Windows audio device graph isolation high cpu usage when gaming

[Lenny1]

I've noticed that my gaming performance has taken a hit recently and as far as I can tell it's due to high cpu usage of windows audio device graph isolation while i'm gaming. I've noticed that it's hogging from 10% even up to 20% of my cpu when I launch a game. I have an i5 3570k @ 4.4 (1.29V) so really I can't afford the performance hit on newer games. (cpu temps are fine btw).

I've got an external sound card (asus xonar u5) which obviously I run my headphones from, but for whatever reason I can't seem to get rid of the realtek hd audio driver. Windows just keeps reinstalling it (even though i've set it to no in device installation settings). I also have an AMD audio driver from my gpu for hooking my computer straight to a TV. Any time I end the process it just runs straight away. The process is coming straight from windows > system32 so it's not a virus. I have scanned my computer multiple times with no results. There's no enhancements enabled on any devices. I do sometimes get a message stating that windows has detected audio enhancements for the following device device are causing problems: line in (realtek high definition audio) audio enhancements for this device have been disabled. would you like to reenable - to which I choose no. Could this be causing the issue? I've even tried reinstalling all the drivers once I saw this message (seeing as I couldn't get rid of them permanently)

At this stage I'm really not sure how to go forward, any googling of the issue hasn't given me any troubleshooting steps that work.

Full specs:
Windows 10 home
i5 - 3570k @ 4.4GHz - 1.29V (h60 cooler and temps are fine so not thermal throttling)
Asus P8Z77-V LX2
msi gaming rx480 8GB
Ballistix Sport 16GB Kit (8GBx2) - 1600MHz
Corsair 750M
Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. It's recent enough installation of windows, I'd really rather not have to do a fresh install all over again.

 

[Lakken]

I had the same problem. I only disable the Realtek in sound devices.

 

[Lenny1]

I had the same problem. I only disable the Realtek in sound devices.

Everytime you start windows?

 

[Lenny1]

Even disabling them in sound devices doesn't stop the high cpu usage. Now I'm starting to think it's not those drivers, but something else altogether.

 

[Lakken]

It still shows up in task manager?

 

[Lenny1]

It still shows up in task manager?

Yep, and still taking up huge resources

 

[Lakken]

on the startup tab in the task manager. Does the Realtek stay disabled?

 

[Lenny1]

on the startup tab in the task manager. Does the Realtek stay disabled?

Yes

 

[Lenny1]

OK so further trouble shooting I've actually narrowed it down to the Xonar U5 driver from asus. I completely uninstalled it and launched a game (obviously with no sound) with every other driver disabled and didn't get the audio device graph isolation at the top of my processes. When I reinstalled the drivers for the sound card, next time I booted a game up it comes back with a minumum of 10% cpu usage. My question now is, I have the bitrate set to maximum for my heaphones as the sound card is good enough to process them. Is this a normal amount of cpu usage for max quality? Has it always been using that much cpu and i've just noticed it now as I thought my PC was slowing down? Could it be something else entirely causing the slow down and this is just a red herring so to speak?

 

[ram52]

I encountered this problem 10-20 times per day. My fix was to do Ctrl-Alt-Del, go to Task Manager, and kill the process, which was often consuming 99% of my CPU (and it's a dual core PC, so it was bombarding both CPUs.) That fixed the problem temporarily. But the process returned, behaved for a while, and then went haywire again.

So I did some research. The suggested permanent fix was Control Panel/Sound/Playback/Properties/Enhancements. On the Enhancement tab there is a checkbox to "Disable enhancements." Except for my speakers there was no Enhancement tab in Control Panel. Sign. Back to the drawing board. I dug and dug around in Control Panel and finally as a whim I clicked on the Microphone tab. What do you know, there was an Enhancements tab. So I clicked on it, and what do you know, there was a checkbox labeled "Disable enhancements" (unchecked.) So I checked it. I have not had a problem since. All those months I was focusing on my speakers when it was really the microphone (which I never use, but it's enabled) that was the problem. I thought I'd pass this along as another possible solution.

Wow, such a good feeling to solve something for a change rather than just living with it or putting a bandaid on it.

By the way, don't blame Microsoft for this problem. They split the audio driver into two parts. This weirdly-named process allows vendors to add their own enhancements to Microsoft's base Windows audio driver. That means that the vendors don't have to completely re-write the audio driver from scratch. But it also means that if the vendor does a lousy job of programming the enhancements, then things could easily get fouled up, and Microsoft really has no control over that.

 

[Lenny1]

The only thing I have on in AGC (automatic gain control), as without it my mic can barely be heard. And that's under "custom" - there's no enhancement tab and no "disable enhancements" checkbox.