High CPU usage with KDE 4.3.3

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1

This question has been asked before, but I have not found a definite answer.

On my openSUSE 11.1 box with KDE 4.3.3 CPU usage is far to high (Xorg = 30-40%) when doing simple things like just moving a window. I have desktop effects on. When I turn them off desktop effects CPU usage drops down to nearly nothing. In addition to the high CPU usage the interactive response also becomes bad after a few minutes of use (when desktop effects are on). Clicking the start menu takes 1-2 seconds to open the menu.

I have a dual core Dell Inspiron 390 with a nVidia Geforce gt9800. Also tested with a quattro FX 3450 with same result.

I use the following plasmoids: analog clock, calculator, dictionary, digital clock, microblogging, picture frame, stock quote, system monitor (CPU), system monitor (network).

Note that plasma doesn’t use to much CPU.

So is this something I have to live with? Is it a problem specific to openSUSE (which has been suggested some places)? Will it be fixed in openSUSE 11.2?

2

olejacob wrote:

>
> This question has been asked before, but I have
not found a definite
> answer.
>
> On my openSUSE 11.1 box with KDE 4.3.3 CPU
usage is far to high (Xorg
> = 30-40%) when doing simple things like just
moving a window. I have
> desktop effects on. When I turn them off
desktop effects CPU usage
> drops down to nearly nothing. In addition to
the high CPU usage the
> interactive response also becomes bad after a
few minutes of use (when
> desktop effects are on). Clicking the start
menu takes 1-2 seconds to
> open the menu.
>
> I have a dual core Dell Inspiron 390 with a
nVidia Geforce gt9800.
> Also tested with a quattro FX 3450 with same
result.
>
> I use the following plasmoids: analog clock,
calculator, dictionary,
> digital clock, microblogging, picture frame,
stock quote, system
> monitor (CPU), system monitor (network).
>
> Note that plasma doesn’t use to much CPU.
>
> So is this something I have to live with? Is it
a problem specific to
> openSUSE (which has been suggested some
places)? Will it be fixed in
> openSUSE 11.2?
>
>
4.3.3 definitely higher than either 4.3.2 and the
4.3.3 beta’s, did you see this in kde4.2. I see
higher usage but not like you’re seeing.

Suggestion - when I upped to 4.3.3 I had strange
performance issues with plasma and erasing the rc
files fixed them, though xorg and kwin still
higher than before the upgrade.

openSuse 11.1 x64bit, KDE4.x Factory, Opera
weekly

3

I’m not sure if the number of plasmoids you have is the problem (they seem rather a lot, all I keep normally is the weather widget), but it certainly seems that you could try removing some of those plasmoids.
On my Fedora box with KDE 4.3.1, with most KWin effects enabled, nine plasmoids for the sake of testing, three programs running, a total of 144 processes, and a Pentium D with 1.5 GB RAM, the CPU usage amounts only to 20% or less when normally working, and around 40% or more when I’m deliberately taxing out the system.
The number of plasmoids, although they seem high to me, are not a problem on my system… Maybe for some reason they are a problem on your system. Try removing some unneeded ones.
The second possibility is that this is an openSUSE 11.1-specific problem, a bug or something… Or some other technical problem with your configuration. I can’t much help you with that, sorry. Try openSUSE 11.2 when it comes out (only 4 days left), and see if the problem is fixed there.
Because Fedora with KDE functions well with some programs running and nine widgets on the desktop, all I can suggest is to remove some widgets and see if that does the job (Don’t disable KWin altogether), in case the high number of plasmoids is too heavy a load on your openSUSE system.

Hope that helped.

4

Ok, I am even worse, It starts with 20 or 30% CPU at first, but now after I let the computer run over the weekend it now reaches 98% CPU and 81% (1.6 Gb virtual) memory according to top. Just to top it off, I get two crashes on KDE startup: plasma and krunner. And when the desktop shows up, all system tray icons are stacked one on top of the other, the clock widget isn’t working and Alt+F2 is not available…

5

What you could do is take a screenshot of top when it’s running high like that. Then post it here for us to look at.

6

How do I attach a snapshot in the forum. Can’t seem to be able to upload, it’s asking for an url.

7

Now I see why: I may not post attachments. So, what do I do?

8

Upload the picture to a hosting service like imagebam.com
Then copy the direct link here

9

Here we go:http://thumbnails19.imagebam.com/5537/61837c55368102.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/61837c55368102)

10

I would like to report a similar problem,
but seen only on one of two very similar
systems (at SW side), just as a complement
of info: ‘disabling compositing effects’
(Alt+Shift+F12) nor ‘disabling desktop
effects’ does not help at all.

SYSTEM with problems

CPU: Intel(R) Core™2 Duo CPU E8200
Total memory (RAM): 3.8 GB

OS: Linux 2.6.27.37-0.1-pae i686
System: openSUSE 11.1 (i586)
KDE: 4.3.3 (KDE 4.3.3) “release 1”

Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Model: GeForce 8600 GT/PCI/SSE2
Driver: 3.2.0 NVIDIA 190.42

Summary of top:
top - load average: 1.88, 1.95, 1.91
Tasks: 147 total, 3 running, 144 sleeping
Cpu(s): 37.9%us, 15.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 45.7%id
Mem: 4026972k total, 1401344k used, 2625628k free
Swap: 2104472k total, 0k used, 2104472k free

USER VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM COMMAND
root 574m 52m 19m R 52 1.3 Xorg
auser 305m 64m 30m R 48 1.7 plasma-desktop
auser 77068 17m 13m S 4 0.4 kgpg
auser 3304 1148 640 S 2 0.0 dbus-daemon
root 1008 360 308 S 0 0.0 init
…

SYSTEM without problems

CPU: Intel(R) Core™2 Extreme CPU Q9300
Total memory (RAM): 3.9 GB

OS: Linux 2.6.27.37-0.1-pae i686
System: openSUSE 11.1 (i586)
KDE: 4.3.3 (KDE 4.3.3) “release 1”

Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Model: Quadro FX 3700M/PCI/SSE2
Driver: 3.2.0 NVIDIA 190.42

Summary of top:
top - load average: 0.00, 0.05, 0.07
Tasks: 146 total, 1 running
Cpu(s): 0.6%us, 0.6%sy, 0.2%ni, 97.8%id
Mem: 4089648k total, 1204256k used, 2885392k free
Swap:2104472k total, 0k used, 2104472k free

USER VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM COMMAND
root 1008 364 312 S 0 0.0 init
root 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 kthreadd
root 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 migration/0
…

Hope it can help spotting the issue…

Sincerely

11

I’ve seen this a lot of times. Mostly caused by plasma putting a heavy load on X, removing all plasma*rc most of the time solves matters. AFAIK a lot of changes to how plasma writes things in the config files have changed over the years. Had some trouble with remains of a wheather widget, slowing things down terribly.

12

Crumbs. I have come across this here and there. But I get cracki’n performance. Here is a shot of mine. It has what might look a strange result in swap, but I have changed swapiness for performance.
http://thumbnails18.imagebam.com/5538/90fd9555379296.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/90fd9555379296)

My only advice for now though would be live without desktop effects (I assume you are using kwin??)

13

> My only advice for now

i’d also suggest that someone log a bug…

–
palladium
Have a lot of fun…

14

Testing for a couple of days it seems that KDE4/Xorg is behaving a lot better if I turn off “Enable direct rendering” under Desktop effects->Advanced.

15

Great hint, in my case, once removed
(one after one other):
*
~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc
~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktoprc
~/.kde4/share/config/plasmarc
~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc
*
the ‘Xorg’ as well as ‘plasma-desktop’ became
quite again and the workstation usable with full
KDE 4.3.3 desktop advanced capabilities…

Many thanks

16

Great hint, in my case, once removed
(one after one other):

~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc
~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktoprc
~/.kde4/share/config/plasmarc
~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc

the ‘Xorg’ as well as ‘plasma-desktop’ became
quite again and the workstation usable with full
KDE 4.3.3 desktop advanced capabilities…

How did you remove those 3’s ?

17

Out of curiosity I put KDE-4.3.3 on two of my 32-bit openSUSE-11.2 PCs :

  • 32-bit AMD Athlon-2800 w/2GB (Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard) w/ PCI (not PCI-e) nVidia GeForce 8400GS graphics [age-5 years] and
  • 32-bit AMD Athlon-1100 w/1GB (MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard) w/AGP nVidia GeForce FX5200 graphics [age 9-years]
    For testing I enabled Special Desktop effects on both of those PCs.

KDE-4.3.3 appears to be running no worse on those PCs (than 4.3.1), and if anything the CPU load is less on those. My test consists of playing an mpeg video, increasing the window size, and then messing around with the special effects, to see if the video/audio playback starts to get jerky.

They were both completely clean installs of 11.2 (including a clean /home). With the exception of adding (and then removing) the KDE4 repositories to update to KDE-4.3.3 the repos for those PCs has only been OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman.

What sort of “legacy” does your /home have?

(As an aside, having a nVidia card with VDPAU support (and the proprietary nVidia graphic driver) makes a substantial difference in performance in an old PC, playing an mpeg or h264 encoded video with mplayer, as the CPU load is significantly less (with the GPU picking up the video decoding)).

18

Hi, my problem was CPU around 70% or more :(. SOLUTION: leave in SYSTEM TRAY by default (I dissabled some things and that was the problem)! Right now my CPU is 2-3%. Happy openSUSEing :wink: