you’ll be happy to learn in the meantime i went and added some zapifying effect to my Steam avatar 
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OOOOOOOHHHHHH!!! Shines 
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I actually have to close my friends list while playing games because those take GPU resources even when in the background.
Difference between a steady 142 fps and jumping around between 120 and 140.
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i don’t think it’s a new issue related to the animated frames/avatars (tho they might have added to it too)
ever since steam “revamped” the interface and chat system and chromium backends and whatnot, it’s been an issue that “steam” would randomly just consume resources for no reason, and the “simple” fix was to exit the steam client and restart it - making sure you were “offnline”/didn’t activate “chat”
and since this was potentially terribad already back then, (the amount of HW resources steam could hog despite idling was crazy), it would not surprise me that with Valve’s famous tendency for borking things, that it has maybe been made worse/more frequent now with chat animation added on top 
edit. did a quick (but brief) test, and i don’t by default get increased hw utilization just from opening chat (in client) - but that doesn’t mean it wont just “randomly” happen out of nowhere like previous/“usual” at some point.
-do still get a gpu spike when opening chat in browser tho (and not a small spike either), but that’s also nothing new unfortunately 
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When they introduced the revamp they also made available low bandwidth and low performance options in the library settings, which I chose to activate right away. Don’t care for steam looking pretty and I have not noticed it ever taking up any undue resources.
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i did not even notice this was a thing, i only had disabled community stuff
edit, aaaand i’ve no idea what it does… 
looks exactly the same to me 
meh i’ll keep it anyway, hopefully can’t be worse 
even with those settings, and client in offline mode… steam is for some reason not only still displaying my achievements in the column/library interface - but they are also still “animated”/glowing @_@
i’m offline, hooow?? 
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those are simply achievements which were obtained by less than 10% of the player base
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they are displaying, despite every library setting being off, but more importantly, somehow, despite the client being in complete offline mode @_@
-i’ve never noticed steam being able to display “online” features offline before (above settings on/off)
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I actually have to close my friends list while playing games because those take GPU resources even when in the background.
If this is an issue for you. A long time ago my chat and friends list would pop up. So I removed them at startup by renaming my steam shortcut:
Steam -nofriendsui -nochatui
It hasn’t popped up since. So I think it worked.
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If you launched the client in online mode and went offline, it may still display data that it collected while you were online. If you are in offline mode and restart your client, and keep it offline, it shouldn’t display any of that. I am not sure about your personal achievement data, because I think some achievements still trigger during gameplay while in off-line mode, eventually it syncs back when you go online, though the Steam timer for those achievements are all at the same time, when you go online.
As for those rare achievements, I am not sure if the client/data stores your achievements and how rare they are, so when it’s under 10% obtained, it glows. It might just be pre-stored data, but I am not sure.
Great advice, I notice that there’s a huge difference in GPU usage just to have the friend list displayed, to the point that I turn it off when I play as well. I never thought it was a big deal until I noticed just how big of a deal it had been all along. I am not sure how long it’s been doing that, but it’s more than just a small amount. My GPU load goes up by about 15% with the friendlist just being displayed, it’s mind-boggling.
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I only see a 3-5% increase in CPU usage when I bring the friends list up. Maybe it varies based on number of friends you have in the list. Still I rarely have the friends list open while playing games, why would I? Only ever bring it up temporarily if I need it for something.
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lolz
I didn’t open the internet browser at all the whole weekend.
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A lot of times I get a message and go look at it, and it stays open. I notice a difference in performance if it’s a game that really demands it.
That and probably a constant variable based on friends’ customizations using animated wallpaper/avatars/frames, and stuff like that. I don’t know the details.
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lul what?
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This is only guess 
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Before, when someone liked many of your posts in a row it would just show each single post in the notification, now it’s all consolidated in one. 
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Notifications don’t seem to be working for PMs right now. Nothing to tell you that someone has sent you a message, etc… Hopefully this can get fixed soon.
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