Re: Periodic sluggishness in games
Quoting Joel Konkle-Parker <jjk3@msstate.edu>:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
> >On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 20:02, Joel Konkle-Parker wrote:
> >
> >>Ron Johnson wrote:
> >>
> >>>On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 18:03, Joel Konkle-Parker wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I'm experiencing periodic sluggishness when I play 3d games like Unreal
> >>>>Tournament (natively) and Max Payne (WineX). It's not a framerate
> >>>>problem, because there's no choppiness, it's periodic (a minute of
> >>>>slowness, a couple minutes of normal, a couple of slow, et c.), and
> >>>>there's no apparent relation to the complexity of the action when it
> >>>>happens. The effect is as if the game itself is going into a slow-mo
> >>>>mode (yes, I know, Max Payne has a slow-mo mode, but that's not what's
> >>>>going on here).
> >>>>
> >>>>I have a new Dell 5150 with an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 using the latest
> >>>>nVidia-supplied drivers. I don't have any apps running while I'm
> >>>>playing the games, save for Gnome and its applets and such.
> >>>>
> >>>>Does anyone have any clue what could be the problem here?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Can you ssh in from another system, and run top(1) in P mode?
> >>>Maybe some intermittent process is jumping in.
> >>
> >>Assuming that any such process would be running even when I'm not in a
> >>game, would simply watching top for a while work?
> >
> >
> >Oh, ok, I assumed (yeah, yeah, I know) that these were full-screen
> >games that would make that impossible.
> >
> >
> >>Unfortunately I don't have another system to ssh from.
> >>
> >>As a test, I tried playing UT from twm, with none of the Gnome stuff
> >>running. The same problem occurs. It appears to be kind of progressive:
> >>it's fine for a good while, then slows for a moment, then is fine for a
> >>shorter time, then slows, then fine, slows, fine, slows, et c.
> >
> >
> >Have you tried any other games, like tuxracer?
> >
> >
> >>Just from sitting here watching top for a while, it appears my highest
> >>memory hog is Mozilla Mail checking for new messages, but that never
> >>gets above 4%. I've run the game without Mozilla in the background, with
> >>the same behavior.
> >>
> >>I've never noticed this effect in Windows.
> >
> >
> >exim? SpamAssassin? PostgreSQL?
> >
>
> As a test, I closed all open apps, turned off apache and mysqld, and
> start up a round of Unreal Tournament. The problem continued, with
> alternating periods of normal speed and slow speed, with the periods of
> normal speed getting shorter as time went on.
>
> The only syslog entries during this time period were:
>
Try turning off as many network servers as you can. On Quake III, if
I shutdown Postfix, the SMTP server, and make sure I am not in
SquirrelMail, a Webmail client that bangs on the IMAP server, then it
runs much smoother.
HTH,
Jeffrey
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