[Dabbeljoe]

Hi all,

Recently I bought my first completely fanless computer to use as a home server. Since the thing is powerful enough to run XBMC and play full HD video, I decided to use it as a HTPC as well.

Since it's fanless, I've been a bit anal in monitoring temperature and CPU load, and I noticed that XBMC is using quite a lot of CPU compared to the other processes. On an idle system I see things like mysqld, SABnzbd, mopidy pop up to using 1% CPU every once in a while, but xbmc.bin is burning a steady 25%. Disabling the RSS feed helps a lot, it dropped the CPU load to 10% and the temperature from 60C to 50C after a night of idling.

Still I'm wondering.. what is it actually doing? I put on a black screensaver, I have no add-ons that need to remain active all the time, still it seems to be calculating... things. Why? Is there a way to find out?

[negge]

Try disabling all addons and see if the CPU usage drops.

[wsnipex]

and a Debug Log

possible issues: video driver, dynamic skins that "dirty" the screen all the time and therefor force a redraw(like rss) and ofc addons

[Dabbeljoe]

Ah yes... of course I didn't read the "READ THIS FIRST" post. Sorry 'bout that.

Debug log: http://pastebin.com/7hMJ2KvZ
Distro: Archlinux (up-to-date 2014-08-14)
Architecture: x86_64
Install Method: pacman
Git: unknown (compiled Aug 8 2014)

The skin is just bog standard confluence. Enabling the debug log does show some more info on screen, which tells me FPS is still ~75, even though nothing is moving on screen.

I'm wondering if anyone is seeing <1% CPU usage from an idle XBMC. I mean, is it even feasible to expect this, or is it just the way XBMC works?

And if it is indeed the GUI that's causing this load, isn't there some way to disable it altogether when XBMC is idle? To me it seems strange that there's still CPU load from the GUI when all it's actually outputting is a black screensaver.

[wsnipex]

set V-sync in system settings to "always". There is lots of DB and scraping activity in your log, so you might have enabled "scan library on startup". Wait till this finishes, then look at your cpu usage in top via ssh.
Also check the cpu frequency.

In general: you will never see <1% as Kodi(xbmc) is an OpenGL 3D application, which isn't comparable to normal 2D desktop guis.
I have 3-6% idle load on my i3225 on confluence home screen, while the cpu is downclocked. Similar on my AMD A4-5000

[Dabbeljoe]

I guess I should have disabled scanning before posting the log

That's the way I've been monitoring all along. I suspected something like your OpenGL explanation, but still I wonder if something could be done about it.

Please bear with me here, I know next to nothin about the inner workings of, well, Kodi. But I have toyed around a bit with 3D frameworks, and usually it's possible to drop the framerate or pause threads or whatever when desired. I'd love to be able to keep the whole OpenGL experience on hold until someone presses a button.