I'm really not sure with this one, because I don't know how to investigate here. For a while I've been observing constantly high GPU load even while doing nothing. This causes the battery to drain, wasted energy and heat. I can confirm the GPU is under load in intel_gpu_top and radeontop (on another computer). Also, I've installed GNOME to see if it might be a driver problem but I don't have high GPU usage with that DE. Is there some tool where I can show which process is actually causing GPU load or what's happening on the GPU?
You can try to activate the "Show Paint" effect in KWin to see whether there are constant redraws. If that's the case you can try to identify which window is causing the redraws.
Thanks for your hint. When the effect is enabled, the entire screen is flickering in colours, so redrawn every frame. Not a single window was open during this test. I tried disabling V-Sync, which only introduced tearing into the flickering. Disabling compositing hides the effect but doesn't reduce the GPU load
I doubt the "no window" - there was probably plasma running, which means at least two windows (desktop and panel). So next test would be to kill plasmashell.
Created attachment 106236 [details] intel-gpu-overlay plasma vs gnome Yeah, plasmashell was running, not what I meant by "no window". Attached are screenshots from the intel-gpu-overlay captured under plasma and gnome. Without plasmashell it doesn't redraw like crazy
Reassigning to Plasma, KWin is off the hook
grmat@sub.red, do you have any FolderView widgets on your desktop?
(In reply to Boian Berberov from comment #6) > grmat, do you have any FolderView widgets on your desktop? No, default workspace
(In reply to grmat from comment #7) > No, default workspace I believe the default workspace is set to "Layout: Folder View", which may have the same effect. Each distribution is different and I don't know what Arch does. It may be worth trying "Layout: Desktop Containment" and see if anything changes. Do a full reboot afterwards; a simple X restart did not have an effect for me.
(In reply to Boian Berberov from comment #8) > > I believe the default workspace is set to "Layout: Folder View", which may > have the same effect. Each distribution is different and I don't know what > Arch does. It may be worth trying "Layout: Desktop Containment" and see if > anything changes. Do a full reboot afterwards; a simple X restart did not > have an effect for me. Yes, folder view has become the default recently, my bad. Anyway, I've set it to desktop, not folder view. Changing it back and forth might have helped, but I'll have to monitor that.
(In reply to grmat from comment #9) > Changing it back and forth > might have helped, but I'll have to monitor that. Not resolved yet
Please see links in attached report. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 378010 ***
(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #11) > Please see links in attached report. > > *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 378010 *** Sorry, my problem is high **G**PU, not **C**PU load and I don't see something useful there. However, I was able to reproduce the problem on 2 machines. Steps to reproduce: 1. Create new user or reset configuration 2. Login to create configs 3. Enable the desktop effect "Show Paint" to be able to comprehend redraws 4. See everything is normal, no unnecessary redraws are happening. GPU load is normal (<1%) 5. Configure Desktop, switch "Wallpaper Type" to "Slideshow" and add a folder with images 6. Raise the default interval from 1s to something higher 7. Apply 8. Enjoy the disco with all the redraws It might be necessary to enable/disable the slideshow again, but it happens for me almost every time. Sometimes plasmashell even crashes when enabling the slideshow
Ok, thanks *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 381000 ***