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WiiU Background Downloads Affecting Performance

B

BMAX

Member
I'm pretty perceptive when it comes to picking up on visual oddities in my games. Visual glitches, frame rate drops, I'm unfortunately super sensitive to it all.

That's why when I happened to be downloading Darksiders 2 while playing a round of ZombiU, I realized the game was a bit more herky jerky than usual. I ventured over to my WiiU download management menu and realized that there's an option to pause downloads while gaming to guarantee a smooth gaming experience (don't have the system in front of me right now, forgot the exact wording)

Cool that its an option, annoying that it can impact your gaming performance.
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
I know some PS3 games automatically stop background downloads to prevent them from impacting performance. I'm surprised the Wii U didn't do this.
 
Ein Bear

Ein Bear

Member
Would be hilarious if it turned out this was why all the third party ports seemed to suck.

I know it isn't.
 
C

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
RoboPlato said:
I know some PS3 games automatically stop background downloads to prevent them from impacting performance. I'm surprised the Wii U didn't do this.
Click to expand...

It's only when the network is being used in games when the download is paused to prevent interfering online performance. Unfortunately some games flag online throughout the whole game, which leads to a background download being paused despite not playing online. :\

And if the Wii U has a gig of memory dedicated to the OS...how could downloading content be impacting games so much?
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Just seems to happen with certain games sometimes. Rock Band Blitz will randomly start hiccuping and freezing for 3 seconds when a download ends on 360 in the background.
 
GrayFoxPL

GrayFoxPL

Member
chubigans said:
It's only when the network is being used in games when the download is paused to prevent interfering online performance. Unfortunately some games flag online throughout the whole game, which leads to a background download being paused despite not playing online. :\

And if the Wii U has a gig of memory dedicated to the OS...how could downloading content be impacting games so much?
Click to expand...

It's not mostly about game using online that prevents from downloading. That too but when the game in singleplayer prevents from downloading even when you're signed off it's because of excessive hard drive usage. Deus Ex does that as an example.
 
E

Erethian

Member
Pyrokai said:
Omgsh this makes me so frustrated. Why didn't they just use a decent (not horrible, not amazing) CPU to at least like.....do things.... :(


This has me so bummed out.
Click to expand...

From what I've read there is an ARM processor that is assumed to handle the OS background functionality.
 
S

Sykane

Member
It's funny that Nintendo would think it would be a good idea to limit their CPU for the sake of being backwards compatible. I mean, it's lack of performance is a factor that could seriously affect its viability in the eyes of third parties, software and OS performance and countless other things, and the reasoning for it is a cheap way to play wii games. Instead of putting the original chip in the console as a secondary processor like Sony originally did, or using emulation (which shouldn't have been that difficult seeing as how some dudes were able to do it for PC, with awesome results btw) like Sony and Microsoft have done, they chose to limit the design of the new CPU, affecting the entire new console negatively. I just laugh because someone, somewhere thought this was a good idea.
 
K

kitchenmotors

Banned
Just to point out, I was downloading a game in the background while playing Tekken on launch day and didn't notice any hiccups in performance. Just saying.

H_Prestige said:
This just keeps getting better and better.
Click to expand...

Don't you have anything better to do? We get it, you dislike Nintendo and the Wii U. You're not adding anything of value to any of the topics you post in by saying negative shit like this.
 
Teletraan1

Teletraan1

Banned
Sykane said:
It's funny that Nintendo would think it would be a good idea to limit their CPU for the sake of being backwards compatible. I mean, it's lack of performance is a factor that could seriously affect its viability in the eyes of third parties, software and OS performance and countless other things, and the reasoning for it is a cheap way to play wii games. Instead of putting the original chip in the console as a secondary processor like Sony originally did, or using emulation (which shouldn't have been that difficult seeing as how some dudes were able to do it for PC, with awesome results btw) like Sony and Microsoft have done, they chose to limit the design of the new CPU, affecting the entire new console negatively. I just laugh because someone, somewhere thought this was a good idea.
Click to expand...

But you aren't a console engineer to my knowledge so stop making any sort of sense what so ever.
 
C

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
GrayFoxPL said:
It's not mostly about game using online that prevents from downloading. That too but when the game in singleplayer prevents from downloading even when you're signed off it's because of excessive hard drive usage. Deus Ex does that as an example.
Click to expand...

Oh really? Wow, I didn't know that. That kinda sucks. :p
 
H

Hero of Legend

Member
Had Nintendo gone with a spanking new CPU and Broadway (right?) in the Wii U, how much more would the Wii U have cost?

Shame Nintendo's too afraid to take a chunk of a loss, yeah I know they are right now, but it must be so minor if a single game breaks it even supposedly (heard Reggie confirmed this apparently), but a larger loss to have boosted the chips to give 3rd-parties less of a headache, hell why not have beefed up Broadway to the level on par with the PS360 CPU's, why keep it lower seemingly?
 
A

AzaK

Member
Again, as with the terrible load times, this could point to super slow flash RAM. I really hope not cause there's nothing that can be done if that's the case.
 
C

Chris_C

Member
RoboPlato said:
I know some PS3 games automatically stop background downloads to prevent them from impacting performance. I'm surprised the Wii U didn't do this.
Click to expand...

They only pause background downloading if the game you're playing requires internet bandwidth (if you were playing COD online for instance).

Generally speaking, performance shouldn't be affected as the PS3 and 360 have resources dedicated to OS level multitasking.
 
DonMigs85

DonMigs85

Member
Nintendo should have anticipated this and made allowances for CPU time, or just pause the download.
Well it's growing pains for them, hopefully they patch it up soon. But it really seems like they turned a blind eye to much of the progress Microsoft and Sony made to their system software since launch.
 
S

Seik

Banned
Meelow said:
For someone who hates Nintendo and the Wii U you seem to post in a lot of Wii U threads, interesting I'd say.
Click to expand...

The haters simply love to point out and underline every little problem the Wii U have. Especially since they know Nintendo fans can get emotial, they want to call them out.

If you ask me, no biggie. Best case scenario: An eventual performance patch will fix it.

AndyMoogle said:
Perhaps the OP was playing ZombiU from the same storage device that he downloaded to?
Click to expand...

Very, very good point, please tell us OP! :)
 
S

Silphonica

Banned
I can download a game and play another game just fine on my 360, I thought that this was pretty much standard by now. Especially for a console just released.
 
K

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
DonMigs85 said:
Nintendo should have anticipated this and made allowances for CPU time, or just pause the download.
Well it's growing pains for them, hopefully they patch it up soon. But it really seems like they turned a blind eye to much of the progress Microsoft and Sony made to their system software since launch.
Click to expand...

At this point, I suspect we're seeing an OS that is initially heavily unoptimized due to a focus on getting everything to work first - the Wii U OS has some fairly elaborate stuff going on, with what is running in the background (like Miiverse). Given Nintendo's inexperience, I think it may not be a matter of them being unaware of what others have done. They're still going through iterations catching up.

One would hope that we see the OS get tightened up and trimmed over the next few months or year. I'd think the fact that they reserved way more ram than they thought they'd need, for the time being, is an indication the resource overhead of the OS is still in flux and being downsized.
 
C

Corto

Member
I have a similar problem on my PC. Some games are more sensible to this than others. I specially remember Dragon Age Origins as one of the most noticeable. I f there's an option to pause the download, then there should be no problem.

I think it had more to do with the writing/reading on the hard drive than the download itself. Just did some trouble shooting and stopping the download did the trick.
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
Pretty sure my PS3 did this too to some degree. I almost always pause while playing, especially if I'm playing a digital game...doesn't sit right with me.
 
S

Satchel

Banned
Though Nintendo would make it pause automatically if its going affect performance.

I know the 360 pauses downloads when you play any game that needs to access live as to not affect the games access.

Once it's not online or accessing live in some way, the download continues. I think the PS3 does something similar with background downloads.
 
B

benny_a

extra source of jiggaflops
Corto said:
I have a similar problem on my PC. Some games are more sensible to this than others. I specially remember Dragon Age Origins as one of the most noticeable. I f there's an option to pause the download, then there should be no problem.
Click to expand...
There is no big warning sign that says "Games will run worse if you download them in the background." so this needs to be fixed.

Don't just think about you after you read the OP who was the perceptive one. Think about the people that are just wondering why the game runs shitty all of a sudden.

So basically: Needs to be fixed for the general populace. People in the know can help themselves for now.
 
N

Nekofrog

Banned
Seik said:
The haters simply love to point out and underline every little problem the Wii U have. Especially since they know Nintendo fans can get emotial, they want to call them out.

If you ask me, no biggie. Best case scenario: An eventual performance patch will fix it.



Very, very good point, please tell us OP! :)
Click to expand...

I don't hate Nintendo, I even bought a Wii U launch day. I'm no longer their biggest fan, BUT....

Whenever someone repeats this about the various WiiU problems, it REALLY reminds me of the old PS3 "wait till X game!" meme.
 
B

BMAX

Member
AndyMoogle said:
Perhaps the OP was playing ZombiU from the same storage device that he downloaded to?
Click to expand...

I was playing off the disc, downloading Darksiders 2 to internal storage. I also played MarioU while downloading and did not notice any performance issues. It's just interesting that the OS would specifically call out that downloading in the background can cause performance issues in other applications. If that's the case I'd rather background downloads be disabled by default. The OS is currently pretty buggy all around, so maybe some smart firmware updating can help resolve the issue.

Loving the system though. Hungry for Sony and Microsoft's next offerings, but equally ecstatic about playing Mario and Zelda in HD finally. Also holding out on Skyward Sword until it gets the inevitable HD WiiU remake ;)
 
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