Desktop Window Management makes your Windows device appealing with all the visual effects you see on the Operating system. However, for some users, this feature has turned out to become troublesome as it overkills GPU usage.
This is possible if the device is loaded with heavy visual effects and the background process priority for the Desktop Window environment is set high. A bug in the operating system also appears to be contributing to this issue. Taking these factors into account, we will offer some solutions for fixing this problem in this article today.
What Causes Desktop Window Manager to Use High GPU
Desktop Window Manager (DWM) is a Windows application that handles the function of personalization.The themes you get to see on windows, including the animations, wallpapers, transparent windows, and other such visual elements, are handled by the DWM.
DWM’s executable filedwm.exeresides in thewindows\system32directory and runs on the system processes the whole time you use your Windows device. If you see its process in the task manager, you might find its CPU and GPU utilization very high.
How to Fix Desktop Window Manager High GPU
It is possible that the GPU usage might be shown high for the DWM due to some temporary glitches in the task manager or the system. Start by restarting the computer and checking if the problem exists as earlier. Also, ensure that a few processes that use DWM are running in the background.
Change Priority for DWM process
You may choose to run the applications on your Windows system with varying priorities. Setting it for a high priority will consume high GPU and CPU resources. It is possible that the Desktop Window Manager is set to a high-priority mode. you may set up it to run low-key from the Task Manager to fix it.
Configure the Visual Effects
It is no wonder that if your device is running with high visual effects, it will consume a greater proportion of the GPUs capacity. This might be the reason that you are seeing a high GPU utilization bydwm.exe. you may set up the visual effects and tone them down for best performance andlower GPU usage.
Turn off Transparency Effects
This effect makes the start menu, taskbar, and windows transparent to enhance the aesthetics of the Windows OS. However, it is also using a lot of system resources through Desktop Window Management. As reported by some users, disabling the transparency effects resolved this issue for them. Here’s how you too can disable it.
Disable Hardware Acceleration
If you have hardware acceleration enabled, the DWM might get to utilize the excess of the GPU resources. Thehardware acceleration featureconsumes a higher proportion of GPU and extracts much from the CPU as well. To disable it,
