Re: CPU and Memory usage of XFree86
On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 11:06, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> Michel Dnzer wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 00:42, Nirmal Govind wrote:
> > > Hi.. I've noticed that the XFree86 process on my ibook is taking up a
> > > decent chunk of memory and some CPU and this seems to be slowing down my
> > > machine a bit .. when I do 'top', XFree86 is a process that's constantly
> > > at the top of the list..
> >
> > X server memory consumption is a FAQ and has recently been discussed
> > here, but the X server should normally never hog the CPU (and it doesn't
> > here) unless there are clients flooding it with requests.
>
> Of course, notice that the Xterm (or worse, kterm etc.) you're running
> the top command in _is_ flooding the X server... :-)
>
> (I've actually measured this some ten years ago -- the result (on *that*
> old system, your mileage will be totally different I'm sure) was that
> top+xterm took 10%-20% cpu. top itself *still* takes ~2% cpu on busy
> systems (lots of processes), and the Xterm situation has not considerably
> improved either, I feel confident in saying).
FWIW, top uses about 0.3% here (the 2.6 kernel might help there),
gnome-terminal and the X server less than 1% together.
I guess the bottom line is that the X server obviously does need some
CPU cycles to do its work. :) Unless it's constantly hogging the CPU,
that's normal and shouldn't have a significant impact on overall system
performance. The kernel scheduler and VM are much more likely to matter
there.
--
Earthling Michel Dänzer \ Debian (powerpc), XFree86 and DRI developer
Software libre enthusiast \ http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer
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