Pandemic draws signifcantly more power than Bliss or Charm

[Stock]

For some reason, the Pandemic skin draws about 10W to 15W more power for playing the same song than the Bliss or Charm skin.

Reproduction steps:
1. Use Windows11 64bit & AIMP x64
2. Hook up a Watt-meter
3. Make sure there are no other programs running in the background
4. Play a song with Pandemic skin active -> 82.9W

5. Play the same song with Charm skin active -> 69.1W


What's drawing all the additional power when using Pandemic?

[Artem]

I think Pandemic uses more power because it draws with textures instead of solid colors like Bliss/Charm. Additionally, Pandemic has no native high dpi support, so skin-engine may stretch output using anti-aliasing algorithm that uses some more cpu time. Is it really so bad with electricity?

[adem]

As I can see on the photos, Pandemic is running with an active window of visualization. May be that is the main reason?

Also Pandemic has build-in transparency effect applied to its borders. It is from Windows Vista/7 era. That may eat some CPU/GPU power, I guess.

[Stock]

Pandemic is running with an active window of visualization

Yep. Both Pandemic and Charm are showing the song's cover art.

The power draw is about the same (very low) if AIMP is playing in the background and the playlist window is not visible,
but when AIMP is in the foreground, the delta between the skins is at least 12W+.