Re: Periodic sluggishness in games

[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.

Actually, these are full-screen games. I meant watching top while I'm 
not in the game at all, so see if there's any kind of periodic processor 
activity.

> > 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?

Nope, just these two. Would there be anything different about tuxracer 
that would help isolate the problem?

> > 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?

Well, I have exim set up for local delivery only. No SpamAssassin. I 
have Apache and MySQL running. I guess I could shut these down and see 
how they effect things.


--
Joel Konkle-Parker
Webmaster [Ballsome.com]

Phone     [+1 662-518-1636]
E-mail    [jjk3@msstate.edu]