High iGPU load when watching streams in firefox.

[EBK21_2]

System:

Windows 10 pro 22h2 19045.3516

Intel i5-10200h with UHD 620

Driver 31.0.101.2125

Firefox ESR 115.3.0

When watching streams in firefox, I noticed that overall iGPU load is very high, up to 70%, a lot higher than watching 1080p movie with dedicated player.

I found that the firefox actually only shares 10~20 iGPU load, the rest are from DWM, which load is  up to 40% sometimes.

Also found if I switch from the tab with streaming page to another normal webpage, DWM immediately drops its usage to about 2%, firefox still uses some load as it's still decoding. DWM usage rises if I switch back.

I tried force firefox to use nvidia dGPU, firefox does use nvidia card to decode, but the DWM problem said above still apply.

See attatched image as prove.

[Jocelyn_Intel]

Hello, @EBK21_2  

Thank you for posting on the Intel® communities. I will do my best to assist you here. 

1. Does this issue happen in other browsers (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, etc.)? 
2. Please provide us with the following report to have more information about your system: 

Intel® System Support Utility for Windows. 

Note: Make sure to mark the box that says "everything" before pressing the Scan button. After that, click on "Next>" and select "Save" and then, attach the .txt file. 

Best regards,  

Jocelyn M.   

Intel Customer Support Technician. 

[EBK21_2]

I generally only uses firefox. But I do have portable chrome somewhere so I'll do the test later.

Text attached.

[Jocelyn_Intel]

Hello, @EBK21_2  

Thank you for the information provided. 

Please let me know the results with Chrome or any other browser. 

On the other hand, make sure you have the latest BIOS version and try your System Manufacturer's graphics driver. 

If you have updated the BIOS or the graphics driver, please send a new SSU report. 

Best regards,  

Jocelyn M.   

Intel Customer Support Technician. 

[EBK21_2]

So I tested with latest chrome, it's even worse actually.

Chrome use  ~15% for decode and other job which seems normal. But DWM is even worse.

DWM uses up to 70% and uses about 43% CONSTANTLY.

see attached image.

For Bios I have updated once before and it's currently latest (there's may be no more updates unless insyde become less lazy since it's based on generic insyde laptop bios model).

For the driver the System Manufacturer only provide one very old driver for bootstrapping and shippment (Standard CLEVO movement). It's unlikely to use it unless you want to experience the critical bugs intel has just working hard to fixed and may less compatible with current windows 10 version.

[Jocelyn_Intel]

Hello, @EBK21_2  

Thank you for the information provided. 

We would like to replicate this issue, can you please provide the steps to reproduce this issue as it would normally happen to you? Please provide the specific link to download the DWM you used as well. 

Best regards,  

Jocelyn M.   

Intel Customer Support Technician. 

[EBK21_2]

Just open up any stream site(must be streams) with firefox/chrome and dwm usage start rising.

I also test watching twitch.tv with firefox, the situation may slightly better at %20~%30 load.

For DWM, I'm sorry if this is misleading you, it's actually dwm.exe  - the Desktop Window Manager of Windows.

[Jocelyn_Intel]

Hello, @EBK21_2  

Thank you for the information and details provided. 

Please allow me some time to replicate this. As soon as I have updates, I will let you know. 

Best regards,  

Jocelyn M.   

Intel Customer Support Technician. 

[Jocelyn_Intel]

Hello, @EBK21_2  

Thank you for your time. 

After some research, it seems to be a Microsoft issue, please check the following "dwm high load" from Microsoft community pages, a lot of people complain about it, and there are a lot of solutions posted: Desktop window manager (dwm.exe) way too much CPU usage! 

Apps running should be 64-bit since we switched to them a long time ago, but some users sometimes use 32-bit versions. 

Most of the fix pieces of advice and help tutorials say about updating GPU drivers, using troubleshooters from Windows, setting some parameters to "performance" type setting, some say about old components in PC that should be updated or replaced, etc. 

Some solutions may help depending on the scenario, but the best one probably is an OS clean installation. If it is possible, try it on some separate drive and compare it to your original OS. If this is not possible, then try an OS clean installation and let us know the results. 

Best regards,  

Jocelyn M.   

Intel Customer Support Technician. 

[EBK21_2]

Thanks for your effort.

The problem here is mostly the iGPU load as the CPU usage  of dwm is around ~5% which seems reasonable to me.

I just have cleanly installed 19045.3570 RP when it comes out, with the same driver, but the problem is still same.

I'll try to install slightly older version of driver when I have time and check again.

[Jocelyn_Intel]

Hello, @EBK21_2  

Thank you for your reply. 

I comprehend your point of view, however, there are several scenarios about this issue and this app is known for generating problems, even if the CPU usage is not high, be aware there are high probabilities that are affecting your GPU usage since your graphics are integrated to the processor, is equally related. 

We understand that you have installed an update recently, however, we need to discard possible corruption in the OS, which is part of the troubleshooting we found about this issue and the most efficient solution found in the forum mentioned. 

We would appreciate it if you can confirm that this issue still happens after an OS clean installation, so we can discard options and do a proper investigation. 

Best regards,  

Jocelyn M.   

Intel Customer Support Technician. 

[EBK21_2]

Thanks for the reply.

I tested with clean installation with 19045.3570RP ISO generated from uupdump with driver version 27.20.100.9749. The problem is still same. However There's may be a coincidence that iGPU total load  is stucked at about 45% when watching streams in that test, While on driver 31.0.101.2125 the load is variable.

While this is fine on win10, version 27.x(wddm2.7) is not very suitable for use on win11, so I gonna install the 31.x one in case I updated to win 11.

BTW all the load are categorized as 3d.

[EBK21_2]

So I just found that even a simple image animation in firefox would spike both dwm and firefox igpu load to 30%(60% total).

Then I tried start firefox in troubleshoot mode which disable any addons and hardware acceleration. In this case, the animation would now suprisingly spike dwm and csrss instead(firefox not using iGPU anymore).

I'm also started to think if this is just that task manager miscompute the load and I should use 3rd party tool like process hacker to monitor the load.

[EBK21_2]

Tried using process hacker, somehow  it only shows usage of shared memory, gpu usage is always 0.0%.

[Jocelyn_Intel]

Hello, @EBK21_2  

Thank you for your reply and information provided. 

In that case, we recommend you contact Microsoft for further assistance and check this issue with them, as it seems to be an issue with the OS tools or DWM. 

Best regards,  

Jocelyn M.   

Intel Customer Support Technician. 

[Jocelyn_Intel]

Hello, @EBK21_2    

I hope you are doing great. 

As we have not heard back from you, we will proceed to close this thread now. I hope you could see my last post. 

If you need any further assistance with other matters, please feel free to contact us back and submit a new question as this thread will no longer be monitored.  

Best regards,  

Jocelyn M.   

Intel Customer Support Technician.