Very high SMAPI CPU usage

[zdaar]

Hello, when I run this container I get very high cpu usage from smapi

My server has an i5 8700 with 32GB ram.

I am new to this, is this normal ?

[sma505]

I'm having the same issue here... any ideas?

[jerrychan7]

I observed that the high CPU usage was due to using llvmpipe to render on the CPU instead of the GPU:

Therefore, if there is a way to use the GPU for rendering, it can also reduce CPU usage.

So based on this observation, lowering the VNC resolution can reduce CPU usage. In actual use, when the resolution is adjusted from 1200x900 to 800x600, the CPU usage will be reduced from 400% to 270%.

But this is only a temporary solution, and we still need to find a way to solve the problem of high CPU usage.

[DaanSelen]

I also have this problem, any idea on how to reduce this to a "server" solution? I can map a GPU to it, that would fix it would it not?

[DaanSelen]

I observed that the high CPU usage was due to using llvmpipe to render on the CPU instead of the GPU:

Therefore, if there is a way to use the GPU for rendering, it can also reduce CPU usage.

So based on this observation, lowering the VNC resolution can reduce CPU usage. In actual use, when the resolution is adjusted from 1200x900 to 800x600, the CPU usage will be reduced from 400% to 270%.

But this is only a temporary solution, and we still need to find a way to solve the problem of high CPU usage.

I tried exposing a GPU to the SMAPI container, with success but SMAPI just ignores it.

[spiffyguy]

Hi all, I recently set this up and then decided to try updating some things! It's still early BUT for this specific issue, I managed to use libstrangle (https://gitlab.com/torkel104/libstrangle) to limit the SERVER FPS to just 8fps. It does not seem to affect the server to client connections, just limits the drawing. I tried 5fps but it was a little slow in case I needed to VNC to click or move the server player.

I run this on a LXC Container on proxmox (using the Docker LXC proxmox community script). I set 4 cores of CPU in the settings for this older 6th gen laptop running proxmox.

See attached picture with a CPU graph showing the before and then after... before using libstrangle the CPU usage was around 88% consistently on this LXC Container but now sits around 10.35% with libstrangle limiting the frame rate of the server.

No noticable changes in the clients, I run this server for 3 users, 2 tablet clients and 1 macOS client. Works great for our shared family farm!

I will do an "official" fork soon of this repo with the changes but specifically for libstrangle I added this to the Dockerfile that builds the Stardew docker image (you can put this anywhere in it but I put it before the SMAPI install)

# Dockerfile
# Install libstrangle
RUN apt-get install -y git make gcc-multilib g++-multilib libx11-dev mesa-common-dev libc6-dev-i386 && apt-get clean
RUN git clone https://gitlab.com/torkel104/libstrangle.git && cd libstrangle && make && make install

and then in the docker-entrypoint.sh file where you launch the game, I changed it to launch strangle instead with the game as the second argument after the 8fps first argument:

# docker-entrypoint.sh
echo "Opening Stardew Valley"
# Open the game
#/data/StardewValley/StardewValley
VSYNC=0 strangle 8 /data/StardewValley/StardewValley

(Sorry yes my repo I am testing uses /data/StardewValley as the game directory, so yours may be different but essentially it's the LAST line that matters... Set the VSYNC=0 (which turns off VSYNC) and then run strangle 8 GAME_BINARY, which runs strangle, sets it to 8fps and then launches the GAME_BINARY)

[DaanSelen]

Hi all, I recently set this up and then decided to try updating some things! It's still early BUT for this specific issue, I managed to use libstrangle (https://github.com/milaq/libstrangle) to limit the SERVER FPS to just 8fps. It does not seem to affect the server to client connections, just limits the drawing. I tried 5fps but it was a little slow in case I needed to VNC to click or move the server player.

I run this on a LXC Container on proxmox (using the Docker LXC proxmox community script). I set 4 cores of CPU in the settings for this older 6th gen laptop running proxmox.

This might be what we need!

[jerrychan7]

Or I have another idea: Is it possible to suspend the game process when there are no players and then resume it when players enter? If you are playing with friends, there are no players online most of the time.

Resuming the game may be relatively simple. The game always listens to port 24642/udp. Probably, we can write a shell script to resume the suspension when there is communication on the port, and pass the communication packet to the suspended game to avoid packet loss.

The timing of pausing the game may need to start with the Always On mod, because only this mode can accurately know whether all players have exited and paused the game. I observed that when all players have exited, this mod will output a Game has only local clients in the console, which is from ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/StardewValley/ErrorLogs/SMAPI-latest.txt. Probably, we can start from this to determine whether the game should be suspended?

Another point to note is that the game should be saved once before suspending to avoid losing the game progress due to container restart during suspension.

[jerrychan7]

Hi all, I recently set this up and then decided to try updating some things! It's still early BUT for this specific issue, I managed to use libstrangle (https://gitlab.com/torkel104/libstrangle) to limit the SERVER FPS to just 8fps. It does not seem to affect the server to client connections, just limits the drawing. I tried 5fps but it was a little slow in case I needed to VNC to click or move the server player.

Excellent, this solution significantly reduced CPU usage. On my Intel n6005 CPU, the usage was reduced from 270%~400% to 60%~150%.
The heat of my server was finally controlled to a barely acceptable temperature 🎉 (the machine is in a very hot area. I even bought a fan to cool it down 24 hours a day).

[DaanSelen]

To come back to this! What is the minimal fps needed for stardew valley to NOT become wonky? I right now have it at 8 but I was wondering how to minimize it further if possible.

I also decided for a mangohud approach instead of libstrangle!

See my above references issue for that.