[Solved] High "System" process usage when connection to dGPU lost

First let me preface this post by saying I know fully well MSI Afterburner doesn't support laptops and I don't expect any actual fix for this issue.

Title says it all, when the 1660ti (Driver 441.41 DCH, W10 1809) on my ACER nitro 5 goes into sleep mode when unused, MSI Afterburner generates ~15% load @4 Ghz on my 9300H through the "system" process each time it does hardware polling. Increasing it from 1000 to 60000ms greatly reduces the issue but it remains somewhat annoying. Interestingly this also happens with GPU-Z but not with HWiNFO64.

I just wanted to report this in case someone else is facing the same issue but I'd also like to know why is the maximum hardware polling rate caped at 60000ms and if there is a way to extend it for those who don't need the monitoring features. Also why not add a separate "disable/enable monitoring" option ?

 

1. This is due to Nvidia Optimus technology, when not used the 1660ti vanishes as device for MSI AB
2. Optimus is a laptop only technology and therefor afaik it won't be supported
3. There is a enable/disable source monitoring switch, kinda... In the monitoring tab group all GPU related sources together by dragging them. To enable/disable them, click first then shift+click last to select them and uncheck one of them to have them all unchecked.

 

Yup I'm already aware this is because of optimus and I have nothing against it as it reduces the idle power draw from 20+ Watts to only 8.
I've already disabled all monitoring sources, including CPU and RAM just to be sure but it doesn't change anything because AB still tries to ping the dGPU.
The only option left is to quit AB (the system keeps the clocks and voltages changes until reboot or driver reset) but I wouldn't call this an ideal solution, especially for the average user.
Also I'm really curious to know why the polling rate cannot exceed 60000ms even when edited through the config file.

 

I'd guess a monitoring interval exceeding one minute would be considered useless?

Since AB is built for desktop PCs, it probably doesn't have any special handling for situations where the GPU "disappears" mid-session.

Why do you need to have AB running when not gaming? Any overclocks or voltage adjustments you've defined don't do anything if the dGPU is disabled. I'd suggest to not run AB automatically upon Windows login, but rather start it manually just before you launch a game.

 

Apologies, I only use the v3 skin so I had forgotten about the main GUI temp/clock indicator. I get that you're often dealing with entitled laptop users and have run out of patience for them but it seems a bit of a stretch to assume literally no desktop user would want to completely disable monitoring for troubleshooting or whatever. From my perspective the polling rate limitation is a completely useless one that required at least some amount of work to implement. That's why I was curious for an explanation.
Lack of support for laptops is logical considering the amount of work involved but I assume that as a dev, you're still happy that plenty of laptop users can use your software to vastly improve their experience even though you have no obligation to support this use case. If you work hard to create something great, the more use people get out of it the better right ?

Anyway thanks for taking the time to reply, I'd just like to mention I'm really grateful for AB and RTSS that I get to use for free every day and I consider them really useful. I just wanted to provide some feedback.

I don't use laptops anymore, this one is for a family member and I wanted them to have a nice and simple preconfigured undervolt/overclock on their dGPU with no work required. I guess the best way to achieve this would be to configure a task to close AB after launch. Never did this before so I'm not sure if it'll work though.

 

Nice ! Problem gone. Very quick to unpause too in case monitoring is needed. I've never tried to right click the graphs so I had no idea you could pause it this way. Looks like I'm not the only one though so it might be useful to post a PSA somewhere for those who have the same issue. Thanks for the tip.