High CPU usage while idle (1 Viewer)

[spiderwheels]

MediaPortal Version: 1.1 RC1
MediaPortal Skin: Blue wide
Windows Version: XP SP3
CPU Type: AMD Athlon X2 250
HDD: WD 1TB
Memory: 4 GB DDR 1066
Motherboard: Gigabyte
Video Card: ATI HD4200 IGP

I'm running some performance tests as I have some issues with TV recordings occasionally stuttering. I wondered if it was a disk issue but after examining it in Performance Monitor I can see my physical disk usage barely moves over 5% even when recording and time shifting simultaneously. Is this pretty normal? I read somewhere that time shifting was quite disk intensive.

Anyway, back to the point... with mediaportal open but idle on the basic home screen the CPU usage is running at 27%. If I open the TV plugin it shoots up to 35%. If I then watch a TV program the usage stays about 35%. I believe I have hardware acceleration setup correctly and so playing video should just be a few % not 35%.

Why is mediaportal doing so much when idle?

Thanks

 

[winterescape]

I am going to guess that you have cool-N-quiet enabled, which is fine but you are using 25-35% of the cpu power at the current throttle position. If you disabled this you would see the % util of the full cpu horsepower. If you right click on my computer on win xp and select properties you can see the current CPU clock rate on the general info tab.

 

[spiderwheels]

I am going to guess that you have cool-N-quiet enabled, which is fine but you are using 25-35% of the cpu power at the current throttle position. If you disabled this you would see the % util of the full cpu horsepower. If you right click on my computer on win xp and select properties you can see the current CPU clock rate on the general info tab.

Hi. Yes I realised after I posted I had cool-n-quiet enabled (sorry I didn't get the opportunity to edit my original post). I added the processor frequency stats to perfmon. One core was throttled to 800MHz and the other was flicking between 800 and 1800.

So its using 35% of a dual core processor clocked at 800MHz while idle. That still seems like a lot - if I close media portal the CPU drops down to 5% (of the 800MHz rate) when just displaying the windows desktop.

I appreciate its a small amount but I am trying to track down what might be causing glitches to my recordings. I want to make sure there isn't some loop running in Mediaportal that is using up CPU time at inopportune moments.

 

[winterescape]

1) You use the onboard graphics with shared memory, what size is the memory set to for the graphics in the BIOS? (try 512)

2) Open device manager, right click on primary IDE channel, select the advanced settings tab, and check what transfer mode the HDD transfer is in? (should be DMA mode x not PIO)

3) Run the online version of “Microsoft one care live” make sure you have no virus or spy ware and the system is clean and the HDD is de-fragmented. (run full service scan) Windows Live OneCare safety scanner: Free online tool for PC health and safety then try disabling any virus scanner you may have running

4) Schedule a task to run every night to defrag the HDD recordings, Use task scheduler and the XP defrag program

5) By chance do you run comskip?

6) make sure your drivers are up to date, go to windows update and check custom, then check the hardware,optional updates for hardware drivers. Microsoft Update

 

[RCW]

Do you use the My TV-Series plugin?
I have experienced a similar problem when the My TV-Series plugin database has been corrupted.
To test rename C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\database\TVSeriesDatabase4.db3 to TVSeriesDatabase4.xxx and restart MP.

There is a thread about this somewhere & credit to the original poster.

 

[spiderwheels]

1)

4) Schedule a task to run every night to defrag the HDD recordings, Use task scheduler and the XP defrag program

Thanks for the reminder. The partition is only used for recordings and timeshifting and is only 25% full and only about 4 months old. So how can it be 63% fragmented??? Stupid NTFS... Perhaps I should increase the block size.

Obviously not related to the CPU usage though

Do you use the My TV-Series plugin?
I have experienced a similar problem when the My TV-Series plugin database has been corrupted.
To test rename C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\database\TVSeriesDatabase4.db3 to TVSeriesDatabase4.xxx and restart MP.

There is a thread about this somewhere & credit to the original poster.

No. I haven't got it

 

[winterescape]

So its using 35% of a dual core processor clocked at 800MHz while idle. That still seems like a lot - if I close media portal the CPU drops down to 5% (of the 800MHz rate) when just displaying the windows desktop.

I appreciate its a small amount but I am trying to track down what might be causing glitches to my recordings. I want to make sure there isn't some loop running in Mediaportal that is using up CPU time at inopportune moments.

So what I did not mention in posting my suggestions is that I agree if you have hardware acceleration enabled that seems somewhat high. I run at about 10% with MP 1.0.2 on the home screen and bounces up into the high teens while playing back TV recording.

But I would say you have most of the CPU available so I am not sure that tracking it down will fix the glitches in your recordings. The other thing that might help is this thread, not sure if your symptoms match…

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/mediaportal-1-talk-45/stuttering-livetv-38450/

Also, use "shift +1" to display frame rate. I get 50fps with HW accel.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Spiderwheels

A couple of things to try, first one is the amd dual core optimizer, this is only of use to XP users, this always solve my minute stutterings with cool'n'quiet enabled, the other one is a bit more physical, try removing 2gb of ram, see if things change then.

High cpu use in home screen, and running modules like liveTV etc, should be fixed in RC2 (already in svn), I found this when I updated from 1.0.2, my cpu when playing video went from 2-7% (depending on mpeg2-H264) to 20-30% inside MP, running same files in MCE took me back to previous levels, so know it was a MP problem, not my system

Regards

 

[spiderwheels]

I think winterscape was right about fragmentation upsetting recording. I honestly hadn't expect there would be so much. I'll keep it defragged for now.

Live TV doesn't stutter. I think the HW acceleration is on as the CPU usage doesn't change much when going from the mediaportal menus to full screen TV. And while showing video cool n quiet has the CPU dropped down to 800MHz again.

PD: I've got dual core optimizer installed. Your description of the fix in RC2 sounds right to me. I'll wait for it to be released.