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[deskmate]

Hi,
 
My PC is a HP Touchsmart 310 and it has enough power, even at 60fps and 8X graphic filter.  

But I have an issue with fan noise, the problem is that even I limited the frame rate to 30fps and only have 2X graphic filters, Theater View's CPU and Graphic card load jumps through the roof (40% v.s. 3% in normal view). And then the HP kicks into a higher fan speed mode which gets noisy.

Even when I am NOT operating the UI in the Theater View, just simply playing a song, the CPU/Graphic card load will jump to 40%, why is that?

Any way to reduce the CPU/graphic card load under Theater View?

Many thanks.

DM

[JimH]

You could also try the option for video card under Tools/Options/General.

[deskmate]

Hi Jim,

I have try all the settings under that already, no matter how, the Threatre View still takes a lot of CPU/Graphic power.  Any reason why? Especially when I am not even using the UI.

When I am using the UI, I don't mind they use more power and kick the fan in the screen is to a higher speed mode, but when I am listen to music alone, the screen is basically static, they should not consume so such power.

Any other ideas?

Thanks,

DM

[Matt]

Theater View uses 3d accelerated graphics.  CPU usage will be low (a couple percent on my computer here) but it will require some GPU.

For any modern graphics card (even the $30 ones with no fan), this should be easy work.  If your GPU is breaking a sweat, make sure you have the latest drivers.  If it still isn't happy, I think the only solutions would be to lower the resolution, lower the video card settings in Options > General, or upgrade the GPU.

In your case, you might be able to upgrade just the GPU fan since you said it runs fine but the fan is loud.

[deskmate]

Thanks for the reply, the CPU load does jump up to 20% or more from 2 % under my HP 310z (2.8GHz AMD Athlon II 240e Dual-Core Processor), the graphic card's temp raise up 5-10 degrees (ATI HD5450).

When I the MC is playing music only, no UI interaction, the UI is basically static (Playing Now screen), shouldn't this draw a lot less power?  All my 3D games draw less power when the screen is not busy, it seems that even the screen is static, MC is still doing a lot of work on the screen unnecessary under the Theatre View, any way to optimise this a bit better? 

Because this is an all-in-one PC, the headsink and fans and all connected via special heatpipes, one can't easily change those.  All, All-in-Ones PCs are start to picking up stream as media centre, many of my friends are considering getting All-In-Ones for their media center.

Thanks,

DM

[audunth]

This seems strange. On my fairly old computer (built it almost 5 years ago) with a Core2Duo E6300 @ 2.4 GHz and a Radeon HD4550 GPU, CPU usage jumps to around 20% when starting up Theater view and hovers around 5-10% with or without a track playing (playing raises the avreage CPU usage maybe 2% or so). Browsing fast through my albums raises the CPU usage to around 30%.

Hardware accelerated graphics are set to Automatic.

Just tested on my laptop (a HP Touchsmart with a low power Core2Duo and Intel onboard graphics/ATI Radeon selectable). There I have the same behaviour as you, the GPU load goes from 2-4% in Standard view up to 20-40% when in Theater view, even when I'm not doing anything. Tried with both the onboard and ATI graphics card activated, and it has absolutely no effect on CPU usage. The laptop has MC 15 installed so the option there is called Drawing quality. Setting it to low or medium changes nothing either. So it seems there's something about the HP systems that makes MC Theater view use the CPU more.

In my case it could be that I'm using an older version of MC, but I'm sure you guys at JRiver can say if something is new done with the Theater view graphics rendering in v16. If you're using the latest v16 build, deskmate, it seems it's not.

Anyone else with a HP touchsmart that can check their CPU usage too? Can it have something to do with the touchscreen driver being very "active" when rendering the graphics in Theater view? Maybe try with the touchscreen HID disabled in Device manager?

[javidan]

Hi guys,

I can confirm that this isn't to do with an old computer or a GPU lacking the muscle.
Basically using my media PC (ATI 6770 medium/high end) and my laptop (Nvidia 330M Medium/low) and using a GPU load program, theater mode take a huge chunk of GPU processing power for doing nothing except being in theater mode.

On both the computers, when you activate theater mode, you will see the GPU usage spike to about 20-30%. This happens whether you are browsing, or doing nothing. It happens even if you are not playing any music or watching videos.

It is for this reason that I stopped using theater view. Not because I dislike it but I am just surprised that J River coded it to chew up so much power when idling in T View.
I have also pulled up Windows Media Center full screen just to see if the other media players demand as much and...nah, they don't.

I found it surprising initially when my fans starts firing up when my computers were basically doing nothing but I have narrowed it down to T View now.

Shame really...I love T View but I don't see a point in spending so much GPU power when it doesn't do as much as watching videos.

I am going to be upgrading my media PC to an ATI 6990 soon and will be able to provide feedback on whether it is just the case for those two different video cards and computers. (My hunch is that we are still going to see heavy pressure on the GPU)

[JimH]

Theater View uses 3D drawing.  You can reduce the load by adjusting the frame rate down.  It's in the Advanced options for Theater View.

Even at a menu, the screen is being redrawn constantly.

[javidan]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the heads up!

I will try to reduce 3D View frames to 24 or 30 to see if it helps!