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[rolf_eigenheer]

I found that my surface tablet heatens up when in Theater Mode.

While idle in the top menu of Theater Mode, the CPU load is as little as 2%. But GPU is used 100%. 85% by Mediacenter and 15% by Desktop Window Manager.  When leaving Theater Mode, the total GPU load is 7%.

Heating the tablet leads to thermal throtteling.


Even the GeForce GTX 1660 from my desktop PC is loaded 38% by MC. Doing nothing more than showing Theater Mode top menu.

[JimH]

Check Theater View settings.

[rolf_eigenheer]

Check Theater View settings.

I disabled 'Use Mipmaps' and chosen No Anti-Aliasing.
GPU load is still >80%

[lepa]

On 2070s GPU utilization ratio saws between 10-44% when start screen is being displayed (@2160p)

[JimH]

You can set the number of frames per second and the quality.

[rolf_eigenheer]

You can set the number of frames per second and the quality.

Is this a Theater View option ? I cannot find it.
But is correct, that displaying a still image can take that much GPU power ?  What for ? 
Displaying the desktop with 120Hz does not heaten up the tablet.

[JimH]

What do you mean by "still image"?  Theater View uses 3D drawing and it's refreshing the screen.

What are you looking at?

[rolf_eigenheer]

What do you mean by "still image"?  Theater View uses 3D drawing and it's refreshing the screen.

What are you looking at?

If nothing is entered, the picture does not change. Hence, no CPU / GPU should be used to send the same image to the screen. No matter which screen refresh rate is selected.
If you recalculate a scene with the same input data, you will get the same output. Therefore this calculation makes no sense.

lepa has a graphics card worth> 500 USD that is ~ 40% busy displaying this image. It's like shooting sparrows with cannons.

Update: On an older hardware (ATI FirePro V4800) there is no GPU load reported when running Theater View. Is it possible that CPU graphics is used instead ? This would be fine, because I cannot see increased CPU load in Theater View. CPU load increases only when necessary i.e. while scrolling. Is it possible to force CPU grahics instead of GPU ?

[JimH]

Try updating your video driver.

[rolf_eigenheer]

Try updating your video driver.

I've just updated the GeForce 1660 Driver. The GPU load in Theater View remains the same. See screen shot.
The drivers of the G640 of the MS Surface are up-to-date. And there the GPU utilization goes towards 100%.

Jim, you said the frame rate and quality are adjustable. Where ?

MediaCenter cannot be operated in Standard View on smaller computers with touch screens. The Theater View would be suitable for this,
if it weren't for the following problems:
- The high GPU utilization leads to thermal throtteling. Everything is slowing down.
- Thumbnail fanning is not optimized and cannot be switched off. MC reads ~20 album covers for each artist. So that the page does not take forever to load, I scale Theater View to 150% to only show 9 artists per page.
- Enlarging the display means that instead of the thumbnails from the locally stored JMD, the media files themselves are read again. To display a page with 9 artists, there are now over 2000 file operations via WLAN on the NAS.
- The display no longer keeps up when scrolling with the remote control or keyboard. In contrast to scrolling using the scrollbar, the OSD is not displayed. The screen just stays blank.

Every single improvement would improve the usage of MC on slower computers and tablets.

[justsomeguy]

Ya there's something definitely not right. I just tested this on a computer running a GTX 970 with a monitor set to 144Hz. My GPU usage sits at about 7~8% in theater view. So I thought to try and drop the refresh rate of the monitor down to 60Hz expecting the GPU usage to drop. Instead of dropping, the GPU usage jumped up to 25~30%. Switched back to 144Hz and gpu usage went back down to 7~8%. So theater view being rendered in higher frame rate results lower GPU usage, backwards from what you'd expect.

[Manfred]

On my workstation GPU load with GTX 1070, latest NVIDIA drivers, i7 4C8T and 16 GB RAM; Theater Mode with Antialiasing 8xMSAA, Mindmaps enabled, Vulcan backend=off: GPU load is below 10%. Refreshrate is 59.973 Hz, 8 bit Display, Colourspace: SDR, Resolution 3440x1440, Display Settings automatic Change Mode = On, General Settings->Hardware accelerated graphics: Highest quality (high-end Hardware)

[rolf_eigenheer]

On my workstation ... GPU load is below 10%.

Is this the load reported for MediaCenter or total GPU Load ? Note: The GPU load of Desktop Window Manager is directly related to MC GPU load.

[Manfred]

Total GPU load in Win Taskmanager. GPU-Z shows the following:

[Manfred]

I checked it also with the environment in my living room:

On my media renderer GPU load with GTX 960, latest NVIDIA drivers, i3 2C4T and 8 GB RAM; Theater Mode with Antialiasing 4xMSAA, Mindmaps enabled, Vulcan backend=off: GPU load is around 27%. Refreshrate is 59.940 Hz, 10 bit Display, Colourspace: SDR, Resolution 3840x2160, Display Settings automatic Change Mode = Custom, General Settings->Hardware accelerated graphics: Highest quality (high-end Hardware)

[rolf_eigenheer]

PCs with smaller form factor, as we like them in the living room, have smaller fans. When they work at high loads they produce a lot of noise.

Therefore it is recommended, not to waste GPU power.

Anyone who had the same problem ? How did you solve it ?