire CPU or even half of it at that I have noticed that steam kills my frames. Basically I get locked at 30 frames unless I'm staring into the sky or the ground. Disabling everything in Steam did not fix the issue. Only by ALT-Tabbing then ending the task was I able to get those frames back. I wonder if the non steam distro simply gets better performance overall.

Another thing to point out is the fact that this is random. Sometimes steam doesn't cause the lag at all and other times it reams me.

[tet5uo 4]

I think I'll also disable steam-community in-game for now as well.

[ElLocoRemolacha 1]

To close the steam in-game overlay you can terminate the proces SteamOverlay_UI, (i think i was like that) the process only appears when you open a game, after you close it the in-game overlay will be deactivated for all you steam games, to enable it just restart steam.