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g-a-c · (This post was last modified: 2011-03-10, 09:48 by g-a-c.)

Hi, my HTPC got updated this morning (I'm remote, wanted to get the latest zfs-fuse version but threw the xbmc updates on anyway even though I'm not at home right now) and the first thing I've noticed about 10.1 is that the CPU usage is a lot higher. I have a dual-core HT Atom (so 4 "cores") and it seems from top that one of them is being stressed by XBMC even though I've rebooted the box so it's only sat at home on the menu screen, not playing anything.

10.0 used around 2-4% when it was idle, 10.1 is using 25% solidly, i.e. one whole core of the CPU. Unfortunately, because of the Hyperthreading and the fact they're not real cores, this seems to be making the box lag even though I'm only SSHed into it (yes I should turn HT off and I will, but I'm remote so can't do it right now and this has never been a problem before so it still indicates that something has changed for the worse within XBMC).

Any ideas why this might be the case, and is anyone else seeing it? My xbmc.log file looks normal to me, there's one HAL error and one D-Bus error, but that's all. I'll pastebin it in a second and put a link in this post, or feel free to ask for any other information that might help.

edit - http://pastebin.com/UhSxGt2X

jmarshall · 2011-03-10, 10:08

If that's all that's in the log it hasn't come back up fully by the looks.

g-a-c · 2011-03-10, 10:56

Ah, OK. Like a fool, I just restarted it blindly (thinking the logs were would be appended) so all I have is a .log and .old.log which are the same, any logging info from before that will have been lost.

I'll just stop the Upstart task for now and restart it when I get home to see what happens when I'm actually looking at the TV, and post back with more information.

Thanks!

g-a-c · 2011-03-10, 19:27

OK, I'm now home. Everything seems to be working fine, but the CPU usage is much higher. Strangely, I quickly loaded the iPlayer BBC One live stream, and the CPU usage dropped to about 10 percent? So this box is using less CPU time playing RTMP videos than it is displaying the main XBMC menu! Any ideas why this might be the case? I'm using the default skin (Confluence) but I'm just about to try another one to see if it causes the CPU usage to drop. If I narrow it down to the skin, how would I go about troubleshooting this? I've never changed any skin settings since originally installing XBMC Live (with 9.10) so I'm not sure why this would suddenly be the case...

nemek · 2011-03-10, 19:43

Check how much fps u got on menu (just enable debugging) i beat it is some big number and thats what your cpu is doing. By enabling vsync and setting smaller refresh rate u should be able to lower cpu usage.

g-a-c · 2011-03-11, 02:09

I checked, my menu is doing around 100fps (it flickers around but is pretty much constantly between 99.0 and 99.9). I don't know what it used to do before, because it just worked. My refresh rate is set to 50Hz, and I had vsync set for video playback. I've now changed it to vsync always, the menu says it's running at 60fps now (I don't know why, as the refresh rate is set to 50!) and the CPU usage seems to have dropped to around 20%, so still higher than I saw with 10.0...

hjbotha · (This post was last modified: 2011-03-18, 09:32 by hjbotha.)

I'm getting this as well but fiddling with vsync etc hasn't done any good. Never noticed it until now because I haven't tried to play back HD content in a while, which stutters now.

Zotac MAG Atom/Ion box, menu runs at 60 FPS, display at 50hz, vsync on.

I started a new profile just to eliminate an option somewhere.

Log is at http://pastebin.com/7D3kqzwv

fatalglitch · 2011-03-19, 16:53

I found that when I was running the main menu at 60Hz, it was using around 60% cpu at all times in the menu. Changing the menu to run at 24Hz, and I'm down to 7% cpu for the menu...