CPU use at 100%, recent development

Technical Support
1

I cannot play Overwatch due to constant crashing on startup. I get to the main menu and I hear my PC fans blasting. Task manager says overwatch is using 100% of my CPU then my PC hard crashes. I know 16gb RAM isn’t a lot nowadays, but it ran perfectly fine last summer with no lag. I have tried pretty much everything I have found on the forums including:

  • Launch setting that restricts cpu thread usage
  • Alt + tab spam
  • Changing Shader Cache size
  • Lowering graphics to the minimum
  • Updating Drivers
  • Restarting PC
  • Reinstalling Overwatch
  • Joining a game quickly
  • Some people noted to just wait until the cpu usage goes down, overwatch crashes my PC before it can

I have a feeling this has something to do with shaders as I had a shader crash issue with Marvel Rivals for months until they hot fixed it. Really looking forward to playing this update, but I’m out of ideas on how to prevent this from happening.

2

Hi, volunteer here. As of two years ago, the Blizzard discontinued the Technical Support team, so those staff members were either reassigned or moved on from the company.

If you want to try troubleshooting with fellow players, provide a system diagnostic file for review.

Click here to show/hide the instructions

  1. Open Start Menu, type DxDiag, then press Enter.

  2. Click Save All Information.

  3. Name the file whatever you like and click Save.

After you have the report:

Note: If you have trouble posting the URL, highlight the link and click </> on the post editor toolbar.

3
4 
  Drive: C:

Free Space: 77.6 GB
Total Space: 953.0 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: ADATA LEGEND 800 GOLD

SSDs need 15–20% free space to work properly (you’re at 7.5% free of 1024GB), so try using Windows Disk Cleanup to free some space from previous Windows updates.

It also looks like you’re behind on Windows updates, so check for those.

Display Topology: Extend

Lastly, try duplicating your desktop instead of extending.

5

Thanks for the prompt reply! I cleared out space to where I have about 210GB free. I also updated Windows and tried using a single monitor display. The game ran closer to 2 minutes before it crashed my PC time whereas prior it was closer to 30 seconds.

EDIT: I finally got my Overwatch to stop using so much CPU. To do this, I downloaded “Smart Game Booster” via Steam which has a built in performance boost mode and the ability to tweak PC settings to affect performance. I don’t know exactly which setting fixed it, but that did it for me. Overwatch is down to between 5-20% of CPU now.

6

I’ve seen a lot of Reddit threads saying that app is malware. I would avoid it.

If you’re using DirectX 11, the game will rely more on your CPU.