10-50% CPU used by xorg?

[Daniel Kasak]

On Tue, 2008-02-19 at 14:47 +0100, Ben E. Hard wrote:

> 113       0.6208  libexa.so                libexa.so                

EXA on Intel 830 systems is bound to be fantastically slow at the
moment, particularly without a composite manager. We're waiting for LOTS
of experimental stuff to land: the batchbuffer branch of the Intel
driver, TTM, DRI2, etc, etc. Last word was that this wasn't happening
any time soon, so in the meantime, force X to use XAA:

Option      "AccelMethod" "xaa"

> Ok, I don't know if I use it the same way as you, but your comment
> made me think, that the behaviour might be quite normal.

No it's not. With XAA you should get quite snappy performance with
minimal CPU load. My usage is hardly 'normal'. I'm running
Enlightenment-0.17 with ecomorph ( a compiz derivative ), and I have the
performance-killing XAANoOffscreenPixmaps option set. With all this
running, yeah I get X using about 50% of my CPU ( a 2.6Ghz Pentium
4 ) ... and this is with everything 'sitting still' so to speak. If I
don't run a compositing manager, and I use XAA but *not*
XAANoOffscreenPixmaps, then X rarely gets above 10%.

> I can see for example, that 
> the fact that I'm writing these lines brings X from around 10 % up to
> 20-30%.

That's EXA.

> Also if I open a konqueror window and move it around 
> fast, X goes up to 80%.

Ahhhh ... the 'window-wanking' test. If you must do this as part of
everyday use, then run a compositing manager. If you don't want any
compiz special effects, then the best performance is with XAA,
XAANoOffscreenPixmaps set, and xcompmgr.

--
Daniel Kasak
IT Developer
NUS Consulting Group
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email: dkasak at nusconsulting.com.au
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