Hi,

On both my laptops Arcanum.exe consumes 100% cpu constantly.
One is Turion 64 single core 1.8 ghz (windows 8 and xp dulaboot - tried on both) and the other is Pentium 4 single core 2.6 ghz. (windows xp)

It doesnt matter what i do in the game. Even in the menu its 100%. Edit: When cinematics are playing cpu is low.

I tried all combinations of installations with and without all 3 patches its all the same. I tried -doublebuffer , I tried -no3d also and both at the same time but to no avail.
I limit the cpu usage with a 3d party program called battle encoder shirase. I have to run constantly at 80% for Arcanum.exe and it still has too much lag when a fight starts or when in Tarant. Its unplayable. And i can feel its destroying my cpu.

Edit: I also tried all kinds of compatibility and running as admin.

Please suggest something.

Edit: Maybe its normal. Maybe the processors are just too slow for this game even though i read system requirements are much older cpus. I just cant understand. There is something wrong maybe with both my old laptops. But thats impossible. i can fee that sometihng is wrong software side. Its impossible THAT much resource to be needed by this game. 100% of a pentium 4 - 2.4Ghz. Thats just... WHat am i missing?

If your cpu isn't overheating then what is the problem?

i have no idea... so the game is unplayable?
do you have proper virus killer progs? scanned lately?
have you compared to some other gog-games like baldur's gate 2 that are near on par with the tech requirements?
I have a bit less tech-wise to your specs: dual core 1,7ghz and 2gb mem, xp... and it runs quite well even with high res patches and such, only if I multitask and browse internet at the same time and some other programs that require cpu time does arcanum slow down... but still I have no idea about your real problem, I mean of course it shouldn't happen... do you have all the drivers installed... how well does windows run other programs currently?

btw. windows task manager here says arcanum.exe cpu 49 or 50 and mem usage 339,368 K

You have dual core processor probably so technically Arcanum is using one core 100%.

I don't believe that's unusual behaviour as have seen it plenty of older games despite none of them requiring that much processor power. Probably just how they're programmed.