In the last two-three months, I've got a feeling that my computer is getting slower. It's a Dell XPS 13 9550, with an i7-6500@2.50Ghz, 16Gb of RAM and a Samsung 960 NVMe SSD.
Right now I'm using the latest Windows 10 build in the Slow Ring, 17120.rs4_release.180309-1616.
The CPU usage is (I think) abnormally high. Just having some stuff open & listening to Spotify, without touching the keyboard, I've got an average of 30% CPU usage:
The detailed service view doesn't help much, it usually jumps between Spotify, Opera, the Windows Audio Graph Isolation and random services (antivirus, updaters, telemetry, etc.) :
I don't get how just listening to music can use up to 20% of an i7 CPU (cumulatively, with Spotify & the Windows Graph Isolation service), or why Opera uses 5% - 6% when I'm not doing anything. Of course, when I start doing something semi-serious (just typing in Idea for example), it causes peaks of 60-70% CPU.
Doing anything like opening a new project or compiling causes a 100% sustained CPU usage and the mouse starts to stutter.
I've been reading about the Meltdowns & Spectre patches, but generally the consensus is that with Windows 10 the impact for a end user should be minimal.
I've been using Avira for the last three years as my default anti-virus and it doesn't seem to be the culprit either.
Any idea about where to start looking?
