[SOLVED] Browser use of hardware acceleration

[punkncat]

I am sure all are aware that Edge and Chrome both use hardware acceleration. They both have the ability to stay running the background and do so by default if you don't change it.

Question is this....

If you aren't USING the browser, but haven't turned off the background process WHAT exactly is it doing?

I did a reformat of one of my gaming machines and of course have to recall all the things I turned off and set differently than default. I have noted that between the two of them the GTX1080 will be running between 11-29% usage. The second I start to do something actively on the computer, it stops. I had only fan curves and temps to tip me off to this initially, and I have to sit with task manager open in order to catch what it was.

I went in and turned off the appropriate things to have it stop. Seriously though, that is a LOT of computing power when spread across millions of (possible) machines.
Are they working coin hash on us in the background? Using everyone on their browsers as one HUGE supercomputer?
What gives?

 

[Lutfij]

I've had acceleration for as long as I've been using Chrome. In all honesty I don't know what it's doing and I also have DU Meter installed o my platform so I can monitor all inbound and outgoing traffic. I haven't seen anything suspicious happening since.

Might want to see what tabs you've got opened and what sites you visit since they could be the ones leeching resources from your system.

 

[punkncat]

Might want to see what tabs you've got opened and what sites you visit since they could be the ones leeching resources from your system.

That is sort of the point of my question.

Even if you close all tabs and "X" the browser, if you haven't turned off background usage and hardware acceleration it does this.
If you turn on the column for 'GPU engine' you can sit and watch all the programs using resources from the card.

As far as sites, I am VERY mainstream where it comes to these particular machine(s). No weird sites, downloads, cracks, and very good AV protection installed before making live on the internet. The only "virus" it would be is the browser itself.

 

[johnbl]

That is sort of the point of my question.

Even if you close all tabs and "X" the browser, if you haven't turned off background usage and hardware acceleration it does this.
If you turn on the column for 'GPU engine' you can sit and watch all the programs using resources from the card.

As far as sites, I am VERY mainstream where it comes to these particular machine(s). No weird sites, downloads, cracks, and very good AV protection installed before making live on the internet. The only "virus" it would be is the browser itself.

download rammap from microsoft:
RAMMap - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs
you can take a look at file summary and file details tabs and maybe see something unexpected going on.
you can also go to the menu empty
and select all of the items to clear up the various working sets
then reboot and run it again to see what is actively being used. (just makes the search a lot easier)

 

[johnbl]

download rammap from microsoft:
RAMMap - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs
you can take a look at file summary and file details tabs and maybe see something unexpected going on.
you can also go to the menu empty
and select all of the items to clear up the various working sets
then reboot and run it again to see what is actively being used. (just makes the search a lot easier)

Funny from this list of files I can see that microsoft did a live kernel dump and generated a livekernelreport looking for some bug in my network stack.
report sent to microsoft via the windows error reporting.

 

[johnbl]

Funny from this list of files I can see that microsoft did a live kernel dump and generated a livekernelreport looking for some bug in my network stack.
report sent to microsoft via the windows error reporting.

I just looked at the error report and it showed a bug in my network adapter
Image path: \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\Netwtw10.sys
Timestamp: Mon Aug 17 02:06:48 2020 (5F3A48A8)

it was automatically reported on dec 1 2020
and I did not even know there was any issue. this driver is for the intel wireless adapter ( i think it is microsoft's version of the driver, not sure) automatic error reporting and live automated debugging sure is nice.