Why does X use 25% of a 2.4 GHZ CPU at rest? [Solved]

Message

chris4amd · Post by **chris4amd** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 12:13 am

The subject of the thread says it all. Why does X use so much of my CPU time when it is at rest. At the moment I have open firefox, XFE, and an xterm.

I am not running anything intensive at all, yet the X usage is around 25%. Is something wrong?

Chris

PS - I thought I have seen threads like this before, but I couldn't find any searching the forums.
PSS - I am running XFCE4.2.

robet · Post by **robet** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 12:52 am

Does 2D rendering work?

chris4amd · Post by **chris4amd** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 7:18 pm

robet wrote:Does 2D rendering work?

I can view 2D (my desktop) if that is what you mean. I have a SiS 650 type video in my laptop here.

Is that the info. you needed?

Sith_Happens · Post by **Sith_Happens** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 10:04 pm

Are you using X with TWM or what (you just said X so I don't know).

EDIT: Wait is XFE supposed to be XFCE? Run top to verify that X is in fact the culprit here. If not it will tell you what is hogging your cpu.

chris4amd · Post by **chris4amd** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 11:35 pm

Sith_Happens wrote:Are you using X with TWM or what (you just said X so I don't know).

EDIT: Wait is XFE supposed to be XFCE? Run top to verify that X is in fact the culprit here. If not it will tell you what is hogging your cpu.

XFE is a file manager application that resembles Explorer.

Running top does show me that X is the one taking up so much of the CPU.

chris4amd · Post by **chris4amd** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 11:40 pm

I disabled the composite extension in X and corrected the issue. Now X usage is < 3%.

Oddly enough I didn't have this problem before XFCE 4.2. Go figure...

Sith_Happens · Post by **Sith_Happens** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:42 am

That is what I was asking, you never mentioned what window manager/desktop environment you were using. I too had some problems with XFCE 4.2 and the composite manager, but they were graphics rather than cpu related though. XFCE doesn't use the X composite manager, rather it uses it's own composite manager and it is beta software, so it has some problems.

coffeeman · Post by **coffeeman** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 7:41 am

this is a xfe problem... xfe is evil

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-30 ... e+cpu.html

andersbk · Post by **andersbk** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 2:47 pm

chris4amd wrote:I disabled the composite extension in X and corrected the issue. Now X usage is < 3%.

Oddly enough I didn't have this problem before XFCE 4.2. Go figure...

What do you mean "disabled the composite extension in X"?

I currently have the same problem. Am running XFCE 4.2, with nvidia-kernel drivers, and X is hovering at 40% to 80% cpu !!

Am reverting to fluxbox temporarily until I can figure how to mitigate.

[edit]
I removed the "Net" montor from the panel, and cpu load went down to around 6% for X at idle. This is still way unacceptable IMHO. I'm running fluxbox right now, and X is idling at around 0.3%... now that's more like it!
No XFCE for me until it's "fixed".
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