2015-09-01, 10:31
This is very odd and problematic. May be a 15.1 problem. It is very reliably reproducible.
My Kodi 15.1 installation is on Opensuse on a Sandy Bridge i7-2600k using VAAPI for the built-in GPU. Confluence skin. Xfce desktop (stock no effects).
At idle, there is about a 5-6% cpu usage which is fine but as soon as I bring up a text entry dialog on the screen (say Search for a Movie in the local Library), the CPU usage jumps to 25-30% even by just keeping the dialog box up on the screen and doing nothing with it. This by itself is not the problem although I don't see why that should be the case.
The above CPU increase usage happens in full screen as well as Windowed mode. In Windowed mode, I don't notice any other side effects. The CPU core temperatures remain the same and the fan speed does not increase (or a very small increase).
Here is the odd part:
If I am in Full Screen mode when I bring the text entry box up, the temperature starts to shoot up and the fans come on loud. The CPU usage is the same at about 20-30%. Watching "top" I don't notice any other process taking up more CPU time between full screen and windowed mode but the temperature rises only in Full Screen Mode as soon as I bring up the text entry dialog box.
Is this "normal"? I am not sure this happened in 14.x. Seems like a possible explanation is that the rise in temperature is due to heavy on-board GPU usage on the i7 but why should this dialog box sitting idle create such a heavy load on the GPU and only in Full Screen mode?
Have no problem while watching videos where hardware decoding is used.
Could it be some strange interaction with the Window Manager?
Sorry no debug log as it takes a lot of time to redact personal information in the logs (Path names, etc) but I have looked at the highest level debug log and there is nothing that is logged after the dialog is brought up while the CPU usage increases. There is no difference in the logs between the full screen (when the temperature shoots up) and the windowed mode where the CPU usage goes up just as in the former but temperature does not.
Same thing with scrolling text. Lot of heat generation in Full Screen mode requiring loud fan rpm AND the two cases above are cumulative! If I am looking at a list of movies and the current movie has a scrolling text in its description, the CPU usage and temperature goes up and if I bring up the dialog box to change the title of the movie while the text is still scrolling in the back, the CPU usage and temperatures start to go higher than either of them by their own. This does seem like a GPU usage problem. I have had thermal shutdown of the machine by trying to change the title of many movies sequentially after a library scan.
Is there a known bug in Kodi 15.1 that results in this problem?
Thanks for any inputs/pointers/suggestions that might shed some light on this.
My Kodi 15.1 installation is on Opensuse on a Sandy Bridge i7-2600k using VAAPI for the built-in GPU. Confluence skin. Xfce desktop (stock no effects).
At idle, there is about a 5-6% cpu usage which is fine but as soon as I bring up a text entry dialog on the screen (say Search for a Movie in the local Library), the CPU usage jumps to 25-30% even by just keeping the dialog box up on the screen and doing nothing with it. This by itself is not the problem although I don't see why that should be the case.
The above CPU increase usage happens in full screen as well as Windowed mode. In Windowed mode, I don't notice any other side effects. The CPU core temperatures remain the same and the fan speed does not increase (or a very small increase).
Here is the odd part:
If I am in Full Screen mode when I bring the text entry box up, the temperature starts to shoot up and the fans come on loud. The CPU usage is the same at about 20-30%. Watching "top" I don't notice any other process taking up more CPU time between full screen and windowed mode but the temperature rises only in Full Screen Mode as soon as I bring up the text entry dialog box.
Is this "normal"? I am not sure this happened in 14.x. Seems like a possible explanation is that the rise in temperature is due to heavy on-board GPU usage on the i7 but why should this dialog box sitting idle create such a heavy load on the GPU and only in Full Screen mode?
Have no problem while watching videos where hardware decoding is used.
Could it be some strange interaction with the Window Manager?
Sorry no debug log as it takes a lot of time to redact personal information in the logs (Path names, etc) but I have looked at the highest level debug log and there is nothing that is logged after the dialog is brought up while the CPU usage increases. There is no difference in the logs between the full screen (when the temperature shoots up) and the windowed mode where the CPU usage goes up just as in the former but temperature does not.
Same thing with scrolling text. Lot of heat generation in Full Screen mode requiring loud fan rpm AND the two cases above are cumulative! If I am looking at a list of movies and the current movie has a scrolling text in its description, the CPU usage and temperature goes up and if I bring up the dialog box to change the title of the movie while the text is still scrolling in the back, the CPU usage and temperatures start to go higher than either of them by their own. This does seem like a GPU usage problem. I have had thermal shutdown of the machine by trying to change the title of many movies sequentially after a library scan.
Is there a known bug in Kodi 15.1 that results in this problem?
Thanks for any inputs/pointers/suggestions that might shed some light on this.
