Windows 10 and Apps and System Programs heavily using GPU

[canerpense]

Hi everyone,

 

I've been a poweruser since 1997 but I never had such  annoying problem with my PC until now. Even after tens of fresh installs and every kind of attempts, I still have these problems.

 

- Windows Apps such as Calculator, Photos and even the Windows Store itself sometimes starts working on the GPU. Please note that I disabled background apps from settings and I'm not even using these apps.

- DWM (dwm.exe) seems to be constantly using high GPU (percentage always changing, is not constantly at a fixed percent) and nothing I did prevented this. Seems to be OK after fresh install but after I connect to internet and Windows downloads some stuff from it's store, it starts acting like this again.

- Installing a firewall does not help. I thought my PC had some kind of malware but I formatted all my drives (yes, it drove me that mad), freshly installed Windows more than ten times and the problem persists. I also used different methods for installing Windows as well including the USB Download Tool and an ISO burned to an external HDD.

 

I'm almost sure that there is some kind of miner infected the DWM or Apps or Store App or all of them. Malwarebytes and Avast failed to find any though...

 

High GPU usage problem can be seen at the SSs in the attachments.

 

As I'm going out of my mind and patience, please advice.

 

PS: Now re-installing 1703 version of Windows 10 to see if it changes anything.

[mr cheese]

As a small note DWM.exe is the process dedicated to Windows' visual effects

Do you have integrated graphics?

[canerpense]

49 minutes ago, DaJakerBoss said:

As a small note DWM.exe is the process dedicated to Windows' visual effects

Do you have integrated graphics?

Thank you but I'm well aware that the dwm.exe is Win10 Desktop Window Manager aka Aero. The CPU has an  integrated Intel GPU but it is disabled in BIOS and not related with the issue.

 

I finally found out what was causing the issue:

 

When the GTX1060 6GB VGA card is set to use YcbCr420 or YcbCr422 color depth compression, the GPU usage and clocks go really high! My monitor only supports 4K 60hz at YcbCr422 settings and thats what I was using it at.

 

When it's set to 1080p resolution, RGB or YcbCr444 uncompressed format can be selected. When idling GPU has none to little usage while clocks constantly at 2D idle (139mhz)...

 

Something seriously wrong with either Nvidia drivers (installed all 397.xx drivers and they all reproduce the same issue) or DWM for YcbCr42x color depth compression... Any ideas?

[mr cheese]

Just now, canerpense said:

Thank you but I'm well aware that the dwm.exe is Win10 Desktop Window Manager aka Aero. The CPU has an  integrated Intel GPU but it is disabled in BIOS and not related with the issue.

 

I finally found out what was causing the issue:

 

When the GTX1060 6GB VGA card is set to use YcbCr420 or YcbCr422 color depth compression, the GPU usage and clocks go really high! My monitor only supports 4K 60hz at YcbCr422 settings and thats what I was using it at.

 

When it's set to 1080p resolution, RGB or YcbCr444 uncompressed format can be selected. When idling GPU has none to little usage while clocks constantly at 2D idle (139mhz)...

 

Something seriously wrong with either Nvidia drivers (installed all 387.xx drivers and they all reproduce the same issue) or DWM for YcbCr42x color depth compression... Any ideas?

Probably an issue with the latter, but I don't know enough about the subject. Just my 2 cents.

 

I often see DWM handled by integrated but I could also be wrong there.

[canerpense]

9 minutes ago, DaJakerBoss said:

Probably an issue with the latter, but I don't know enough about the subject. Just my 2 cents.

 

I often see DWM handled by integrated but I could also be wrong there.

Thank you for your thoughts, as I told you the int. GPU is disabled via the BIOS.

 

If anyone with a TV attached to their Nvidia card could try to reproduce this issue, it would be great.

[mr cheese]

Just now, canerpense said:

Thank you for your thoughts, as I told you the int. GPU is disabled via the BIOS.

 

If anyone with a TV attached to their Nvidia card could try to reproduce this issue, it would be great.

yeah I know your iGPU is disabled, I just thought that in the average system, similar to a dedicated PhysX card, that the iGPU would be automatically selected by Windows to handle DWM.

[canerpense]

4 minutes ago, DaJakerBoss said:

yeah I know your iGPU is disabled, I just thought that in the average system, similar to a dedicated PhysX card, that the iGPU would be automatically selected by Windows to handle DWM.

Did not know that, thank you.

[GoodBytes]

Microsoft is moving everything to GPU rendered interfaces. Task Bar, Start Menu, Action Center, touch screen keyboard, Calculator, Mail, Calendar, Skype, Store, Edge interface, Weather app, News app, Photo app, Movie & TV app, Groove, XBox, etc. all, are GPU rendered. Expect more to come. The transition started by Vista and took the computer market by surprise, and hence why so many people had trouble rendering the interface at the time (now hardware catchup, so no problem).

 

That said, your problem is not normal. GPU should not be this high in usage, even if you are having a party with apps shaking them like madness to redraw the interface (a modern GPU should barely show any sign of being under load, in fact).

 

I think your problem is a driver issue.

Make sure you have the latest Nvidia drivers. When you install them, make sure you pick Advanced, and you ONLY install: the Graphics Drivers, and the associated Audio chipset drivers, and check the box to do a clean install. DO NOT install 3D Vision, or GeForce Experience. Once done, restart your PC.

Also, make sure that your GPU is not overheating and throttling, and that its power connectors are properly connected (check while the system is turned off)

[canerpense]

12 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Microsoft is moving everything to GPU rendered interfaces. Task Bar, Start Menu, Action Center, touch screen keyboard, Calculator, Mail, Calendar, Skype, Store, Edge interface, Weather app, News app, Photo app, Movie & TV app, Groove, XBox, etc. all, are GPU rendered. Expect more to come. The transition started by Vista and took the computer market by surprise, and hence why so many people had trouble rendering the interface at the time (now hardware catchup, so no problem).

 

That said, your problem is not normal. GPU should not be this high in usage, even if you are having a party with apps shaking them like madness to redraw the interface (a modern GPU should barely show any sign of being under load, in fact).

 

I think your problem is a driver issue.

Make sure you have the latest Nvidia drivers. When you install them, make sure you pick Advanced, and you ONLY install: the Graphics Drivers, and the associated Audio chipset drivers, and check the box to do a clean install. DO NOT install 3D Vision, or GeForce Experience. Once done, restart your PC.

Also, make sure that your GPU is not overheating and throttling, and that its power connectors are properly connected (check while the system is turned off)

 

Thank you, I already know these basics (I'm only new to this forum, one of the ancient guys from 486 days here...) and I've done exactly what you suggested and some more actually. YCbCr42X compression and dwm.exe going mad is the only thing I suspect, probably a driver bug as you say. Tried all three  397 series drivers with the same result. Will try an older driver tomorrow.

 

Also, I've already sent Nvidia a report about it but I really don't think they will respond...

 

Well, it is 5AM here and I'm exhausted after installing Windows over and over, debugging and all.

[BloodKnight7]

Try updating the firmwares available for your system, besides the nvidia driver, I suspect that it might be either BIOS version or chipset driver....

[canerpense]

5 hours ago, BloodKnight7 said:

Try updating the firmwares available for your system, besides the nvidia driver, I suspect that it might be either BIOS version or chipset driver....

Latest firmware is installed for the mainboard. For VGA though, I'm not sure as the previous card actually got bricked while flashing... Chipset (Intel INF) driver is the version 10.1.1, the lastest one for Z87 chipset.

 

Can UEFI cause this? I mean at RGB or YCbCr444 color format everything is fine.

[canerpense]

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/1028062/-driver-flaw-ycbcr-causes-elevated-gpu-usage/#5344651

 

People having the same issue.

 

---

 

Installing 391 series drivers did not solve this issue, yet again...

[canerpense]

-Win 10 RTM 10240 did not let me install Nvidia drivers...

-On other 6 different versions of Win 10 x64 (including the oldest [1511] and latest ones[17134] supporting 10xx series VGAs) reproduced the DWM using abnormal amounts of GPU when YCbCr420 color format is selected.

-On Nvidia forum user Sora says that it is a bug in the OS.

 

If you never did visit MS support forums, you may think that one could find fine support there. One could not be more wrong... Even some moron mod claims this abnormal high usage of GPU resources by DWM is actually a good thing. Would you look at that? Sigh.

 

 

 

Edited May 15, 2018 by canerpense

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, canerpense said:

-Win 10 RTM 10240 did not let me install Nvidia drivers...

-On other 6 different versions of Win 10 x64 (including the oldest [1511] and latest ones[17134] supporting 10xx series VGAs) reproduced the DWM using abnormal amounts of GPU when YCbCr420 color format is selected.

-On Nvidia forum user Sora says that it is a bug in the OS.

 

If you never did visit MS support forums, you may think that one could fine support there. One could not be more wrong... Even some moron mod claims this abnormal high usage of GPU resources by DWM is actually a good thing. Would you look at that? Sigh.

 

MS Answer forum is really bad source of information, including mods marking their unhelpful posts as answers, or generic sets of steps that does nothing related to the problem, like run "sfc /scannow". It is only good for finding problems to simple problems, and general OS questions, only. I just avoid the whole websites. I don't know how mods are picked, nor really care, but they are definitely not engineers at the company that is for sure.

 

I don't have YCbCr420  display... oh wait... maybe I do.... I think my Dell monitor supports this. Although I have GeForce GTX 680. I'll try tonight.

[canerpense]

HOLY FUUUUUUUUUU!

 

Guys, I think I found a solution!

 

Turns out new cards (I bet most of the recent ones as well) are perfectly capable of having a TMDS rate over 300mhz on HDMI connection. Actually TMDS can be set upto 600ish mhz! This 300mhz limit is the reason why the color depth data had to be compressed YCbCr at a ratio of 4:2:0 at 60hz 2160p, so that the datarate does not exceed the available bandwidth.

 

I can prepare a guide if requested but what I did was to change EDID information (via a tool called CRU) that is available to Windows (hence Nvidia drivers) and making it tell that the TV (or monitor) is capable of over 300mhz TMDS rate... After a restart of VGA drivers, Voila!

 

Fake news, it seems. But wait, there's more:

 

I did override the HDMI limit by itself but turns out it didn't work. What made the RGB available is that I also added HDMI 2.0 support and it made the RGB thing work! So it's not the HDMI 1.x 600mhz TDMS rate but the HDMI 2.0 standart that made the option available....

 

4K, 60hz, RGB (8bit) on desktop which keeps dwm.exe calm.

 

So far the only thing I noticed is constantly increased Frame Buffer usage of the VGA card but I'm not sure if it's because of some other things that I messed with. 

 

[canerpense]

Here is the step by step guide:

 

0) Get ffed by MS because you own a 4K TV and a PC.

1) Download the CRU tool from this link: https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU

2) Extract the files to any folder.

3) Run CRU.exe and give administrator privileges by clicking YES on the SmartScreen thingy.

4) Click on the entry under "Extension Blocks" tab, then click "Edit" (SS 1)

5) Under Data Blocks tab, click "Add" (SS 2)

6) Select HDMI 2.0 Support from the list then click OK. (SS 3)

7) I am not really sure what is to be ticked at this step but these are the ones that my gut told me to click (most relevant ones to my TV). (SS 4)

8) Keep clicking OK until the app closes itself.

9) Run restart.exe (or restart64.exe if you are using 64bit Windows [Who doesn't?]) and give the administrator privilege.

10) Check your Nvidia Control Panel and enjoy your new options under resolution tab.

[BloodKnight7]

4 hours ago, canerpense said:

Here is the step by step guide:

 

0) Get ffed by MS because you own a 4K TV and a PC.

1) Download the CRU tool from this link: https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU

2) Extract the files to any folder.

3) Run CRU.exe and give administrator privileges by clicking YES on the SmartScreen thingy.

4) Click on the entry under "Extension Blocks" tab, then click "Edit" (SS 1)

5) Under Data Blocks tab, click "Add" (SS 2)

6) Select HDMI 2.0 Support from the list then click OK. (SS 3)

7) I am not really sure what is to be ticked at this step but these are the ones that my gut told me to click (most relevant ones to my TV). (SS 4)

8) Keep clicking OK until the app closes itself.

9) Run restart.exe (or restart64.exe if you are using 64bit Windows [Who doesn't?]) and give the administrator privilege.

10) Check your Nvidia Control Panel and enjoy your new options under resolution tab  

1

Great work! Interesting scenario you got here. Would you mind sharing the full hardware configuration of your system?

[canerpense]

15 hours ago, BloodKnight7 said:

Great work! Interesting scenario you got here. Would you mind sharing the full hardware configuration of your system?

Thanks!

 

Here is the specs:

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K (Haswell-DT, C0)
3400 MHz (34.00x100.0) @ 4000 MHz (40.00x100.0)
Motherboard: MSI Z87-G43 (MS-7816)
Chipset: Intel Z87 (Lynx Point)
Memory: 20480 MBytes @ 666 MHz, 9-9-9-24
Graphics: MSI GTX 1060 Aero ITX OC/ARMOR OC
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, 6144 MB GDDR5 SDRAM
Monitor: 65" 4K 60Hz TV (Vestel 65UD8900)
Driver: 397.64
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional (x64) Build 17134.48 (1803/RS4)