Your claimed GPU usage seems really high for a simple spinner, even considering the CPU is pretty old. I wonder if there's some other problem going on with your setup.
I don't think so. This is just what happens when you redraw the screen.
Doing it 30x more frequent than needed costs more, no matter if it's only 1 pixel.
This problem is not isolated to me or to just one machine. Check out the chromium bug about the tab loading spinner, for example. It is a "simple" spinner as well.
Or the Zed editor, which spams screen redraws even when nothing changes at all, so it has high GPU usage for still picture.
Avoiding unnecessary browser repaint of the rest of the page is a basic technique and often already done correctly. If people don't do that, it's just ultra-bad.
But do really have the CPU/GPU go idle, you need to not use them; the only solution to that is to show still images, aka reduce FPS.
But it does. The GPU rerenders your entire screen with all its pixels, even if you change only one. The only thing you can do to avoid that is to not ask the GPU to render a frame. For that you need to reduce FPS.
You need a fairly modern laptop to change the screen refresh rate like you're describing. Older laptops do 60Hz (or whatever) refreshes at all times, they can't change refresh rates like that. The compositor should only paint relevant pixels on the screen.
I'm sure that some spinners are horrible and peg the CPU, but unless your machine is older than ~2018 there is something wrong with your setup if spinners (and not intense operations behind them) cause your battery to suffer.
I truly wish i could get everything to use the ticking clock one at 1Hz (or maybe 0.5) for spinners, animation in user interfaces causes me anguish in general, so i have to go around filtering them on webapps.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinner_(computing)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throbber
Hah, I did not expect that. I can't imagine any end users will be able to name that one.
Doing it 30x more frequent than needed costs more, no matter if it's only 1 pixel.
This problem is not isolated to me or to just one machine. Check out the chromium bug about the tab loading spinner, for example. It is a "simple" spinner as well.
Or the Zed editor, which spams screen redraws even when nothing changes at all, so it has high GPU usage for still picture.
But do really have the CPU/GPU go idle, you need to not use them; the only solution to that is to show still images, aka reduce FPS.
I'm sure that some spinners are horrible and peg the CPU, but unless your machine is older than ~2018 there is something wrong with your setup if spinners (and not intense operations behind them) cause your battery to suffer.