Hello.
Is anyone else having problems with Xorg process eating quite of big chunk of CPU time in KDE4? I have AMD 4600+ X2 CPU and running top says that Xorg process is the most CPU hungry app. constantly eating ~30% of CPU. Periodically it jumps even higher causing a short freeze in Medieval2 - Total War (for example). Is anyone else having this problem with Xorg in KDE4? It seems to be related to KDE4 since when I run XFCE I can play Medieval2 without intermittent freezes.
My system has KDE4.1.3 and Nvidia 177.82 drivers with some desktop effects enabled like translucency and shadows. It does not seem to be related to compositing because disabling it has no visible effect on the CPU demand of Xorg. My xorg.conf seems to pretty much default that Sax2 suggest, so I don’t have any added Option lines there. Any suggestions what to try or is this a know bug in KDE4 or Nvidia drivers?
Have you turned on any compositing? Kwin or Compiz?
With Kwin compositing on (wobbling, transparency, taskbar thumbnails, minimize animation) i think, xorg eating 30% cpu is normal. On my system it goes 50% often.
>
> heres a shot in the dark are you running the plasma network graph? the
> reason im asking is because when i run that i get high cpu usage
>
> if that thats not it try renaming your .kde4 folder to .kde4.old and
> then log back in, it will reset kde4 back to the default
>
>
yea that seems to be a problem with plasmoids that do any kind of monitoring - the applets in kde3 were much more cpu efficient. Hopefully this will resolve in future release, in the mean time I keep the kde3 panel loaded with the plasma one
Suse 11.0 x64, Kde 4.1beta (factory repo), Opera 9.x weekly
Ok, I will try that next, since I do have couple system monitoring plasmoids. Resetting KDE4 defaults is something I really would like to avoid since I’ve spent good amount of time to getting it the way I like it.
I have encountered the same problem on many different Linux distributions with KDE4. I currently use Kubuntu 10.04 on my workstation at work. It’s configured as follows :
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+
GeForce 9400 GT
2GB RAM X.Org version: 1.7.6
KDE 4.5.3
2x Dell WPF2408 1920x1200 monitors (I wish I could afford these for personal use!)
NVIDIA drivers 195.36.24
One of my personal machine is a Dell Studio 14z running Archlinux. Here are the specs :
Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 @ 2.20GHz
GeForce 9400M G
3GB RAM X.Org version: 1.10.2
KDE 4.6.3
Built-in monitor 1600x900 I also sometimes use my LCD TV 1920x1080 or my old Dell 19" 1280x1024
NVIDIA drivers 275.09.07
Regardless of the distribution or the exact versions, I have slowdowns. I can not keep nearly as many windows open as I used to in KDE3. Even if composition is disabled, the slowdown still occur. I have no plasmoids on my desktop and none that update themselves. I experience the worst slowdown at work. At some point, the Xorg process will take about 20% of a CPU when I’m not doing anything. When that occurs, typing, changing windows, scrolling becomes unbearably slow and Xorg maxes out one CPU core. The response is a slow as using remote X through a 56Kbps modem connection!
I my personal machines, I have found a reproducible way to trigger the problem : I edit pictures with digiKam (Aspect ratio crop, color balance, etc…). After doing that on about 30 images, Xorg goes crazy and maxes out one CPU core. At work I have yet to find a recipe that triggers the issue(I don’t think my boss would enjoy seeing me work on my photos!). When the slowdowns do occur, closing some windows will help, but won’t bring Xorg back to normal. Un-login and re-login will take care of the symptoms.
I have heard reports of some of my co-workers encountering the same issue with ATI cards, but I have no first hand experience with them since all the systems I use have NVIDIA cards. Did anyone encounter this problem with Intel cards? I have yet to try other desktops environments. I used to love KDE because of it’s features and the high integration, but if these issues are caused by poor X resources handling in KDE, I might actually switch to GNOME!
I wrote to the Xorg mailing list and they suggested to recompile Xorg and KDE with debugging information and to use a system profiler to see what Xorg does when it’s eating up CPU time. I have yet to do so…
On 07/07/2011 08:36 PM, Prozzaks wrote:
>
> I have encountered the same problem on many different Linux
> distributions with KDE4. . . .
> Regardless of the distribution or the exact versions, I have slowdowns.
i wonder why you post to the openSUSE forum, your problem is clearly not
with openSUSE, but with KDE…why not post to their forum??
> I wrote to the Xorg mailing list
but, if your problem is with KDE why not write to them??
or, am i missing something?
@Prozzaks
I was having the same sluggishness in kde4 (due to high cpu by xorg) and I resolved it by changing the qt graphics system to raster. You can make the switch by:
install kcm-qt-graphicssystem
go to Configure Desktop > QT Graphics and select raster
log out and log back in
Some programs don’t work properly with raster but you can start those programs with the native system. The only one I’e had problems with so far is ibus, so I start it like this:
QT_GRAPHICSSYSTEM=native ibus-daemon --xim
The only problem with ibus was that the icon in the system tray was invisible but it was fully functional.
