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wilburpan
l33t
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 977
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 Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 6:06 pm Post subject: Is this reasonable performance? |
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I'm running Gentoo on my work laptop, and today I gave Superkaramba a try. One of the first things that I loaded was the man theme, which gives information on how my system is performing. I was kind of surprised as to what I found.
My laptop specs:
700 MHz Pentium III
128 MB RAM
256 MB swap file
Running:
KDE 3.1.1
Konqueror webbrowser
XMMS
Superkaramba main theme (monitors CPU, free RAM, free swap, and internet I/O
According to the data from the Superkaramba monitors, my CPU usage is pegged at 100% all the time, I have only 2 MB of free RAM, and I'm using 70-75 MB of my swap file.
This seems to be a bit on the excessive side. Any ideas, or is KDE/Superkaramba that much of a CPU/memory hog? |
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paranode
l33t
Joined: 06 Mar 2003
Posts: 679
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 6:31 pm Post subject: |
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I tried out Superkaramba yesterday. While my CPU usage wasn't 100%, it managed to keep it above 20% all the time. After shutting it down all was normal and the CPU was mostly idle. I think that program is a mad resource hog.
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Meh. |
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pilla
Bodhisattva
Joined: 07 Aug 2002
Posts: 7729
Location: Underworld
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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Is your DMA enabled?
BTW, try also with "top" instead of karamba to see if the problem is on that application
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"I'm just very selective about the reality I choose to accept." -- Calvin |
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wilburpan
l33t
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 977
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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I didn't have top installed, but I got some interesting results with Ksim -- the gkrellm-like program that comes with KDE.
For some reason, the CPU usage seems much more reasonable now. With Konqueror, XMMS, Konsole, the Superkaramba main and xmms modules open, I get on average 20-25% CPU usage. Both Ksim and the Superkaramba agree with their readings.
However, the free memory readings are quite different. Ksim reports 40-60 MB of RAM free, while the Superkaramba meter still reports near 100% RAM usage.
I am pretty sure DMA is enabled -- here's the output from hdparm:
| Code: | /dev/hda:
Model=IC25N030ATDA04-0, FwRev=DA4OA70A, SerialNo=64A64NW1342
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=1806kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=17475/15/63, CurSects=16513875, LBA=yes, LBAsects=58605120
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
AdvancedPM=yes: mode=0x80 (128) WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-5 T13 1321D revision 3: 2 3 4 5 |
I also tried a torture test -- I had multiple browser windows open, Kmail, XMMS, Kwrite, and was emerging a package from within Konsole. As you might guess, everything slowed down, and my hard drive was doing a lot of thrashing about. However, the swap file usage never got less than 100MB of free swap space.
Does this mean that if I put enough RAM into my laptop, then my swapfile will never be touched? |
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Malakin
Veteran
Joined: 14 Apr 2002
Posts: 1692
Location: Victoria BC Canada
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Does this mean that if I put enough RAM into my laptop, then my swapfile will never be touched? |
Yes. My system has 512M and it runs fine without a swap file although it's a good idea to keep one just in case a program starts leaking memory the easiest way to spot it is excessive swap usage. |
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echeslack
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 131
Location: NJ, USA
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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| wilburpan wrote: |
However, the free memory readings are quite different. Ksim reports 40-60 MB of RAM free, while the Superkaramba meter still reports near 100% RAM usage.
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Maybe one is reporting memory used including cache and buffers and one isn't. My buffers and cache account for 170 MB, but I have a bunch more stuff open than what you said and I have been working for a while.
-ewen |
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wilburpan
l33t
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 977
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 9:44 pm Post subject: |
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That's exactly it. After doing some searching, my lesson of the day is how to use cat /proc/* commands. 
Ksim is reporting free memory as what is not being used, ignoring cache and buffers, so what is "free" RAM includes cache and buffer space. The superkaramba main theme only looks at unused RAM, so it does not count cache/buffer RAM. |
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