Various technical issues and situations can cause the Zoom desktop client to use more processor (CPU) power than expected, which, depending on your device’s hardware, can potentially impact performance of your Zoom Meeting or Webinar.
Note: Unless the Zoom desktop app is experiencing high CPU usage due to a specific action like screen sharing, Zoom cannot identify the cause from a problem report or application logs. For further troubleshooting, contact your desktop support team to determine the cause of the issue or provide Zoom support with ETW or Processor Monitor logs to diagnose the issue.
Outdated drivers for your processor, network connectivity devices, graphics cards, and other components can impact the performance of those components and cause other applications, such as Zoom, to run inefficiently and thus utilize additional processing power.
Due to technical limitations inherent in 32-bit architectures, memory restrictions when using the 32-bit version of the Zoom desktop app can cause high CPU-usage.
Other resource intensive apps could be running at the same time and causing overall higher processor usage, which can in turn affect the performance of the Zoom app.
Other backend processes, malware, or antivirus software could be potentially using the processor, leaving less overall available for Zoom and other apps.
In general, network delay and latency can potentially be a factor in Zoom having high CPU-usage because the Zoom app is waiting to process the data it has not yet received over the network.
When experiencing high-CPU usage, it can be helpful to view the current processes actively using the device’s processor, which can help you track down if other apps or OS-related processes are the cause of the higher CPU usage.
As devices age and software advances, inevitably devices will begin to struggle and eventually no longer be able to handle newer versions of applications.