High GPU % with Desktop Window Manager

Anyone else having a problem with Desktop Window Manager hogging a whole load of GPU resources and crashing my frame rate? It’s only started recently but I’m struggling to find a solution.

I can run FS2020 normally in 3D but when I switch to 3D with my Reverb G2, Windows Mixed Reality starts up and triggers DWM to start using up to 100% of GPU and the frame rate drops really low, even when I’m in FS2020 menus.

DWM continues to be a problem even after closing FS2020, until I manually close WMR. Graphics card is an Nvidia Geforce RTX 3090, driver version 511.79

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It’s not just Nvidia graphics. I have Radeon 6900 xt and just noticed this yesterday. My flight was somewhat jittery so I had opened HWInfo64 to check my stats. I didn’t notice anything unusual in those stats however after quitting the sim I went away from the computer for 5 minutes. When I came back HWInfo64 was showing my GPU was still running at 80% utilization. Checking task manager I saw it was from “Desktop Window Manager”. I quit the Mixed Reality Portal app and the GPU utilization dropped to normal.

Today I had 2 1-hour long flights and both were extremely smooth. No stuttering at all so it’s not a repeating issue I think.

I think I’ve found the reason: it appears it was a setting in Nvidia control panel. Changing Power management mode to ‘Prefer maximum performance’ and I’ve not had the problem again, yet.

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DWM is the WMR compositor. Any time something is projected to the headset DWM is active and consuming CPU cycles.

Back in the day tuning DWM gave some FPS increase if done in the Nvidia control panel. Not sure if it’s worth anymore.

There is definitely a problem with the interaction between MSFS and Mixed Reality Portal (MRP) that results in high DWM GPU usage. The following procedure can be reproduced with consistency:

  1. Start MSFS and wait for it to load the main screen.
  2. Spawn into an airport and stay in PC mode [DWM GPU < 1%]
  3. Now start MRP [DWM GPU < 21%]
  4. Enter VR mode [DWM GPU < 2%]
  5. Exit VR mode, going back to PC mode [DWM GPU > 98%]
  6. Exit MRP [DWM GPU < 1%]
  7. Start MRP again [DWM GPU > 98%]
  8. Exit MSFS [DWM GPU < 1%]

Nvidia RTX 3070 XC Ultra
Intel i5-11600K

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I also have this problem. So I created a feedback in microsoft feedback hub.
Please upvote it: https://aka.ms/AAi8717

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