On Mar 21, 2004, at 11:26 AM, David Rocamora wrote:
On Mar 20, 2004, at 11:31 PM, Mark Moorcroft wrote:
Observation:
With XDarwin/Gnome running full screen and in the background I find that my system load is only about .15, but my Powerbook is burning hot.
Your system load (as displayed by something like say, uptime) is the average number of processes waiting to be run in the queue. Though sometimes its a valuable clue, it doesn't always indicate how loaded down the cpu is. This isn't to say that you are wrong, but it's possible that it's still the cpu thats making the heat.
I've always found the load average more useful when you are dealing with a multiuser system where you have lots of people running lots of processes at once. But you do make an interesting observation, I'll have to look out for it.
-Dave
From first hand experience on a PB G4 15"/FW800, I suspect that the fact that you are running a graphics-intensive application also contributes to the high heat, especially if you have the Energy Saver control panel set for Highest or Automatic Processor Performance. Proof that the CPU is running on high gear is that, should you be on battery, it will last much less than if you were doing something lesss intensive, like just reading Mail. If you force a Reduced Processor Performance, heat will definitely go down, battery time will rise, but don't expect to break any speed records.
Also note that if you're using full-blown OS X Panther and its own X11, the machine will run cooler than with XFree86, since the customized X11 will take advantage of hardware-based graphics acceleration, offloading much of the graphics work off the main CPU.
And yes, say half an hour or more of this kind of high performance and the laptop is definitely not something to be placed on the lap... ;)
Cheers,
J. Courcoul
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