Just an idea:

Check the CPU temperatures.  Some people have reported problems with ACPI fan 
control to point that it causes CPU overheating.  The internal temperature 
sensor then reduces the clock speed to prevent damage.  I've never heard of it 
causing this much trouble however - mostly lag when watching videos etc.

Sorry I don't have any specifics, but it might be worth eliminating this as a 
potential problem before you go reading all that code  ;-)

Chris



________________________________
From: Robert Massaioli <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, 6 September 2011 10:46 AM
Subject: High /usr/bin/X CPU Usage


Hi XOrg Mailing List,

In a nutshell: I am having issues with /usr/bin/X taking up way too much CPU 
and, when it does start to use more CPU, my entire user experience becomes 
quite laggy. I have tried really hard to solve the problem on my own but I was 
unable to find a solution so I have finally decided that it is time for me to 
ask this mailing list for help. That is the fundamental problem, the rest of 
this post deals with how it happens, what I am running and what I have already 
tried. I could use any help I can get so thank you for reading.

This link points to a screenshot of htop running showing the constant high 
40-60% CPU usage that /usr/bin/X now sits at: http://i.imgur.com/mRIzG.png

My computer is quite powerful and should easily be able to handle any load that 
any part of linux can throw at it. I have a Quad Core i2500k CPU, an NVIDIA 560 
Ti Graphics Card and 8GB RAM, so no hardware bottlenecks thats for sure (and my 
Windows Partition runs like a breeze; which proves that the hardware seems to 
be solid). However, with that in mind this is what happens:

        1. Start computer, everything is working fine, /usr/bin/X is behaving 
normally. I can play and watch videos with no lag at all.

        2. Wait some undefined period of time and just work on stuff (I don't 
actually know how to reliably reproduce the problem but it does happen every 
single time I use my linux partition).
        3. Watch one of my CPU's spike to an average of 50% and keyboard 
responsiveness drop to the point where I can notice the lag in response time. 
Video playback also becomes impossibly slow at this point.I would not have 
thought that the keyboard would be an issue but it is lagging so I have a Razer 
Acosta keyboard if that helps.

In short, I have no idea what is causing the problem, on the software side I am 
running:

$ uname -a
Linux ShhnapDesk 2.6.38-10-generic #46-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 28 15:07:17 UTC 2011 
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=11.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=natty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 11.04"
$ xmonad --version
xmonad 0.9.2

My window manager is XMonad as you can see from above and I am also running 
XMobar (0.13) through that. I have tried:

        * Asking for help elsewhere: 
http://superuser.com/questions/328612/linux-x11-is-using-up-50-of-one-of-my-cpus-and-lagging-terribly
        * Uninstalling Flash because I read that it might be the problem.
        * Using Firefox instead of Google Chrome (I found that chrome had some 
X issues in the past)
        * Closing every single X program (bar XMonad) to see if /usr/bin/X 
would start behaving again.
But none of those troubleshooting attempts worked out for me.

I do not know what else to do other than read through the entire codebase of X 
and try and reverse engineer where my problem lies. If anybody has any 
suggestions then please make them and any extra information that you happen to 
require I will be more than happy to provide. This problem is significantly 
hindering my Linux joy and I love Linux. I use it for everything and have done 
so for the last three years.

Thanks in advance for any and all help,
Robert

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