The b43 driver peaks at 45% CPU usage every 10 seconds.
This is causing a huge problem when I play online games.
Is there any way of fixing this?
Thanks 
openSUSE 11 (64_bit), KDE 4.2
growbag wrote:
> The b43 driver peaks at 45% CPU usage every 10 seconds.
>
> This is causing a huge problem when I play online games.
>
> Is there any way of fixing this?
>
> Thanks
>
> openSUSE 11 (64_bit), KDE 4.2
Yes, upgrade your kernel or change to openSUSE 11.1. There are a set
of periodic tasks that need to be run to do interface housekeeping.
Between 2.6.25 and 2.6.27 these tasks were put into a workqueue so as
to eliminate your problem.
Larry
I’ve been putting off updating to 11.1, but if that alleviates that problem then it might be worth it.
Plus I’m too scared to try a kernel update!
Thanks for the information :).
growbag wrote:
> I’ve been putting off updating to 11.1, but if that alleviates that
> problem then it might be worth it.
>
> Plus I’m too scared to try a kernel update!
Kernel compilations are not scary. All you need to do is download the
kernel source from kernel.org, create a configuration file from the
running version (decompress /proc/config.gz into .config), and run
‘make -jX’, where X is one more than the number of CPUs you have.
There will be some new kernel option questions at the start. The
default answer is usually best. All kernel builds should be done as a
regular user, not root. Once the kernel build finishes, you finish
with ‘sudo make modules_install install’, which stores the kernel
files in /boot, the modules in /lib/modules, and updates your GRUB
menu. When you reboot, there is a new option or two.
Once rebooted, you will need to rebuild any out-of-kernel modules such
as nVidia or ATI graphics drivers.
Larry
Thankyou very much for the clear instructions :).
I’m downloading the kernel source now and will definitely give it a try.
It will also be a good time to try the new nvidia driver, it gave me problems with the standard 11.0 install, but hopefully the newer kernel will fix that.
Again, thanks for the help and inspiration :).
Wow, what a difference!
Xorg has dropped from between 15% to 30% cpu usage to 1%, and b43 hardly ever gets into the “top” list!
My games seem to work perfectly, konsole resizes properly (formerly slow motion!), and the menu appears very quickly (previously 3 seconds!).
I should mention though, it avoids a LOT of problems if one removes the old (compiled from the binary package) driver BEFORE doing any of the kernel stuff.
I had to reboot about 15 times in order to remove the old driver (don’t ask!).
All in all, a great improvement :D.