Empty Rhino is very resource intensive

Ya, that’s not good, nor is it a solution IMO.

We’re looking into this…

Thanks,
-Jeff

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I have Alienware laptop (is that considered Dell now) with Geforce GPU no issues. I will say fan coming off and on seems to have no correlation to laptop temps at times (they will kick in on idle with no abnormal heat often, even with no active apps running on my system. other times if I do no heavy cpu or gpu work I can go hours without them going off, and other times they will kick in right when they should. Never had them NOT come on when they needed to which I guess is best thing I suppose)(I overclock so always have temp monitors going all time).

@jeff
Did you find a solution?

No, not yet…sorry… I don’t have a laptop here that’s showing the problem…still trying to get a config that demonstrates the problem…if I can’t, then it’s going to be “hunt and peck” approach.

-J

I have a desktop machine with Asus mobo and Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 GPU, and using Rhino 5 (SR14 x64) (Win 7 x64, Nvidia drivers are the latest).
And it seems to me that our problems have one cause.
I think it’s because Rhino makes the GPU runs at high frequency (that’s why fans are spinning at high speed), even when idle.
I have (like others in this thread) many GPU intensive programs (like Photoshop, 3ds Max, etc.). But only Rhino accelerates GPU all the time, even with empty file and no activity.
Here’s the statistics from GPU-Z (you guys can download it for free and check your frequencies with Rhino on and off):
Idle:

Rhino 5 SR14 (empty new doc, no activity):

And even when I turned off GPU Acceleration in Options:

image

Rhino continued to boost GPU.

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does mcneel test with the laptops with the problems?
Well… I’m sure following up every laptop would be impossible but ones reported frequently?
Possible to borrow from dell/asus?

Very interesting!
Same findings in here, checked it with Rhino 4, 5 ,6.
140MHz/1500MHz, 34°/42°.
Also when Rhino is minimized.
I think this also explains why notebooks on battery run out of power so soon when using Rhino.

This behavior should be really changed.


No need.
The effect is also seen a Desktop PC.

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I don’t see that on the Radeon I use for display adapter:

  1. FireFox only unminimized app (apart from GPU-Z)
  2. FireFox minimized
  3. Start Rhino 6SR8, then let idle - but still visible, not minimized

I’ll see if I get different behaviour on the Intel GPU and the Nvidia GPU tomorrow when I am in the office again.

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Also interesting is that the 1500MHz is not the maximum.
When I start an OpenGL game, the core clock is much higher:
image

Could Rhino to use such clock rates too?

GPU without Rhino

vs.

Rhino Version 6 SR8, launched, idle, minimized

GPU load is 0% yet temp rises 8deg?
I guess this is reason for laptop fans going on…

I tried again:
Restarted my notebook (left screenshot), then started Rhino, closed it after a few seconds and started Rhino again (right screenshot).
The results are similiar to my previous post. The GPU temperature rises 8°C as soon as Rhino is launched (empty new doc, no activity)

.

I see about what you see with my p4000.

@BoinB, @Charles, @Holo, All -

Jeff has been digging into this today and what he found, and it worked here as well, is that this setting, Power management mode, in the NVidia control panel:

needs to be set as in the image: NVidia driver-controlled.

If you can try this and report back that would be helpful - thanks.

-Pascal

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@pascal

Cool! (in both senses ) )
I added Rhino to the Programs list and set the corresponding option, but my alternatives are slightly different.
The default was Prefer Maximum Performance. So high frequencies was understandable.

And after a short peak at Rhino start now the frequencies are at base low level.

Works like a charm! Thank You!

Ok, that works.
We hand over the control to the NVidia driver.

Does this mean, that Rhino controls the Power Mode?
If so, Rhino should use the adaptive mode as default.

So that we don’t have to touch the Nvidia settings.

@pascal
Thank you! Excellent!

Does this need to be set everytime Rhino updated?

No… Rhino has no idea about NVidia’s profile settings, nor does the installer… Now, updating the NVidia drivers may require you to redo this change, I’m not 100% sure profiles remain consistent across driver installs, but I would hope they would be.

NVidia ships a Rhino profile with their Quadro drivers and not thier GeForce drivers…so my guess is that Quadro drivers have a higher chance of stepping on any profile changes…However, I will be discussing this change with NVidia, as I’m not sure why it was set the way it was… It’s not something McNeel requested in its profile…my guess is that Rhino’s profile just got copied from some other CAD product profile, and then tweaked with our requested changes, but any/all other settings didn’t get set to their defaults…but that’s purely speculation.

-J

Hey Charles,

Nope, Rhino doesn’t control any of the profile settings… Making it the default, which is “Use global setting”, means that if you change the Global power management setting to something else, then you’ll be right back to the same problem…only my guess is that now all programs will exhibit this problem… IMO, the best solution is to find a group of settings that work perfectly for Rhino, and then lock them down inside a custom profile… Which is what we have done with NVidia and their Quadro drivers…Unfortunately, they don’t allow this for GeForce since we are not a “gaming company”, so you’re left to whatever the defaults are on GeForce installations, and are forced to create your own custom profile for Rhino(.exe).

Thanks,
-Jeff