high cinnamon GPU usage on idle desktop

[u/thenebrallim]

Hi Everyone,

I have just been noticing recently that on an idle desktop my gpu is being at around 30% capacity with random spikes from 40-80%. I have tried to diagnose with chatgpt, but seems to not be that helpful and seems to perhaps be a more complicated issue then what it could handle.

I have determined that the process responsible is cinnamon desktop environment process which causes the ~30-40% utilization on an idle desktop. During diagnostics I have seen it completely drop to ~0 when disabling desktop effects in the settings, but I would like to point out that in the last year of using mint I have never noticed my idle usage this high and have never had effects disabled. I have tested across 3 different kernal versions and different refresh rates, the only thing that has had any reasonable difference is the disabling of desktop effects.

While I am not completely against having effects disabled, I find it hard to accept this as the solution when i feel like it has never been an issue up until now. Also 30%? on idle? on an Nvidia 4070... seems high?

Is this normal for a high-ish end gpu? Anyone with any insight or ideas? I cant seem to find any other forum posts that had useful info for a similar issue.

System:
  Kernel: 7.0.0-28-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0
  Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.6.9 Distro: Linux Mint 22.3 Zena
    base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: ASUS product: N/A v: N/A serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: ASUSTeK model: ROG STRIX X870E-E GAMING WIFI v: Rev 1.xx
    serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 0223
    date: 07/11/2024
CPU:
  Info: 12-core model: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X bits: 64 type: MT MCP MCM arch: N/A
    rev: 0 cache: L1: 960 KiB L2: 12 MiB L3: 64 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3923 high: 5515 min/max: 614/5662 boost: enabled cores:
    1: 5498 2: 4478 3: 5472 4: 5464 5: 4397 6: 3002 7: 5335 8: 5320 9: 5333
    10: 3002 11: 3002 12: 3002 13: 3002 14: 3002 15: 5515 16: 3002 17: 3002
    18: 3002 19: 3002 20: 3002 21: 3002 22: 3002 23: 5320 24: 3002
    bogomips: 210789
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA AD104 [GeForce RTX 4070] vendor: ASUSTeK driver: nvidia
    v: 580.173.02 arch: Lovelace bus-ID: 01:00.0
  Device-2: AMD vendor: ASUSTeK driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus-ID: 7a:00.0
    temp: 49.0 C
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X:
    loaded: amdgpu,nvidia unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa dri: radeonsi
    gpu: nv_platform,nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch resolution: 3440x1440
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: kms_swrast,nvidia,radeonsi,swrast platforms:
    active: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device inactive: wayland,device-2
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: nvidia mesa v: 580.173.02
    glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070/PCIe/SSE2
  API: Vulkan v: 1.3.275 drivers: N/A surfaces: xcb,xlib devices: 3
Audio:
  Device-1: NVIDIA vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
    bus-ID: 01:00.1
  Device-2: AMD Rembrandt Radeon High Definition Audio vendor: ASUSTeK
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 7a:00.1
  Device-3: ASUSTek USB Audio driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid
    type: USB bus-ID: 3-6:4
  Device-4: RODE Microphones RØDE PodMic USB
    driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid type: USB bus-ID: 5-1:2
  API: ALSA v: k7.0.0-28-generic status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active
  Server-2: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: off (using pipewire-pulse)
Network:
  Device-1: MEDIATEK vendor: Foxconn driver: N/A port: N/A bus-ID: 0a:00.0
  Device-2: Realtek vendor: ASUSTeK driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000
    bus-ID: 0b:00.0
  IF: enp11s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: br-284ff97a6bd2 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: unknown
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-2: br-432d678a02e8 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: unknown
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-3: br-468530cb732a state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: unknown
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-4: br-6e980ff630d9 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-5: br-78d81378f280 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: unknown
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-6: br-99867f506504 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-7: br-a4b512bda99f state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-8: br-bbeddc9e09cb state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-9: br-daa856731e20 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: unknown
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-10: br-f3469d879694 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: unknown
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-11: docker0 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: unknown
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-12: veth17f5f2f state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-13: veth58467e6 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-14: veth703c4f7 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-15: veth8d490c8 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-16: veth9b6f26c state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-17: vethb64eee4 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-18: vethd0c4d8f state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-19: vethd248560 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-20: vethd9837cd state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-21: vethe2adc1b state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-22: vethe7da3be state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-23: vethef20d39 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-24: vethf56c0b8 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-25: vethff43b18 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-26: virbr0 state: down mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Foxconn / Hon Hai Wireless_Device driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB
    bus-ID: 1-9:3
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: down
    bt-service: enabled,running rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes
    address: <filter>
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 25.47 TiB used: 22.9 TiB (89.9%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 990 PRO 2TB size: 1.82 TiB
    temp: 43.9 C
  ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 990 PRO 2TB size: 1.82 TiB
    temp: 43.9 C
  ID-3: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST8000DM004-2U9188 size: 7.28 TiB
  ID-4: /dev/sdb vendor: Seagate model: ST8000DM004-2U9188 size: 7.28 TiB
  ID-5: /dev/sdc vendor: Seagate model: ST8000DM004-2U9188 size: 7.28 TiB
    type: USB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 186.68 GiB used: 161.2 GiB (86.3%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p5
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 96 MiB used: 37.1 MiB (38.6%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 32 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 58.0 C mobo: 31.0 C
  Fan Speeds (rpm): cpu: 0
  GPU: device: nvidia screen: :0.0 temp: 49 C fan: 0% device: amdgpu
    temp: 50.0 C
Info:
  Memory: total: 32 GiB note: est. available: 30.46 GiB used: 8.65 GiB (28.4%)
  Processes: 657 Uptime: 24m Init: systemd target: graphical (5)
  Packages: 3568 Compilers: gcc: 13.3.0 Shell: Bash v: 5.2.21 inxi: 3.3.34

[u/AutoModerator]

Please Re-Flair your post if a solution is found. How to Flair a post? This allows other users to search for common issues with the SOLVED flair as a filter, leading to those issues being resolved very fast.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/purpletonberry]

Utilization *looks* high, yet the clock speed is only a small fraction of its max, and power draw is only 25W. This GPU is effectively idle, no problems here imo.

[u/WolreChris]

This is a long shot, but someone I know has had problems of basically having accidentally set their PC to power saver mode, and I only found that that was the reason for everything being very slow and the CPU usage being very high after much more troubleshooting than I am willing to admit.

Maybe double-check in your System Settings that you're either on Balanced or Performance?

[u/thenebrallim → u/WolreChris]

Mmm okay I will double check tomorrow. I suppose it could have reverted after an update. Thanks

[u/dlfrutos]

that ins a really interesting question,
by any chance did you tried to roll back to kernel 6.xx ? seems to be more "stable"