C++ Version / Power Usage Very High [SOLVED]

[Kain Nobel]

Hello and good day!

I have two questions that may or may not be related. They may or may not even be easy to answer, and that's OK too. The first one should be easy enough...

Question 1

I'd have to really dig through tutorials and documentation (and I did for a little bit) but...

What version of C++ should I be using? C++14? C++17? ISO or GNU matter? Any other "rule of thumb"? I'm using (paraphrasing) C++14 GNU (ISO with GNU extension). I've experimented with changing these selections around a tiny bit only because of my next question...

Question 2

What could be making Power Usage rate as Very High and what would be a good way to drop this rating? Does SFML generally use a lot of power always or would it be because I might have something set up incorrectly as far as C++ standard, ISO/GNU, etc? I honestly don't believe it is anything having to do with what I've made thus far but here is details of what I have done...

(click to show/hide)

* I've set the application to run at a fixed 60 FPS.
* The application, so far, is running on Windows 11 (and hasn't been tested in 10 or in another OS - yet).
* My application loads 1x sf::Texture, 1x sf::Sprite (combo) that is 800x600px. This sprite is drawn exactly once and does nothing else in the main loop (yet).
* My application loads 3x sf::Music, one active for music and one active for ambience, the other one is special purpose.
* My application uses expandable/retractable number of sf::Sound and sf::SoundBuffers. These are dynamically cleared from memory when finished.
* I have 2x sf::Clock used internally for audio.
* All SFML libraries (except Network) are included in the build.
* The main application looks for 17 unique window and keyboard events in the main loop, but these are all "change application icon" and some "play sound" functions, and a toggle for full screen.

Other than 2 "Musics" playing, and a image being drawn (once) I could have nothing going on, not touching any buttons, and the power usage is the only one that fluctuates and it hits "Very high" a lot for no apparent reason. CPU is "fairly stable" (although it would be cool if it was lower) and Memory is right where I'd want and expect it to be thus far.

Any ideas what could possibly be making my Power Usage high? With my frame rate set at steady 60 via SFML, should I be calling a sleep function in main loop or would that just slow down the application each frame and mess up the FPS? Any other suggestions to drop the power usage? I don't think anything can be done about CPU, I recall it always being about that high from the start, so I think its more in the scope of SFML than anything I've written.

[Stauricus]

1- i think any of these would be good
2- you are probably running your program at max speed (as seens with 52% use of CPU). put a sleep in each iteration: https://www.sfml-dev.org/documentation/2.5.1/group__system.php#gab8c0d1f966b4e5110fd370b662d8c11b

something like

[your code]
window.clear();
window.draw(your sprites, etc);
window.display();
sf::sleep(sf::milliseconds(10));
 

[kojack]

For part 1, it really depends on if you need the newer features or something you are adding to your project needs them.
I mainly stayed on much older C++, but I've now jumped to C++17 due to the "if constexpr" command (lets me do compile time logic in my vector maths classes) and because the awesome Entt library needs C++17.

Part 2
I'm also setting it to 60Hz using the window's setFramerateLimit function. A simple app with ImGui rendering a giant texture (plus other engine stuff) gives me:

I'm running on a Threadripper and RTX2080TI though.
I don't have sound playing, that may be affecting things.

The slight disk usage you have will be due to the sf::Music. Unlike Sound, Music streams in from disk as it plays, rather than loading it all in advance. Better for memory, but needs to keep loading.

52% CPU does seem really high for what you are doing though.

[Kain Nobel]

Alright cool, putting it to sleep for 10 milliseconds as suggested really dropped the values down to almost nothing, the difference is like night and day. (Its running as 0 to 2% CPU now with Power Usage at Very Low).

Thank you both SOLVED!