On Sun, May 28, 2006 at 02:18:36AM +0200, Xavier Chantry wrote: > On Sat, May 27, 2006 at 01:14:13AM +0100, Shawn wrote: > > I'm having a strange problem with cpu usage with my Athlon XP. Every so > > often there seems to be a pause where the system comes under heavy > > load for no apparent reason. If xmms was playing then I get a buzz sound > > and the mouse pointer stops just for a split second, the same with > > mplayer and vlc. Using Opera or firefox also seems to have a strange > > effect where the mouse pointer freezes while pages load, and if there > > is an animated gif on the page the cpu usage goes to 100%. > > > > The jabber client Gajim also makes the cpu get stuck at 100%. When I > > used gnome, nautilus did the same thing until i stopped and started the > > process in the system monitor. I have searched around and found this > > tip from the handbook but it had no effect. > > > > hint.apic.0.disabled="1" in /boot/loader.conf > > > > This happens with the generic kernel and the one i compiled for myself. > > It also lasts for a random amount of time, sometimes it is barely > > noticeable and sometimes it happens for over a second. Running > > neverwinter nights makes the system pause for 10-20 seconds seemingly > > randomly. > > > > My system behaves much better than that, I've no mouse freeze and no > system pauses, but I did have occasonial sound skips using 4bsd on 6.1. > Switching to the ULE scheduler seems to fix this problem, but other > things may behave worse. > One year ago, it was actually the opposite, sound in ULE was really > jerky, and mouse pointer too while eg launching an app. > Did you already try both schedulers ?
Check for interrupt sharing with vmstat -i. Shared interrupts cause performance loss especially if it's sharing with a giant-locked driver like USB. Kris
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