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Why is Garmin Express using 20% of my GPU?

I was wondering why my PC was so sluggish.  So I took a look at Task Manager to see what was sucking up the processor so much.      It shows me Garmin Express is sucking up almost 20% of my GPU, not to mention 5% of CPU  For the image below it dropped to 17.5 but usually it's around 19%.  Even though it's doing nothing.  Even though no devices are connected.  It just sits there at 19%, using more than all the rest of WIndows combined.

Any idea why it needs to suck up so much GPU consistently?  

  • It happens to me as well. I just found out, but I think it's ridiculous!

  • Same problem here. Garmin Express (V6.16.1 on Windows 10 x64) doesn't use any GPU on my machine when Garmin Express is initially started and at the home screen, but as soon as I click on the 1030 icon to load the screen for my 1030, GPU percent for Garmin Express leaps to over 20% and stays there so long as that screen is open, even though the app is sitting there doing nothing - not syncing, not downloading anything... As soon as I switch back to the home screen in the app, GPU use drops back to zero. Same thing happens if I click on the gear icon in the titlebar to load the settings dialog.

      

  • I have a distinct feeling that I did spot this issue myself some time ago as well. At that time GE was providing / installing updates and I assumed it's related to some animations within the GUI that were showing up. But agreed: 20% GPU utilisation (AMD in my case) is a nonsense and smells like a bug to me.

    I will check it and report accordingly.

  • I have a slightly worse related problem... Garmin express wants to use GPU acceleration. Since I have an Intel GPU, this causes crashes, and I cannot even start express (get the startup splash, and then a crash in the intel graphics driver).  The "2D only" option for Basecamp works around this for that program.  There doesn't appear to be an equivalent option for express.

    The only (albeit horrid) "workaround" is to uninstall the graphics driver, and use MSFT driver, which then avoids triggering the problem - then run express with that setup - and when done updating my several GPS's - return to using the Intel driver (so that other things do work).  This totally sucks, but as of now I don't have a better solution.  Garmin, are you listening? "express.exe /nogpu" would be a welcome command line control...

    Regards

  • My work machine gets slaughtered with Garmin Express making WMI calls.

    I suspect it has something to do with monitoring for USB connected devices, namely my Garmin Edge 500 I use on my commuter.

    The GIF below doesn't want to resize. My bad.

  • That makes sense.  WMI is crazy expensive.   I'm a developer and have experience using it.  Was trying to write code to detect some fixed disk info and had to switch from WMI to DevIoctl.  The reduction in CPU usage was massive

  • I work in software dev too (not a dev) and yeah, I'm not impressed. Its taken me about 3 weeks to work this out. The WMI-Activity Trace logs aren't showing it. So I've no idea whats going on there. 

    Takes my normally 4-5 hour battery down to about 45 minutes now.

    Guess I'll just open Express when I need to sync off the Edge 500.

  • I should add that 5 months later with a brand new PC and a several-times-updated version of Garmin Express, its CPU and GPU usage now sits at 0.  So either they fixed it or my hardware or configuration is different enough not to trigger it

  • I have exactly the same problem.  Once you try to install an update to Fenix 6 (which doesn't work for Africa maps and has other issues)  Laptop heats up and fans run at full speed, everything starts to slow down.  WMI being slaughtered. 

    Version 6.19.3.0 

    Disappointed