Silverlight Quick Tip: High CPU usage of Bing map control running in OOB

If you are experiencing high CPU usage when using Bing map control in an OOB Silverlight application, try to disable GPU acceleration. In my case changing the setting brought CPU usage from 70% to 2%.

p.s. To quickly identify which UI part is causing the most rendering cycles, enable redraw regions:

Application.Current.Host.Settings.EnableRedrawRegions = true;

This will make your screen blink a lot. The most flashing areas are the ones that hogging CPU cycles.

Also, with VS 2010 SP1, you can use Analyze->Launch Performance Wizard to profile your Silverlight application to identify high CPU users.