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Whenever I use Google+ Hangouts I get extremely high CPU usage (generally 100% on all cores). There are some other threads on SU that have this problem, but they generally have rather low nd systems. I have a Thinkpad T420 with a i7-2640M CPU. This certainly isn't a low end machine. When I reduce the size of the Hangouts window, things get a little better, but I'm still generally at >90% CPU usage.

I'm running Arch Linux.

This generally makes it so that video calls are choppy both in video and in audio, and other apps on the system are mostly unusable due to resource starvation. I think a similar problem also affects the commercial video conference software called Vidyo. I mention this because I know that the Hangouts uses the same codecs and protocols as Vidyo, so it may be related.

Mike Cooper
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3 Answers3

1

Looks like I managed to reduce CPU load (Ubuntu 20.04 Intel i915 driver) by changing Google Chrome command line switches to:

/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --use-gl=desktop %U

Reference:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/chromium#Hardware_video_acceleration

Toto
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John Mclean
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1

I found the problem. The problem was that I had virtualization extensions turned off in the BIOS, which apparently matters for Hangouts. Turning this feature on (it was off by default, iirc) made hangouts work buttery smooth.

Mike Cooper
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0

Type the URL: chrome://flags/ into Google Chrome's address bar, press enter.

An 'Experiments' page should load. I located the below settings and disabled them:

visual description of controls, showing VP9 codec being disabled

Running a test chat with check your audio and video didn't send my PC's fans running thus I presume worked.

sb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS
Release:    20.04 
Codename:   focal

lspci -vvvv
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4c53 (rev 01)
DeviceName:  Onboard Realtek Ethernet
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 1515
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- 
Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- 
<MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0
Region 3: Memory at <ignored> (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Expansion ROM at <ignored>
Kernel driver in use: icl_uncore


00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 4c8b (rev 04) 
(prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
DeviceName:  Onboard Intel Graphics
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 1515
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- 
Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- 
<MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 141
Region 0: Memory at 6000000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Region 2: Memory at 4000000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [virtual] [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: i915
Kernel modules: i915
user1670856
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