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

[Michael Shiloh]

I'll have to double check again, but i'm pretty sure top shows whatever 
program I'm in at the time, usually Firefox.

True, it's a dual core, but both of them max out when this happens.

M

On 06/07/2014 02:11 PM, Charles-Henri Gros wrote:
> 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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>
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