[sf-lug] Computer freezes every so often; system monitor shows CPU maxed out. Recommend CPU upgrade?

Sat Jun 7 14:11:28 PDT 2014

On 6/7/2014 9:05 PM, Michael Shiloh wrote:
> Hiya,
>
> Every so often my laptop freezes, typically in but not limited to
> Firefox. Happens too with Thunderbird and other applications. Whenever
> this happens, System Monitor shows my two cores maxed out.

What does "top" show?
If you have a dual core, it means your laptop is recent enough that you 
shouldn't need to upgrade it just to run firefox.
It may be some buggy process taking up all your CPU; it might take all 
of a faster CPU, too.

>
> As I mentioned in my other thread, I'm a heavy Firefox tab user.
> Typically I have about 50 open. This may or may not relate to the
> problem at hand. I have about a dozen windows open, most of them not
> doing much (terminals, system monitor, arduino). The two busiest are
> almost always Firefox and Thunderbird.
>
> System details:
>
> ThinkPad T61p 6457-AK7
>
> 15.4in 1680x1050 LCD
> nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M
> Intel Cpu Core 2 Duo T7500  @ 2.20GHz, 4MB cache
> Ram: 6GB total, I forget what speed (is there a utility to tell me that?)
>
> System Monitor also shows that my memory usage is around 60%-70% pretty
> consistently, and my swap usage rarely above 10% of available 3GB. These
> do not change noticeably when the momentary freezing happens .
>
> This all leads me to believe that my CPU is the limit here, and since I
> can get an upgrade to an Intel Cpu Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz, 6MB cache)
> for $75, that seems like a wise investment.
>
> (I still plan to replace my spinning disk with an SSD, but I don't think
> that's related to this problem because the CPU is maxing out.)
>
> Would you agree with my conclusions?
>
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