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

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 06/07/2014 02:05 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.

    The Mozilla programs are very useful tools but they are memory hogs
and I
have read that they should be shut down and restarted at least daily. 
They also
do memory leaks.

>
> 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.

    Well see above.
    Restarting programs may be a drag but it may help.
>
> 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.

    Actually I think you should think more about the graphic side of
things and that
a 4 core i7 with an nVidia with at least 2 gigabytes would be closer to
fixing things.
and that is on an 8 or 16 Gigabyte machine.  I would look for a used
game machine
or a high end Dell Latitude.  The weight might be off-putting though.  I
saw such a
machine but it was older and the weight was above 9 lbs.  The price was
still over
a thousand dollar at the repair shop where it had been placed.

    I used to have independent private windows to read my manga on stuck
on my
Virtual Desktop #4 but since the problems I had last month I am
confining the Firefox
windows to the VD #1 where the parent Firefox runs.  I am not opening so
many
Firefox windows either.  I was not using as many windows as you mention
at my
best(worst?).

>
> (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.)

    That will help with startup speed but I doubt it has much to do with
your freezing problems
unless it can be shown that disk access is getting into problems.

>
> Would you agree with my conclusions?

    See my remarks above.
>
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>
    bliss