Re: performance problem

[michael <linux@networkingnewsletter.org.uk>]

On Fri, 2005-01-28 at 17:36 -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-01-29 at 00:22 +0100, tobias wrote:
> >  
> > But: there is a strange performance problem which wasn't there before. 
> > Using Gnome or KDE every couple of seconds the mouse poiner "stumbles", 
> > regardless if I use a USB or ps/2 device. There is also a short delay 
> > moving windows or even displaying text while typing. Moreover smooth 
> > playing of mp3s is not possible - seems to be the same problem.
> > 
> > Using top or similar programs I wasn't able to identify a process which 
> > eats up my system performance. The CPU has something around 5%, load 
> > average around 0.4.
> > 
> > Has anybody encountered similar problems? I would appreciate hints how 
> > to deal with this problem.
> > Or could it be that the hardware is too old? It's a 700MHz Athlon, 
> > 512MB... should be able to play mp3, I think. On fedora, there was a 2.4 
> > kernel, now it's 2.6.8. Naively, I would expected a performance gain.
> 
> Could it be that your disk(s) aren't running in DMA mode?


how does DMA help? should this be on for all machines (eg mine!)?
thanks,
-- 
Michael Bane
Atmospheric Physics Group
University of Manchester