how to limit the cpu power a program gets?

learnmelinux · 04-20-2005, 08:37 PM

im trying to play Xcom 1 and 2, they both run under linux with cedega but the problem is that these games were written for 486s and it runs way too fast on my athlon to the point where it is unplayable. so what im wondering is if there is a way to limit the cpu power that the game can use, so that the game would run as if it were on a 486?

bigrigdriver · 04-20-2005, 09:49 PM

Yes. There is a way. Look into the command: nice (see the man pages for nice). You first must find out the PID (process id number) of the app when it's running, then renice that number (change the cpu scheduling priority of that process) to use less of the cpu.

vincebs · 04-20-2005, 10:58 PM

Anyone got more detailed instructions? man pages are too technical, I tried to do what the man page said and nothing happened.

learnmelinux · 04-20-2005, 11:35 PM

ok this is what i typed in:

nice --adjustment=19 cedega terror.exe

the man page said 19 is the lowest it could go so i tried that. the game takes longer to start now, but once it loads it runs at the same speed as before. is there another way to restrict the power some more?

SciYro · 04-21-2005, 05:34 AM

i don't think so, its a kernel problem, the kernel decided what processes (tread) gets the CPU, and for how long. The niceness only has noticeable effect when multiple programs are running (that eat the CPU), so all you have is a game, and the system is under no real load, the kernel will give that process a lot of CPU time.

its just a extremely poorly written software, beyond a kernel patch to restrict CPU time of a process (I'm not sure how that would work, or if there is one), theres not much hope.