High GPU usage when hovering over interface elements

[easyaspi314]

For some reason, when hovering over interface elements that animate, especially the watched folder list, the GPU Copy utilization is unusually high, showing 50-80% on my 6700 XT. The utilization is mostly Copy from System, but CompactGUI also uses a decent amount of 3D. This also happens on other GPUs.

The usage seems to be directly tied to my monitor's refresh rate; the higher the refresh rate the higher the usage.

So something with the animations is causing a very large GPU copy.

YouCut_20241206_150917229.mp4

[easyaspi314]

This mostly seems to be because of the DropShadowEffect usage. Removing all of them, especially from the ProgressBar in the FolderWatcherCard, removed all of the System GPU usage, but still it spikes at about 20% 3D usage. (I'm on a 120 fps monitor by the way).

The shadow is barely visible, so it is a rather pointless waste of performance.

I don't know enough about WPF to analyze this any further.

[easyaspi314]

Actually here is a clear visual of the performance impact with shadows.

Excuse the rough footage, but this is on my laptop, an i7-8650u with Intel UHD 620. (In slow motion, obviously). When switching tabs, CompactGUI clearly drops frames, but removing all shadows makes it a smooth 60 FPS.

YouCut_20241207_225954178.mp4

[Iridium-IO]

Hey, not sure why that would be causing such a huge impact, and I can't replicate your findings on my end (using an Nvidia 4070 Super on my desktop, or on my Framework's AMD 780M).
Hovering over items does cause a 3D spike (as expected, but about half the usage of scrolling this Github page) but my Copy stays fixed at 0%. Removing the drop shadows doesn't change the 3D usage either.

I'll look into it further, but since these are just WPF shadows I don't know why they're causing such stuttering on your laptop. As for the high Copy use on your desktop, I wonder if that's a driver issue?