Performance Issues when running video wallpapers for a while

[hofmny]

I run video wallpapers on all 4 of my 4k screens. However, this happened before whhen I had 4 2k screens, also with video wallpaper. My PC is a beast, and can handle it, and it runs fine with WE first launches, but after, I have issues.

This happens with 32-bit or 64-bit exes.

This thread from 2017 seems to have my exact issues:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/431960/discussions/1/1483235412199181769/

Setup: i9-7900X (10 core), 64 gig RAM, 1070ti, SSD Drive, Win10 (latest), Nvidia Drivers (Latest Studio Drivers from June 24th 2021)

First, here are the issues I am having:
1. When I first reboot computer, or kill and start WE, desktop performance is great. However, after it runs for awhile, I notice performance issues. For example, while alt-tabbing on any of my 4 monitors, (which can temporarily trigger the video wallpaper I am assuming, since it appears to pause when an application is full screen), I get a huge amount of input lag to my whole PC. I also notice at this time, that the GPU 3D chart in Task Manager spikes to 100% when this happens, and then calms back down.
2. Sometimes after running for a really long time (like 20 days+), and it took a while to figure this out, WE would crash my system. It would cause explorer.exe to use tons of CPU, and then for my display driver to freak out, causing all sorts of slowness, and then, after killing explorer and wallpaper engine, I notice that my monitors never sleep. They start to go to sleep, flicker, and then come back. I am pretty sure this is WE, because of the other issues I have with it, and because i have kept my computer running for a few months without this happening, simply by restarting WE every few days...
3. After running WE for a while, game and VR performance is horrible.

Even more strange:
Just recently, when noticing this issue, I have restarted WE. But a new issues has now occurred when I try to restart, that never occurred before. After existing WE, and trying to restart it from within Steam, it crashes. Crash is caused by d3d11.dll, with errocode of C0000005 - Access violation: trying to read from address 0000059. Then my computer freezes for a while, and then a Windows alert pops up that says WE "Has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware". This persists until I reboot.

Note, this new error is something new, but the existing issues have plagued me for more than a half of a year or longer... maybe even a year.

[Biohazard]

Originally posted by hofmny:

Just recently, when noticing this issue, I have restarted WE. But a new issues has now occurred when I try to restart, that never occurred before. After existing WE, and trying to restart it from within Steam, it crashes. Crash is caused by d3d11.dll, with errocode of C0000005 - Access violation: trying to read from address 0000059. Then my computer freezes for a while, and then a Windows alert pops up that says WE "Has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware". This persists until I reboot.

This signifies an issue with your graphics driver or graphics card.

You can try reinstalling the drivers with the "clean" installation checkbox enabled and ensure you have absolutely no overlay hooks or permanent screen recorders running like Nvidia Share. But it could also be something obscure like the graphics card drawing too much power for a duration that is too long so that it eventually fails.

You should also verify the application files over Steam like this: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335 if the application files are damaged then anything could happen too, but you can make sure that that's not the case by verifying them. This kind of issue is almost always caused by the graphics driver or card however.

Regarding video performance, video playback is handled by your graphics driver too, it's not part of Wallpaper Engine since it's hardware accelerated. You can try using this alternate video decoder: https://help.wallpaperengine.io/en/videos/lav.html but also check the video decoder load of your GPU, not the general GPU load, while playing all these videos. It may simply be hitting a performance limit too with 4 times 4k videos (assuming the videos are 4k).

[hofmny]

Hello Biohazard, Thank you for getting back to me. I have been trying to trouble shoot the issue over the past month, and I did all the steps you stated. Reinstalled Graphics driver using a clean install, ran a Windows repair, etc.

It seems the issue might be Adobe Photoshop CC 19, as I have had this open for a while the past few months. Wallpaper engine just reporting that Photoshop caused it to crash, and a few hours before, I woke my monitors, and then WPE and Photoshop crashed. This may have occurred previously as well.

As this was happening (after Photoshop crashed and everything got very slow for 2 minutes), my GPU was at 100% (very strange). It finally came back down, and both Phoshop and WPE were not running. Normally, with both Photoshop and WPE running, my GPU is at about 13% utilization.
Not sure what is going on here. Is there some sort of debug mode I can run, so I could possible send some data to you (if you have time to even look into this)?

Thanks again!

[Tim]

There probably isn't much we can do here, from what you shared, the crash happens on a very low level that is beyond our influence. so to speak. My best assumption is that you might be running out of video memory or hitting another bottleneck of your graphics card.

While the 1070 Ti is certainly not a bad graphics card, I think calling it a a "beast" as you did in your opening post is a little too much, at least when considering that you seem to be running an 8K setup which the card was certainly not built to handle as 8K was barely relevant in 2016 when the initial 1070 graphics card designs hit the market.

Especially its memory performance is relatively limited compared to the higher tier GPUs of the GeForce 10 series, so my best bet is that Photoshop is hogging a lot of GPU-related resources which in extreme cases can cause the driver to lock up, causing the crashes that you describe. The 0xC0000005 code you got also means that Wallpaper Engine / Windows failed to access some important memory address which further makes me think it's somehow related to your graphics memory locking up for some reason.

Some suggestions that I can make:

1. Use the "Clone" functionality in the displays tab of Wallpaper Engine and clone the same wallpaper to all your screens. This can help to reduce memory usage as the clone functionality is extremely efficient.
2. Create an application rule to automate this, you could for example load a display profile with the clone functionality whenever Photoshop is started, see if that works:

https://help.wallpaperengine.io/en/functionality/wallpaperperapp.html

3. If the previous option does not work, set Wallpaper Engine to "Stop (free memory)" whenever you run Photoshop or any similar demanding power-user applications.

[butcho]

Try to turn off the GPU hardware acceleration in Photoshop. Depending on the version of Photoshop that you use the hardware acceleration, especially in older Photoshop versions was a bloody mess and caused a lot of trouble in times I used a 1070 GPU as my main card.

Crashes, weird behaviour and even bluescreens where common in my case. This instantly got better when I turned it off. Don't know if it helps in your case, but may be worth a try.

[hofmny]

Thank you Tim and Biohard for your comment. I believe, through more extended troubleshooting, you may be right. I jumped into a Beat Saber session the other day, after doing some graphics and coding work in my office, and it was dropping major frames. OVR Toolkit immediately notified me that frames were dropping due to low video RAM (and the 1070ti has 8 gigs).

I think that seems to be the culprit. I waited in line at Best Buy last night, but was unable to snag a 3090... LOL Oh Well. I am just going to have to try and get a 3090 somehow, because I shouldn't have any issues with 24Gib RAM (at least that is the assumption).

I will also look into the Cloning to trigger when Photopshop launches. That may be a temporary workaround. Thank you for that tip.

Thank you again for you help. Your application WPE gives me so much happiness, as I am always at my PC working and creating, and I appreciate your help in this.

@Butcho,

Turning off GPU acceleration may help, but it may cause Photoshop to be slower or use more system resources, but I will also try your suggestion, to see if it works. Thank for your suggestion!