iCUE or iCancer? CPU load

[Mikuni]

How is this acceptable? i5-2500k @ 4.3 Ghz, constant 5-7% + 2-4% from the service, IDLE.

 

[c-attack]

You can have a more meaninful discussion about what is or is not an appropriate level of software activity. However, you are using a 9 year old 4 core, 4 thread processor. CPU % is directly related to core/thread count and you can't really expect a processor developed in 2010 to effortlessly handle programming loads a decade later.

[LeDoyen]

yea but same load on 9th gen CPUS or Ryzen when it comes to services :/ only iCue load seems to be lower

[c-attack]

yea but same load on 9th gen CPUS or Ryzen when it comes to services :/ only iCue load seems to be lower

 

Which is the point and a 10 year old processor is the wrong tool to demonstrate the issue. CPU % is strictly mathematical, but the individual user's committed resources do not seem to follow scale with c/t count or device count. Right now someone with a Threadripper 28 core wants to know why the OP's CPU % is lower than their own.

[Mikuni]

You can have a more meaninful discussion about what is or is not an appropriate level of software activity. However, you are using a 9 year old 4 core, 4 thread processor. CPU % is directly related to core/thread count and you can't really expect a processor developed in 2010 to effortlessly handle programming loads a decade later.

 

2500K oc'ed to 4.3 is still pretty good nowadays, by no means should it be acceptable that a keyboard/mouse driver app consumes 12-15% CPU to occasionally use the macro keys or mouse side buttons on this setup.

[Oxize]

I9 10 (20ht) core. Just saying.

[djase]

3900x on Asus Crosshair VII.

Edited June 9, 2020 by djase

[Baio]

3700x on Asus Crosshair VIII Formula and 32Gb RAM

 

[LeDoyen]

You're comparing iCue load when open, and on tray.

At this rate, on i7 9700K it takes 2.5% here.. 0.5% minimized.. 15% on the keyboard page with puke rainbow cycle, 12% on the dashboard..

 

Actually.. it just points out to the fact that you should not leave the iCUE window opened or minimized. Always close it to tray

[Raiden85]

Biggest problem with iCue is the damn corsair.service, it may use a small amount but because it's using a decent amount of the CPU it doesn't let the CPU downclock for long, therefore more power and heat for no reason.

This is when the 9900k is at 5ghz, the two corsair services while the program is closed and in the tray is using almost as much as tons of other programs that are running in the background excluding the game running, just ridiculous.

 

iCue while in the tray is the only program that forces my CPU to run at it's full boost clock pretty often, program is just getting bloated unfortunately. I really miss the old Corsair Link, while it doesn't have the functionality for modern devices it ran quietly in the background without hogging my CPU, even when open.

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Raiden85

[c-attack]

And that is the difficulty with all this. 1) User perception of what's acceptable. You are not happy that iCUE is using ~2.8% of of 8c/16t processor while it it is monitoring all your hardware and also running real time lighting adjustments for the Division 2 (unless you disabled it). That's a fair amount of stuff going on for 2.8%. Quit it all and compare to something like AIDA with the monitoring graph up.

 

2) The total usage does not seem to match hardware vs devices or something along those lines. For what it's worth, mine is usually around 3.5-3.7% with 8700K and a dozen devices. I average about 20% more than yours, which could be because of the 2c/4t less. Meanwhile someone with 6950X is seeing 10% for their KB and mouse. It is difficult to explain why some set-ups are using so much more. The only thing that makes any sense is some type of interaction with another program or possibly altered power settings.

 

@Oxize - Your usage seems out of bounds and since you GPU commit is effectively zero, I know you are not sitting on the keyboard tab or dashboard. I would suggest anyone seeing double digit CPU % usage do a repair installation and if that doesn't work, try a clean install (save App Data folder first as a backup). Also, some tabs are going to create more usage. Sitting on the KB lighting tab will always create more load as it enumerates the 100 keys of lighting and the GPU animates it. All those graphs on the dashboard create more loads well, when it it is pulled down.

Edited June 9, 2020 by c-attack

[Mikuni]

[Mikuni]

I've been testing a Roccat keyboard today, look how much CPU it's using while doing the same as iCUE.

 

[LeDoyen]

2 or 3% of a modern CPU is huge. "You can fly to the moon on 2% CPU!" - EEVBlog

[c-attack]

That software does not do monitoring and is limited to external peripherals and no internal devices. It's not the same.

[Mikuni]

That software does not do monitoring and is limited to external peripherals and no internal devices. It's not the same.

 

In my case it's the same, I don't have any monitoring modules on in iCUE, just the lighting and key binds for macro keys.

[lucascaju]

I just don't know for how long the discussion of high CPU usage or performance impact will keep having people making excuses for its validity, even when is already scoring articles in journals and YouTube channels. There are several demonstrations that is affecting game performance in the perception of many people, which by the way are Corsair consumers. This is happening on a variety hardware, being old or new, across multiple years, even affecting idling expected behavior of many models, especially related to Ryzen processors. Oh, it's software RGB control, oh, you should minimize to the tray. This seems to me a very "old Apple mentality", that the users are using wrongly. Dear Corsair engineers, I know that software development is hard sometimes (I am a developer too), especially related to optimizations, but you guys should at least engage your community leaders to create a fixed thread to discuss this issue recognizing that is affecting performance, usability, for a variety of people, like discussed in many threads. Claims come from CPU clock behavior, other software performance impact, YouTube stuttering, disk usage, fps drops and more. And this especially glaring when you instead of trying to deliver a superior solution to the services you create, to provide the functionalities people want, for controlling RGB and all the Corsair goodies, you introduce another services that can further exacerbate the perceptual performance impact. Please stop creating excuses to not look this as a problem, or thinking that is good enough, listen to your many consumers that are unhappy for many years with this particular issue. Do not think that those users are annoying, oh this level % usage, you should not worry about, go play your games. Sure, for some people this is not affecting on their usability, but for others are. The speech of that CPU is old is completely lame, to not say untrue to the case shown. So, I wish this community were moving forward with this, but no, stuck on the same arguments you should not think like that, this is your vision. Of course, for the people that are knowledgeable they can provide more concrete evidence, but this issue is your responsibility and should take more seriously, especially now that iCue is aggregating other companies products, like Asus, that also have their own plethora of problems. Sure, the title "iCue or iCancer" is exaggerated, but just shows how frustrated the community is.

[LeDoyen]

And moving forward some are.. Just waiting for that other watercooling brand to release new software later this year. If it's good enough, i swap my fans and get rid of the last corsair products i had on my PC.

Corsair hardware is average to good in general, but the software is what poisons this brand to me. Dodgy firmwares that work when they feel like, and overly heavy driver that nobody seems to want to improve.. I don't give chances when i pay that kind of money. I expect something that works, and performs.

 

Still, best RGB in the market.. but i don't play RGB, i play games, without stutters and crashes if possible.

 

Is there someone at Corsair that could even tell us if they are looking at performance improvement, and if yes, a rough ETA? A lot of the frustration comes from total silence in front of constant identical complaints

[nels22]

I have a 9700, in the manager it shows maximum 5%, but all my cores are running at top, even when idle and no icue interface open. I was worry about cause power consuption (yes I am that kind of person) and begin to close software and when I reach iCue, all my cores clock went to minimum, of course power consuption too. I have this similar problem with the lighting service in Asus Aura Sync that if you choose for a effect that service will go nuts with your CPU, now I just use it with static color.

[Sprockster]

I believe they use a 3rd party API for the monitoring part. At least for Ryzen processors they could work with AMD. Ryzen Master monitors the CPU in a way that it doesn't prevent cores from sleeping and results in a much lowered voltage. Turn on iCue and voltage will go to ~1.4 at idle on my 3950x.

 

There are other monitoring tools out there like hwinfo that don't cause this spike. Also, AMD even released a Ryzen Master SDK for companies to use https://developer.amd.com/amd-ryzentm-master-monitoring-sdk/

 

Not saying implementing the link above would fix this problem. However, it would be nice to see them acknowledge the problem and start to work towards fixing it. Most of these peripheral companies software is trash. It really wouldn't take much to turn this around and have both decent hardware and software. Just like some say they will move on from corsair, conversely if the software was great people may come over to corsair.

[blyang]

Wanted to offer another data point from anyone who cares. I use macOS for work with my Corsair accessories and iCUE for macOS also seems to consume a very non-trivial amount of CPU load. I'm running this on a 7700k with 32GB of RAM.