CPU overwhelmed

I tried this game on 3 of my PC's of varying quality, and on each of them, this game pulls everything out of the CPU and takes it to 100%. No problems with the GPU or the RAM. I tried with various video and game settings. Nothing seems to help. Is this a bug? I've only seen a few other posts about it. Anything in the works? Trying to decide if I should refund or wait it out.

My best PC is an Intel Core i5-3570 @3.4GHz
8GB of RAM
GTX 1060 3GB
 
I'm not familiar with system requirements or how game even usually runs, but if CPU runs at a steady 3.4 that's a bit on a low side for gaming these days. Could you just be CPU bottlenecked? Again, not qualified to talk about the game. Just general troubleshooting :)
Open your resource manager when game runs and check what's going on. Maybe it's not the game, but some other applications?
 
Planet zoo uses every percentage left available, ranging from 80-95%. Never had any issue with any other game and I play a lot of similar, and to be honest, larger more taxing games with way more going on than this. It's on their end. I've seen a decent amount of posts about it, but no solutions. A few players seem to think its a compatibility with windows 10/DirectX issue. I'm sure most players arent even aware it's happening. Check yours and see.
 
as a long time planet coaster player I can explain you this:

each guest have their own feels/needs/personality,
because of that, the more guests you got, the hardest it is on the cpu, not gpu, as the gpu is more for the "rendering"

I had to upgrade back then from an amd 8150 to intel just to be able to have enought fps when I'm up to 2500+ guest

in PC we used to be able to limit the amount of guest, sure it gives you less money but it let you expand to bigger park

Still what caramel stated is true, that cpu is limit especialy with a game that affect the cpu more than the gpu

Time to think about new mb, cpu and ram, hold the gpu for 1 more year
 
Strategies are usually quite CPU-heavy and your CPU is very close to the minimum specs.
As long as the game is not lagging, it's okay, you only need a decent cooler - you won't hurt the CPU by running it at 100% unless the cooler isn't up the snuff and can't handle it.
Maybe you'll run into problems later on when your zoo is much bigger with lots of animals and lots of guests, you'll have to see, but if you do, I actually do think it would be considered a "bug" as your CPU is (albeit slightly) above the minimum required.

But in short - IMO if the game runs okay, there is nothing wrong with it loading your CPU to its full capability.
 
Nah my CPU is fine and people with faster CPUs seem to be having the same issue so I’m not going to upgrade my computer to run into the same problem. Mine handles much more taxing games with no issue, so I know that’s not it. Any real advice would be great.
 
Strategies are usually quite CPU-heavy and your CPU is very close to the minimum specs.
As long as the game is not lagging, it's okay, you only need a decent cooler - you won't hurt the CPU by running it at 100% unless the cooler isn't up the snuff and can't handle it.
Maybe you'll run into problems later on when your zoo is much bigger with lots of animals and lots of guests, you'll have to see, but if you do, I actually do think it would be considered a "bug" as your CPU is (albeit slightly) above the minimum required.

But in short - IMO if the game runs okay, there is nothing wrong with it loading your CPU to its full capability.

It’s not about being able to play it. No game should take that much of the processor. It interrupts other processes like Discord. It’s about them finding the issue on their end among the other bugs. I play lots of big strategy games that have more going on than this little game. My computer has never had an issue. Civilization VI Giant map with every civ didn’t even bring it above 60%.

Seems like it’s a pretty common issue built into their game.
 
It's not as much about speed. It's just that 8+ threads are becoming a new norm, I'm afraid.
I'm not trying to deny your problems - people clearly have issues with the game, I'm just trying to say that "minimum requirements" mean "it will at least run", nothing more. Maybe with running Discord and who know what else simultaneously with the game you are simply asking too much. It's an 8 years old processor.
I'm sure the game will get optimized along to way at least to some degree, but if you want specific answers to your problems it might be best to get in touch with support.
 
You're clearly missing the point. Its taxing new and old processors alike, for no apparent reason. I'm sure they already have thousands of support tickets for the same issue.
 
You're clearly missing the point. Its taxing new and old processors alike, for no apparent reason. I'm sure they already have thousands of support tickets for the same issue.

well i can see that you don't read or understand my point.

I'm running teamspeak + twitching + the game totaly fine, but I did upgrade my pc 2 years ago. (i7-6700k, 16gb ram ddr4, gtx970, game on a M2)

the 100% on your processor + discord cutting clearly state that your cpu is having an hard time following the demands of the game.

Did you ever played planet coaster ?
Did you ever had more than 4k guest in your park ?


I mean, planet zoo is based on planet coaster and it DOES take more of your cpu than any other strat/builder game, its a fact

You have the right to disagree, but I've spent enought hours in both PC and PZ to tell you that we're right, and you're wrong.

Your cpu is too old/slow to fully enjoy this game, am sorry

If you ask thoses with the same problem as you, they probably all have 8gb of ram and old cpu
 
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well i can see that you don't read or understand my point.

I'm running teamspeak + twitching + the game totaly fine, but I did upgrade my pc 2 years ago. (i7-6700k, 16gb ram ddr4, gtx970, game on a M2)

the 100% on your processor + discord cutting clearly state that your cpu is having an hard time following the demands of the game.

Did you ever played planet coaster ?
Did you ever had more than 4k guest in your park ?


I mean, planet zoo is based on planet coaster and it DOES take more of your cpu than any other strat/builder game, its a fact

You have the right to disagree, but I've spent enought hours in both PC and PZ to tell you that we're right, and you're wrong.

Your cpu is too old/slow to fully enjoy this game, am sorry

If you ask thoses with the same problem as you, they probably all have 8gb of ram and old cpu

Never have any issues with Planet Coaster or Jurassic World. Giant parks with tons of guests. Wonder why this game is taxing even some new processors. Hope the next update has the compatibility for DirectX12
 
Well, the difference between Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo is that in PZ not only does your CPU have to process the AI behavior for thousands of guests but it also has to process the same for all of your animals.

My CPU is also on the older side as well. (an i-5, dont remember specific model atm am at work) I am also having some performance issues specifically when I am trying to handle climbing animals (monkeys and apes and such). My guess was that they have a lot more AI for the game to process which is taxing my CPU. I plan to upgrade as soon as I can.

But to upgrade I also need to upgrade my MB...living the PC life is hard sometimes lol :D
 
I planned my new computer for Cyberpunk 2070 in april next year, but i had the money together and
then Planet Zoo came my way.
Glad i did it, 8000+ visitors in my mainzoo and its working fine, even when its raining.
32 GB RAM, i7-9700kf, rtx 2070
So i don't even got the rich mans version (i7-9900 and rtx 2080, but i am a poor old wolf and have a cat to feed).

edit: you will always have some people with high end computers that have issues.
Sometimes a part is not yet optimized for a new game, sometimes people putting their pc together themselves albeit they are too
stupid to do it right (like me, thats why i let someone built them who does it on a professional base) and fk up their setup.

I can only say that i was fed up with my poor old GTX 970 durin the last year (gpu was the bottleneck on my last pc, still
it served me well for 4,5 years) and have zero issues with planet zoo.
(well, graphic wise, bug wise anothery story^^)
 
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^ Sometimes it can be as simple as clearing your PC temp files and doing some basic PC troubleshooting that can really improve your overall performance. Update Windows and drivers etc. Disable any unnecessary background systems you may not even know are running. Etc, etc
 
I have performance issues with both games, but for very different reasons. In PC, the guests are not the issue, I can have thousands of guests and as many rides as I want, the problem is scenery. as soon as I decorate just a few rides/shops I get a huge FPS slowdown. I loaded a large park running at 7FPS and closed it and removed all the guests it only made a couple of FPS difference. I reloaded and removed rides instead, the same. I did the same with paths, bins, minimal decorated shops .. only when I reloaded and removed scenery did I see a huge difference, I was adding FPS for every decoration I removed. I now play the game with minimal scenery.

In PZ its most definitely the guests, every time the camera pans past a large group of guests my game drops down to 7 FPS, which is basically unplayable. This doesn't happen in PC. I cant view anywhere near my entrance, or anywhere near a group gathering. These group gatherings are nothing like the PC gatherings - they are small compared to the mass crowds that flood a whole area in PC with little FPS impact. just a mildly busy path can slug the game down to 7 FPS, which last night resulted in a crash. Minimal scenery also has a much worse impact than in PC. I noticed a 2 FPS difference for each frontier made planet zoo theme shop I swapped out for a classic theme shop.


UPDATE: I have just reloaded my crashed game from last night. it was running at 7 fps for a couple of hours before it dropped below and crashed, its reloaded to just a few minutes before the crash and its now 23 FPS.
 
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Set the game process to not be allowed to use one of your cores and set that other junk you're running to use that core. Problem solved.
 
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