Visual Studio 2013/2015 Idle CPU usage

Question

I\'m currently evaluating Visual Studio 2015 RC. I\'ve noticed when running the IDE, The Visual Studio 2015 process is constantly at around 25% CPU usage. Even without a project

Answer 1

It’s not to be expected that Visual Studio should chew up continuous CPU time.

I am running Visual Studio 2015 Community RTM right now with a medium sized project open, and am not seeing any ongoing CPU usage (according to Process Hacker 2, which shows usage as small as 0.01 percent). It’s just blank, which means not even 0.01% CPU usage is registering.

Keep in mind that IntelliSense scans your project files in the background to build the database for popping up its suggestions, etc.

Choosing Project > Rescan Solution from the menus will result in that process being done over, which will cause the CPU to be used for a time. But it should ultimately go quiet.

Seemingly forever, there have been times when deleting the Intellisense Database files and doing a full rescan solves “odd behavior” type problems. I don’t know if it’s the “prescribed” method, but if I suspect an IntelliSense problem I just delete the .sdf file in the project folder if I want to make sure Visual Studio starts with a clean slate. This isn’t necessary very often.