High GPU Usage. (1080 Ti)

[Snorfl]

As of yesterday, any wallpaper uses abnormally high GPU usage. Using GPU-Z my GPU clock is at 1569 constant because of maximum performance option enabled in Nvidia control panel so it is not 37% usage of some low clock count.

Right now it is using ~15% of my GPU on one monitor. On both monitors it will use up to ~37% but on one occasion it used 100% of my GPU and caused terrible stuttering and I had to force close the app.

Different types of wallpapers, and frame rate affect the GPU usage however other options don't have much effect on the GPU usage.

I have the latest GPU drivers installed. I've tried reinstalling wallpaper engine, restarting PC, using 32 bit/ 64 bit, and using the beta however none of these helped.

Recent events that may have caused this:
Windows 10 Updates:
Installed on 08/13/2020: 2020-08 Update for .NET Framework 3.5 & 4.8 for W10 Version 1909 (KB4569751) [b/]
Installed on 08/13/2020: 2020-08 Update for W10 Version 1909 for x64 systems (KB4565351) [b/]

Maybe that's useless info but it's the only thing I can think of that changed recently.

[Snorfl]

Here's the log.
https://pastebin.com/VSRrmHXr

Edit: A Windows update is available so I'm going to update and see if it fixes it, if you need anything more info then just say so.

[Tim]

Please try to do a clean reinstallation of your Nvidia drivers, if you have changed some settings in your drivers (it sounds like it), this may be the root cause of the problem in combination with the updates. The Nvidia drivers have a "Perform clean reinstallation" checkbox in the setup, make sure to tick this checkbox otherwise the reinstallation will not do anything useful.

The updates you mentioned are only for Windows 10 versions from 2019 and we have upgraded our machines to 20H1 so we cannot test this for now, but I doubt there is an issue as we would have gotten significantly more reports if the update had really broken something. Worst case, try updating your Windows 10 to 20H1 if possible.

Please also test by reducing MSAA to something "more reasonable" such as 2x or 0x and set the FPS limit to 30.

[Snorfl]

Will try that.
With both wallpapers running @ 60FPS, Full Resolution 3440 x 1440
MSAA x8: 31-32% Load
MSAA x4: 30-31% Load
MSAA x2: 30% Load
MSAA Off: 29-30% Load

With both wallpapers running @ 30FPS, Full Resolution 3440 x 1440
MSAA x8: 16-17% Load
MSAA x4: 15-16% Load
MSAA x2: 15-16% Load
MSAA Off: 14-15% Load

Going to restart to apply new windows update and do fresh install on drivers, will update if anything changes.

[Biohazard]

Your primary wallpaper resolution is actually at 5160x2160, but we don't even have a tag for that size. It's pretty heavy, I think 6-10% at 30 FPS/No MSAA wouldn't be too unusual in this case. I get 10% at about 1000Mhz and my GPU is similar.

Originally posted by Snorfl:

on one occasion it used 100% of my GPU and caused terrible stuttering and I had to force close the app.

Did you use Adobe Lightroom perhaps? Or what situation was that exactly?

[Snorfl]

That's weird. My main wallpaper is tagged as 3440 x 1440. I reinstalled the GPU drivers with a clean install and the issue still persists. Either way, the GPU usage is still a lot higher than it was previously. I would've noticed it checking task manager while the wallpaper is playing. Could something have upscaled the wallpapers? Even 1080p basic scenes with nothing more than particle effects are using quite a bit of gpu.
To answer you question, I meant app as the wallpaper engine app. The only other app I believe was running was just spotify. I don't have any editing programs on my PC. I was just browsing reddit at the time and noticed some stuttering with my mouse, closed firefox and then it got worse and that's when I checked task manager and saw the gpu usage.

[Biohazard]

Originally posted by Snorfl:

That's weird. My main wallpaper is tagged as 3440 x 1440.

Yes, we don't have a tag for 5160x2160 and the next best thing is 3440x1440. I checked the files and the wallpaper is really 5160x2160 which is just very expensive.

Originally posted by Snorfl:

I would've noticed it checking task manager while the wallpaper is playing.

The task manager is completely irrelevant unless you already forced your GPU to be at the high power state all the time before that.

Originally posted by Snorfl:

I was just browsing reddit at the time and noticed some stuttering with my mouse, closed firefox and then it got worse and that's when I checked task manager and saw the gpu usage.

If Wallpaper Engine somehow gets stuck at 100% GPU usage that means the driver is continuously failing and requesting Wallpaper Engine to reset. It's already limiting the reset attempts to one time per second, however, so something must be severely going wrong.

Originally posted by Snorfl:

Even 1080p basic scenes with nothing more than particle effects are using quite a bit of gpu.

Please set the stock "neon sunset" to your main 3440x1440 monitor and use 15 FPS, no MSAA and remove the wallpaper from the second monitor. Now check GPU Z https://help.wallpaperengine.io/en/performance/gpu.html and wait for the clock rate to settle, unless you are forcing it into high power state. Please share a screenshot of GPU Z now, you can upload it to www.imgur.com and share the link here.

[Snorfl]

https://imgur.com/aUcV84Y

I've had my GPU at "prefer maximum performance" since I built it.

[Biohazard]

That's possibly 1% more with 15 FPS than I would expect but I can't judge what influence the other open monitoring tool may have. Having anything else open could easily add a visible difference so the comparison becomes less useful.

You could disable the LED plugin (it does have an influence on GPU work) and close other programs like Nexus and Rainmeter to see if they have any effect. But the deviation from what I would expect is already small.

[Snorfl]

I've disabled the LED plugin but it did not have any noticeable effect. One thing changed though. With both wallpapers running at Full Resolution, 60FPS, and MSAA x8, The GPU load is only ~18-19%. I'm just confused at this point... wallpaper32.exe just shot up to 34% usage. I don't even know at this point.

[Biohazard]

Originally posted by Snorfl:

I've disabled the LED plugin but it did not have any noticeable effect. One thing changed though. With both wallpapers running at Full Resolution, 60FPS, and MSAA x8, The GPU load is only ~18-19%.

At least this sounds normal to me considering the primary wallpaper is pretty heavy. You don't need MSAA though, it's useless unless the wallpaper includes any 3D elements which most don't.

Your log shows a number of bluescreens/crashes. Maybe there is just some fundamental issue?

[Snorfl]

No bluescreens. The crashes (if it's talking about wallpaper engine crashing) is from my sister removing the display port cable on my second monitor or when I switch to "extend these displays" to "only show 2". 2 Is my main monitor. I've done this quite a bit and a popup has appeared stating that wallpaper has crashed.

But after starting it back up when that happens, it works fine.

[Biohazard]

Originally posted by Snorfl:

No bluescreens. The crashes (if it's talking about wallpaper engine crashing) is from my sister removing the display port cable on my second monitor or when I switch to "extend these displays" to "only show 2". 2 Is my main monitor. I've done this quite a bit and a popup has appeared stating that wallpaper has crashed

There is one Wallpaper Engine resource warning (this likely didn't happen with either of the wallpapers you are using right now), but several severe crashes (LiveKernelEvent). You can see these at the very bottom.

All of the LiveKernelEvents have the code 141, which is indeed not a bluescreen, so I was mistaken. It's the TDR event - your graphics driver is crashing. This likely leads to Wallpaper Engine crashing, although Wallpaper Engine has a recovery routine for this, but it sounds like that's not even working for you.

[Snorfl]

I did try out some overclocking on my gpu but that was like a week ago and I've already tried removing the overclock and testing but it did not make a difference.

[Biohazard]

I just tested the TDR system again and found that the LED plugin was leading to a crash upon TDR recovery, so perhaps this will also solve the crash you have when your system gets the TDR event (except you just disabled the plugin anyway, but in case you'll re-enable it).

However I don't think that the last numbers you posted seem far off from what I would expect under these circumstances. The 100% usage is definitely annoying and like I explained, it seems to come from an ever repeating recovery process. Ideally the TDRs should be fixed to solve this. If that happens again please make a copy of this log C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\log.txt and share it via pastebin with us as well.

[Snorfl]

Will do. If you say the usage is somewhat normal then I guess I can live with it. One suggestion that I have and hopefully it wouldn't be too much of a pain to implement, is a quality adjuster slider instead of the "half resolution" option. Thanks for your time and help, take care.