Which of your apps is using the GPU?

Every app gets its own GPU figure in Pulse by Zaweba. The Live page has a GPU column showing each program's use of the graphics card, taken from Windows' GPU engine counters, and a GPU graph across the top for the whole PC. Sort the column to see which app is using the graphics card most. No administrator rights are needed.

Plenty of programs use the graphics card now, not just games. Browsers draw pages with it, video players decode with it, and some apps use it for effects or calculations. When the card is busy and you aren't playing anything, it is worth knowing why.

How Pulse measures it

A graphics card has several engines that do different jobs, such as 3D drawing, video decoding and copying. Windows keeps a counter for each engine and each process. For every app, Pulse uses the busiest engine that app is using, which gives a single figure that reflects how hard the app is working the card. The total for the PC is shown in the GPU graph, scaled from 0 to 100 per cent.

On a PC whose drivers don't provide GPU counters, the total is left empty rather than showing zero. That way you won't mistake "unknown" for "idle".

Finding the app

Open the Live page with Ctrl+1. Click the GPU column heading; number columns sort biggest first on the first click. All the processes of a program are gathered into one row with its icon and name, so a browser that runs its graphics work in a separate helper process still shows under the browser.

The table updates every second without losing your selection or sort order, so you can leave it running while you start and stop things to see what changes.

What the figures tell you

A game using most of the card is expected. A browser using a noticeable share when you only have a couple of pages open may be playing video or animations in a background tab. Something you don't recognise near the top is worth a closer look. Select it and choose Open file location to see where it's installed; the folder often shows what product it belongs to.

If something shouldn't be using the card at all, End task ends all its processes after a confirmation.

Heat goes with load

A busy graphics card gets warm. Pulse's Temperatures page (Ctrl+2) shows the GPU core, hot spot and memory temperatures, read from the driver without administrator rights, each coloured normal, warm or hot. The temperature alert is on by default and warns you when a sensor stays in its hot band for five seconds.

Pulse also keeps history. Each minute it records the PC's GPU use and every sensor's peak, and the History page lists temperature peaks with the three busiest apps that minute, so you can see what was using the card when it got hot.

Watching while you play

The mini meter is a small always-on-top window with CPU, RAM, GPU and network figures and tiny graphs. Turn it on from File > Mini meter or the tray menu, drag it to a corner, and Pulse by Zaweba keeps the GPU figure in view while you work or play.