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

[Michael Shiloh]

Yeah, compiz is a hog. I've done everything I can to limit what it does, 
short of removing it entirely.

Another symptom that I forgot to mention earlier: Sometimes when typing 
text into an email (such as I'm doing right now) the letters momentarily 
stop showing up as I type. A few seconds later they appear in a burst. I 
compose my letters in plain ASCII text, not HTML.

Perhaps this is a useful clue, perhaps not.

I'll have a better idea when I run top concurrently with whatever I'm 
doing that causes the freeze, as someone on this list suggested. My plan 
is to set up a second monitor showing System Monitor and top, so I can 
always immediately see what's going on when the freeze happens.

Michael



On 06/07/2014 04:41 PM, Ken Shaffer wrote:
> On my old HP Presario V3000 (dual core) running Ubuntu 14.04, I see compiz
> frequently taking 100%+ cpu in top, indicating that one core is maxed out.
> Things pretty much freeze, but I can usually get to a virtual term and kill
> the compiz process, then kill the lightdm -- session process so I can login
> again.  I've been attributing this to hardware problems since I've not seen
> (or maybe not noticed) the problem on newer hardware (with 4 dual cores).
> Ken
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 7, 2014 at 2:19 PM, Michael Shiloh <michaelshiloh1010 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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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