KDE 4.x cpu usage

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Post by **asturm** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 10:50 pm

kwin eats around 4% (+-1) cpu when idle on my system.

Mod edit by i92guboj: split from here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=797124

Please, whomever may respond to the thread, take into account that it's been split and that's why there's no explanation or whatever in this post. Just join the debate if you have something to offer or ask, else just ignore the thread.

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 1:20 am

genstorm wrote:kwin eats around 4% (+-1) cpu when idle on my system.

Exactly, it is 5% on my 3.2 GHz CPU, moreover, it is fully presistent - if I leave computer for ten hours, with just one konsole open (+plasma/panel, but nothing moving) it is around 30min CPU eated when I am back. More than X, or, more notorius, firefox

5% seems not large, but it will be, I suspect 10-15% on my 1.2 GHz laptop. What is more important (I am hesistant to try to check), persistent use of CPU on laptop may mean that CPU is constantly awaken and will spend little time in low power state. In this case effect on battery will be much larger that CPU usage may indicate.

Idle CPU usage disappears if desktop effects are off, BTW.

albright · Post by **albright** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 3:47 am

CPU is constantly awaken and will spend little time in low power state. In this case effect on battery will be much larger that CPU usage may indicate.

that's an interesting question - I have kde 4.3 with a firefox window open + wireless
on + gkrellm running + konqueror powertop reports 95% C4 mwait states and
10 watts (thinkpad x300).

without wireless and just writing text this goes down to about 8 watts - I don't
think kde is a power hog

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:22 am

albright wrote:
CPU is constantly awaken and will spend little time in low power state. In this case effect on battery will be much larger that CPU usage may indicate.
that's an interesting question - I have kde 4.3 with a firefox window open + wireless
on + gkrellm running + konqueror powertop reports 95% C4 mwait states and
10 watts (thinkpad x300).

without wireless and just writing text this goes down to about 8 watts - I don't
think kde is a power hog

Encouraging info. I have the same machine, and 10 watts on idle is pretty familiar !. This is what I was aiming for.
Could you check how much your kwin4 consuming on idle ? That is, are you in the regime we discuss when it constantly consumes some CPU cycles ?
(If so - then my worries that it prevents CPU to go in C4 are unfounded, but perhaps you have disabled desktop effects ? )

I was hesitant to put kde4 on my laptop, seeing continuous usage by kde4 on the desktop. in comparison kwin from 3.5 as well as kwin4 with desktop effects off do not even register in top

albright · Post by **albright** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 1:40 pm

I just tried unplugging my x300 and turning off gkrellm, firefox, konqueror and
just running lyx to simulate working. The screen was "3 clicks" from dimmest.

It that scenario c4 states were like 98%, kwin did not show up in the
list of wakeup causes and power useage went down to 8-8.5 watts.

I have all the eye-candy turned ON by the way (I think the kde4 developers
did a superb job of making compositing efficient and smooth - a big
improvement over compiz IMHO)

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:13 pm

albright wrote:I just tried unplugging my x300 and turning off gkrellm, firefox, konqueror and
just running lyx to simulate working. The screen was "3 clicks" from dimmest.

It that scenario c4 states were like 98%, kwin did not show up in the
list of wakeup causes and power useage went down to 8-8.5 watts.

I have all the eye-candy turned ON by the way (I think the kde4 developers
did a superb job of making compositing efficient and smooth - a big
improvement over compiz IMHO)

does kwin show in top at 5-10% for your setup ?

I am trying to distinguish whether in your setup kwin4 does not persistently use CPU, or its use of the CPU has no adverse affects on wakeups

albright · Post by **albright** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 3:22 pm

does kwin show in top at 5-10% for your setup ?

No, kwin shows up (when it shows up at all) in top at 0% - that
is with the computer idle and just top running in konsole

If I have 4 or 5 windows open in the background (on the desktop,
not minimized) kwin goes to 0-1%

Naturally, if I start moving windows around kwin jumps up - looks
like to about 20% while jiggling a floppy window around

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 3:54 pm

albright wrote:
does kwin show in top at 5-10% for your setup ?
No, kwin shows up (when it shows up at all) in top at 0% - that
is with the computer idle and just top running in konsole

If I have 4 or 5 windows open in the background (on the desktop,
not minimized) kwin goes to 0-1%

Naturally, if I start moving windows around kwin jumps up - looks
like to about 20% while jiggling a floppy window around

Well, when you start moving - sure. I have 5% when I do nothing, and have just one konsole is up with top in it. It clearly occupies top line in 'top' , above X
and everything. And it never goes lower. It is, however, on the desktop with nvidia card and nvidia OpenGL (but with 3.2 GHz CPU !). Maybe it is better on Intel GPU's ?

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:14 am

albright wrote:I just tried unplugging my x300

I probably should start a separate thread, but may I ask you here.

I have the same machine - did you ever able to configure touchpad and trackpoint so
that the three buttons under the trackpoint remain functional when touchpad is off ?

Whatever I do, all the 5 buttons are managed with touchpad, so when I switch it off
(say with synclient), trackpoint moves the cursor, but no buttons are functional.

Another side of the question.

If I don't load synaptics driver, and use only old mouse driver for trackpoint, I get all its glorious functionality - presses and scrolls etc.
However, with both touchpad (synaptics) and trackpoint configured, trackpoint reduces to just a pointer (plus no buttons).

What I would ultimately want is being able to dynamically switch off touchpad, getting fully functional trackpoint. Windows does that., so it is not hardware limitation.

Sujao · Post by **Sujao** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:20 am

dmpogo wrote:
albright wrote:I just tried unplugging my x300
I probably should start a separate thread, but may I ask you here.

Yes, you should.

Actually the whole discussion about CPU load is not part KDE usability.

Yamakuzure · Post by **Yamakuzure** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:22 pm

Weird... I have truecrypt running, firefox (obviously), thunderbird and am emerging gcc-4.4.2 right now.

Code: Select all

top - 14:16:10 up 19:50,  5 users,  load average: 1.82, 2.19, 2.12
Tasks: 320 total,   2 running, 318 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  2.8%us,  6.8%sy, 31.9%ni, 42.6%id, 15.7%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.2%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1016420k total,   938404k used,    78016k free,    88708k buffers
Swap:  2096436k total,   300152k used,  1796284k free,   403464k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 2745 root      20   0  299m  72m 3868 S    4  7.3  19:31.46 X
32381 root      39  19 18612 3432  792 R    3  0.3   0:00.10 make
 3086 sed       20   0  433m 9528 5180 S    1  0.9  11:44.86 kwin
 3191 sed       20   0  290m  13m 7488 S    1  1.3   0:28.62 konsole
  292 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    1  0.0   0:06.51 kswapd0
 3094 sed       20   0  611m  17m 6412 S    1  1.8   2:36.53 plasma-desktop
16140 root      39  19 24392 5656  948 S    1  0.6   0:02.12 make
23981 sed       20   0 19260 1480  952 R    1  0.1   0:00.16 top
  290 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:02.08 pdflush
 3100 sed       20   0  4360  632  340 S    0  0.1   0:33.08 ksysguardd
 3157 sed       20   0  328m 4024 1764 S    0  0.4   0:00.56 mysqld
11662 sed       20   0  413m  29m  11m S    0  3.0   0:22.11 thunderbird-bin
32686 sed       20   0  375m  55m  12m S    0  5.6   0:08.15 firefox

So kwin shows up on top with 1%. But I watched top for two minutes or so, and kwin sometimes shows up with 2%. Compositing and all desktop effects are on. (OpenGL, "Pixmap texture", trilinear filtering, direct rendering on, vsync is off)

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 2:43 pm

Yamakuzure wrote:Weird... I have truecrypt running, firefox (obviously), thunderbird and am emerging gcc-4.4.2 right now.

Code: Select all

top - 14:16:10 up 19:50,  5 users,  load average: 1.82, 2.19, 2.12
Tasks: 320 total,   2 running, 318 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  2.8%us,  6.8%sy, 31.9%ni, 42.6%id, 15.7%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.2%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1016420k total,   938404k used,    78016k free,    88708k buffers
Swap:  2096436k total,   300152k used,  1796284k free,   403464k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 2745 root      20   0  299m  72m 3868 S    4  7.3  19:31.46 X
32381 root      39  19 18612 3432  792 R    3  0.3   0:00.10 make
 3086 sed       20   0  433m 9528 5180 S    1  0.9  11:44.86 kwin
 3191 sed       20   0  290m  13m 7488 S    1  1.3   0:28.62 konsole
  292 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    1  0.0   0:06.51 kswapd0
 3094 sed       20   0  611m  17m 6412 S    1  1.8   2:36.53 plasma-desktop
16140 root      39  19 24392 5656  948 S    1  0.6   0:02.12 make
23981 sed       20   0 19260 1480  952 R    1  0.1   0:00.16 top
  290 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:02.08 pdflush
 3100 sed       20   0  4360  632  340 S    0  0.1   0:33.08 ksysguardd
 3157 sed       20   0  328m 4024 1764 S    0  0.4   0:00.56 mysqld
11662 sed       20   0  413m  29m  11m S  
    0  3.0   0:22.11 thunderbird-bin
32686 sed       20   0  375m  55m  12m S    0  5.6   0:08.15 firefox

So kwin shows up on top with 1%. But I watched top for two minutes or so, and kwin sometimes shows up with 2%. Compositing and all desktop effects are on. (OpenGL, "Pixmap texture", trilinear filtering, direct rendering on, vsync is off)

I left desktop on 5 days ago, leaving for the conference. Looking at top through ssh at top 3 processes

Code: Select all

PID      USER       PR  NI  VIRT  RES    SHR      S      %CPU %MEM    TIME+     COMMAND
24190 pogosyan  20   0  492m  74m   33m       S         6      1.9     627:46.56     kwin
20686 pogosyan  20   0  923m 228m  39m      S         5      5.8     359:02.21      firefox
16986 root          20   0  472m 139m  11m      S         1      3.5      93:26.71        X

kde session, firefox and X are all running since Oct 26 - so 10 days. I.e kwin uses one hour of CPU per day - this exactly these 5%.

Remarkably, your kwin also uses very little memory - RSS at 9.5 Mb ! In my case it is 74 Mb ! (moreover I remember this number right after I launched the desktop, so it is not as much accumulated leak )

anton_kg · Post by **anton_kg** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:01 am

genstorm wrote:kwin eats around 4% (+-1) cpu when idle on my system.

Konsole eats another 7% of 1.7Ghz CPU with mplayer *.mp3 running. No, it's not about mp3, any activity (output?..) in the konsole eats such ridiculous amount of CPU.
Also, 512Mb RAM is not enough anymore

PS. I'm posting this message from e16 using Chromium browser. I also have minimal requirements for desktop. I need browser, console and a media player.

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:05 am

Being back to my machine, I can see that it is compositing that idly eats 5% CPU (with OpenGL, a bit more with XRender). Disabling it eliminates idle CPU usage.

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 10:58 pm

Remarkably, I just installed KDE4 on the older dual-Opteron machine with Nvidia NV30GL [Quadro FX 1000] that uses nvidia-drivers-173.14.20
and there is no problem with kwin CPU usage - it is below 1%, running into few minutes of usage over the day while on idle.

No problem as well on Intel based Thinkpad X300 with Intel graphics

So to summarize

Home desktop - Core2 Duo Intel, G86 [GeForce 8500 GT], nvidia-drivers-173.14.20/ nvidia-drivers-180.60/nvidia-drivers-190.42-r3 , xorg-server-1.6.3.901-r2 -- kwin idle CPU usage is at 5-6%, poor resize with nvidia-drivers-180.60

Office desktop - Dual Opteron, NV30GL [Quadro FX 1000] , nvidia-drivers-173.14.20, xorg-server-1.6.3.901-r2 - no problem.

Laptop - Thinkpad X300 (Core 2 Duo, Intel based graphics) xorg-server-1.6.3.901-r2 - no problem either

All default effects are on, seems no obvious difference in configuration of KDE4

Also the window resizing on Opteron machine is almost as good as that Intel one with nvidia-drivers-190.42-r3 (and better than home desktop with nvidia-drivers-180.60 )