I noticed that I'm not seeing any change in the CPU load when I have the Video Output set to "Direct3D11 video output" and toggle between "Disable" and "Direct3D11 Video Acceleration" for Hardware Accelerated Decoding. That says to me that the Direct3D11 acceleration option isn't working. Test video uses codec "H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)" and has 1080p.
If I keep "Direct3D11 video output" but change to "DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) 2.0" then I get reduced CPU load, but the filters (e.g. sharpen, geometry->rotate) stop working. If I switch to "Direct3D9 video output" keeping "DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) 2.0" then everything works - I have reduced cpu load and the filters work, but VLC crashes at the end of a video or upon transition between videos (already reported, sitting for more than a year with no action).
VLC 3.0.6, 64-bit, Windows 7 SP1 64-bit, fully patched, NVidia 1060 GTX, latest driver.