iCUE 3.19 System Interrupts High CPU Usage

[c-attack]

Yeah, and no... removing Aura and the now standalone Aura service in 107.71, then reinstalling iCUE 3.19 did not change events. My scores still suck and are incredibly erratic on 3.19, minus Aura. There is still nothing out of the ordinary in task manager and I don't get any of the single core heavy usage like you guys, but there is definitely a negative effect. The crystal test and the API overhead test are supposed to steadily decrease FPS until you reach a set mark. Instead, the fps drops and rebounds like a bouncing ball -- right from the beginning. That is a clear issue and not what should happen.

3.18.77 provides consistent testing with virtually no variance and no hard drops.

[Darkness1015]

I also do not see the "single core" utilization issue. My symptoms were:

1. FPS drop of 20-40 every 10-15 seconds
2. ~1 second of video lag every 10-15 seconds.

[c-attack]

Originally Posted by Darkness1015

I also do not see the "single core" utilization issue. My symptoms were:

1. FPS drop of 20-40 every 10-15 seconds
2. ~1 second of video lag every 10-15 seconds.

That's more like my symptoms and it was easy to chalk it up to "bad game engines" or frequent updates. However, I notice you don't appear to have Corsair RGB RAM. You do have a Z370/390 chipset like us. However my problem most certainly goes away when I take out the Dominator RGB and drop in my 4 year old Dominators from my X99 build. I am not sure what that means. Chipset connection? Any software trying to control the RAM? Do you use Aura for the RAM lighting control?

[batman7676]

I'm having this problem. Also Ram does not see. I'm eating drop and hanging games are shaking image. Fps dropped. GPU is not used.

[thestu]

I used to have Aura installed, I had 1.6 and 1.7, but I uninstalled everything and cleaned up a month ago.

The single core CPU usage you won't be able to see it with regular task manager I believe. I use process explorer to get a graph for each core. Also, if you have a CPU with many cores/threads, hardware interrupts might only show up as 5-6% usage which might not seem a lot, but really it is using 80-100% of 1 core, at least on my PC.

The funny thing is that the problem seems to go away when I put my PC to sleep and wake it up... However, if I reboot it comes back.

Tomorrow, I'll remove 3 of my 4 RGB sticks to see if it makes a difference.

[Andeeh]

I'm seeing some CPU issues with 3.19 as well.

I use the Balanced power plan in Windows, and when I installed iCUE 3.19, HWiNFO64 showed my CPU clocks were always at 4.4GHz, even when idle with no programs open in the foreground.


When I exit iCUE from the system tray, the CPU cores would downclock back to 800MHz.

I reinstalled iCUE 3.18.77 and am not seeing this issue anymore.

What gives, Corsair?

[thestu]

Originally Posted by batman7676

I'm having this problem. Also Ram does not see. I'm eating drop and hanging games are shaking image. Fps dropped. GPU is not used.

You have very similar specs... same chipset, RAM, CPU.

Can you open Task manager, check in the details tab for System Interrupts. Is it using 5-6% CPU?

In the performance tab, right click on the graph and select Change graph to Logical processors.

[BlaiseP]

Originally Posted by c-attack

Not at this point. We reported it this morning and the next step is they will try to recreate it. If they can't, then they may ask for logs and other details. However, I think they will be successful in replicating because I was able to find a problem.

I mentioned I had been running RAM tests all week and would have noticed any kind of CPU interference. Instead my results were incredible precise, but I was also using my older Domiantor Platinum 3200C15 4x4 (Non-RGB). In the past, the only stuff that has really been problematic with CPU usage is the RGB RAM. Software mode is still very resource intensive and I always use the hardware lighting mode. As a result, I think I missed this in early testing. I put my Dominator RGB kit i just got back last week on. Still in hardware mode, my Time Spy 12 CPU "crystal test" is all over the place with iCUE 3.19 running in the background. Huge 2000-3000 point swings (33% variance) between runs and massively less than the 4x4 kit. I uninstalled iCUE and set identical timings as my Dominator 4x4 kit. The result? Identical score to the other kit. Clearly iCUE is having some negative effect on CPU performance and it is fairly strong. I don't get anywhere near the level of system interrupts you get (2-3% at most and lower with iCUE running), however that is a 4x increase over using non-RGB RAM at identical settings.

You were right, there is a problem and the issue seems to be with RGB RAM.
You appear to have the Vengeance PRO RGB line. I have been using my non-RGB kit for the last month and did not pick up on the problem because it doesn't exist when I use the other RAM. With the RGB RAM on and 3.19, I am definitely getting FPS drops and the minimum frame rate is much lower than it should be. This becomes crystal clear in CPU bottlenecked games like MMOs with not much other overhead. It doesn't show up as usage increase for me, but more like the traditional system interrupt that tanks your performance with micro-stutter, etc. I have my Gsync turned off, so I think that aspect is a dead horse. Thank you for being so thorough. The possible cause didn't quite hit me until I saw the charts in the post above and it reminded me of early RAM issues.

So I think the obvious step here is to stay on 3.18. Naturally I have done a vast amount of creating in 3.19, so I won't be using any of those profiles right now. I would not expect a fix until 3.20 next month.

Under Resource Manager, the graph show CPU 0 pegged at 100% yet I can't see how it really adds up from the Processes list. My "System Interrupts" is around 4.5% and the ICUE services in total are under 1%. Haven't noticed any problems with G-SYNC but I'll keep an eye on it using my monitor's hardware FPS display.

BTW. When I'm going for scores on 3DMARKS, I shut down ICUE completely (I also close explorer.exe) as this has quite an effect on the final scores through all ICUE versions. I can put up with unicorn barf and my fans are controlled by custom curves on my Commander Pro's in hardware anyway.

Edit: Forgot to add, as CPU 0 is pegged at 100%, the CPU is permanently boosted to maximum clocks.

[Crowzer]

Well I'm back to 3.18.77. New update break my ST100 again...

[Krokarn]

I got problems with the new update, my game World of Tanks was getting very low FPS so i could not play at all.
I went back to 3.18.77 and then suddenly all my Corsair Components(K95 Plat, M65 Elite, ST100, Commander PRO, Node PRO, Void PRO, RM850i, Dominator Plat RGB and H150i) was gone from iCUE.
So after a lot of trying i did a Clean install of iCUE and then i got back my Components in iCUE. I am nowwaiting to upgrade to 3.19.120.

[momorious]

Maybe a Mod can rename the threads headline as its no Gsync but a CPU issue with the new version?!

[thestu]

Originally Posted by BlaiseP

Under Resource Manager, the graph show CPU 0 pegged at 100% yet I can't see how it really adds up from the Processes list. My "System Interrupts" is around 4.5% and the ICUE services in total are under 1%. Haven't noticed any problems with G-SYNC but I'll keep an eye on it using my monitor's hardware FPS display.

BTW. When I'm going for scores on 3DMARKS, I shut down ICUE completely (I also close explorer.exe) as this has quite an effect on the final scores through all ICUE versions. I can put up with unicorn barf and my fans are controlled by custom curves on my Commander Pro's in hardware anyway.

Edit: Forgot to add, as CPU 0 is pegged at 100%, the CPU is permanently boosted to maximum clocks.

CPU usage is an aggregated value of all the cores/threads of the CPU. So if you have a 12-thread cpu, a 100% core usage would show up as 100% / 12 threads = 8%. To have 100% in the task manager all cores would have to be 100% used. This is why in task manager you need to show logical cores to see the usage on each core, otherwise CPU usage may appear low globally.

[c-attack]

Originally Posted by BlaiseP

BTW. When I'm going for scores on 3DMARKS, I shut down ICUE completely (I also close explorer.exe) as this has quite an effect on the final scores through all ICUE versions. I can put up with unicorn barf and my fans are controlled by custom curves on my Commander Pro's in hardware anyway.

Edit: Forgot to add, as CPU 0 is pegged at 100%, the CPU is permanently boosted to maximum clocks.

That is the issue the original guys have and I do not, but the problem is there whether you have the "pegged core" or not. At least when you have the core maxed out you know there is an issue. It might be really hard to identify this is it was just dropping frames in some CPU bottlenecked games, like below.

Yeah, if I were really concerned about the scores in 3D Mark I would kill off everything possible, but this was more of a handy quick test that I started running after noticing the frame drops in weak GPU/High CPU games, but not high GPU, low CPU games. With 3.19 running and my Dominator RGB installed, the CPU scores go something like 8500, 6000, 7700, 6100, 8700, 6900. That's not variation. It's devastation. Uninstall 3.19 and it runs 9200 +-30 pts every time. With 3.19 running and my non-RGB Dominators at the same timings, it runs 9200 +-30 every time. That leads me to believe it is a RGB RAM issue only rather than inherent program overhead, but there are getting to be a lot of people in here and I don't know that everyone affected has RGB RAM.

Originally Posted by Krokarn

I got problems with the new update, my game World of Tanks was getting very low FPS so i could not play at all.
I went back to 3.18.77 and then suddenly all my Corsair Components(K95 Plat, M65 Elite, ST100, Commander PRO, Node PRO, Void PRO, RM850i, Dominator Plat RGB and H150i) was gone from iCUE.
So after a lot of trying i did a Clean install of iCUE and then i got back my Components in iCUE. I am nowwaiting to upgrade to 3.19.120.

Yeah, anything CPU bottlenecked like that game or any MMO with high CPU usage is going to be crushing. I was playing GW2 and getting these horrifically low frame drops in places where it should be pegged at the maximum. That was the tip-off.

[Darkness1015]

My hardware specs are in my profile. However, the reason I know this is an iCUE issue is the only thing that was changed in the past 24-48 hours was yesterday I updated iCUE in the morning. As soon as I played a game after that iCUE update, the FPS/video stutter was very noticeable.

I tried a fresh uninstall/reinstall of 3.19 and the problem is still there. If you stop the Corsair windows service, the problem goes away. If you downgrade (3.18), the problem goes away.

[BatJoe]

The new version definitely is increasing CPU clocks/usage.