Hourglass is taking increasingly abnormal amount of GPU power, even after the Timer has expired.

Question

Hourglass is taking increasingly abnormal amount of GPU power, even after the Timer has expired.

Opened this issue 6 years ago · 9 comments

I'm running Windows 10 on Microsoft Surface Book 2 (Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB).

The problem is that the Hourglass app is taking increasingly abnormal amount of GPU power, even after (and especially while) the Timer has expired. The GPU percentage is the highest when the "Time expired" is showing. And my notebook PC fan turns on at this time to cool down the heat.

As soon as I make the "Time expired" text disappear by clicking "Reset", the GPU goes back to 0%.

The graphic for the Hourglass app is quite simple, and should not take such a big GPU power.

I have made a short video showing the problem: https://photos.app.goo.gl/AQaLjrlVfZOtYIw03

Thanks for your attention to this issue.

Dave Lee

Answer 1 · 2018-02-06T20:44:54.000Z

We've had a few reports like this before, but I have never managed to reproduce this on my machines. See, for example, #77. I have tried to reproduce this problem on a few machines, including a desktop and a Surface Pro 3 without any luck.

There's not much that Hourglass is doing itself for these animations, especially the animation when the timer expires. It just calls the WPF animation methods to start a flash... which you would hope would be more efficient than it appears to be.

Leaving this open until it can be investigated more.

Answer 2 · 2018-02-08T12:41:27.000Z

Hi dziemborowicz,

Thanks for your comments.

Do you need any info or action from me, in order to try to investigate this issue?

Answer 3 · 2018-02-08T20:46:19.000Z

I think your report was as complete as it reasonably could be.

I don't know that there's a lot I can do about this bug until I get my hands on a machine that repros this issue. I could try slightly different approaches to animations to see what is more efficient, but without a machine to test it on, it would be difficult and time consuming beyond what I can dedicate to this right now.

Answer 4 · 2018-02-09T04:12:00.000Z

I see.

I hope you can find a solution to this in the near future, because I use your app everyday and really like it, except for the bug that turns on my PC fan.

Anyway, wishing all the best. ^^

Answer 5 · 2018-03-18T03:56:32.000Z

This makes wonder if this is a mining software. I get the same issue on my laptop with GTX960m

Answer 6 · 2018-03-18T21:59:32.000Z

It is not a mining software. :)

It appears to affect only NVIDIA mobile GPUs.

Answer 7 · 2020-03-31T12:50:01.000Z

This also affects NVIDIA GTX 1080 desktop GPU. Although task manager shows 0.4% GPU usage, when the window is active, mouse stutters.
This might have something to do with V-SYNC/G-SYNC active or 144Hz display.

Lowering the app refresh rate might help. Actually I just checked, and the G-SYNC lowers the display refresh rate to 12Hz to match active window. That could explain the stutter.

I am here to test any fixes you might come up with.

Answer 8 · 2021-03-22T13:28:53.000Z

I have got the same bug on my laptop. When the timer has expired, the fan goes crazy until I stop the expiration animation. Hope you can find a solution, because I use Hourglass daily.
Specs:
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 620
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7600U CPU @ 2.80GHz, 2901 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

Answer 9 · 2022-06-19T04:21:11.000Z

I have this issue as well, for me its partially caused by RTSS Rivatuner Statistics Server's frame limiter. My cpu jumps to max frequency and uses 30-50% cpu.
GPU power around 30%, but it wont raise power draw that much, only by around 10 Watt, but still, thats like a LED lightbulbs worth of power wasted for nothing.
This issue only happens when the timer expired. The GPU part issue still there even with closed RTSS, cpu goes down to like 5% with closed RTSS.