From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NvGMN-0007LL-Te for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:42:28 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 98483E09DB; Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:41:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-pz0-f171.google.com (mail-pz0-f171.google.com [209.85.222.171]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6671AE09DB for ; Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:41:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: by pzk1 with SMTP id 1so602013pzk.10 for ; Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:41:28 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:sender:from:to:subject:date :user-agent:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding :message-id; bh=p2u0BnlLip2CmUHxmojqHs69eiE8Hmbc980rzS0grpA=; b=MHKTDt9DpEJnod/wLVKChugDekQpBzeeh8u4FSP8BEE3+eov3/3uvVSTVB9jtMwFtG JOaiNNxFymBPjFn5MVNUXhE7fPOe+r2Qi24oeskaQeGw97TnjQ+ZoT+mGYRqzk2xRsdV vaqJeoPsmKZPQoqvzBz9WwwqX8y28a+v32gVA= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=sender:from:to:subject:date:user-agent:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:message-id; b=jptIbOozYG1micLQFOpcZMEVt+zBHbHk/10ahLkkyJEcN6AFKJcbzVINuEPsofZyGW tWk9fyMzjAP6glcoDNthqjjPeLyPcejqOC8CdSr7m0mo2CQ6HsUIT303Qld2Gtawe8Od xgUn1DThL5c2TwzGbNN1FbY8eHcDTzAaBhOjQ= Received: by 10.115.132.40 with SMTP id j40mr2171260wan.21.1269636087845; Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:41:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from geneva.localnet (officebc.workatplay.com [76.77.93.66]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id 22sm1015277pzk.1.2010.03.26.13.41.26 (version=SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:41:27 -0700 (PDT) Sender: Daniel Quinn From: Daniel Quinn To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: [gentoo-user] CPU "choking" under high load Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:47:55 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.13.1 (Linux/2.6.32-gentoo-r3; KDE/4.4.1; i686; ; ) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <201003262047.55200.expendable.0@danielquinn.org> X-Archives-Salt: 250d1239-1cbc-4e89-9f33-ec34ddd569fc X-Archives-Hash: a714fa69fed0567b08f369053cdfa78a I don't know if this is a hardware issue or not, but I thought that maybe I'd configured my kernel incorrectly and that this might be a known issue someone here has run across in the past so here goes: My computer is a pretty impressive AMD 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6400+ box with 2GB of RAM and for the most part, I just use it to write code at work. However, whenever I'm doing something CPU-intensive, two things happen: * The load on the box goes up to 4 * The box intermittently wobbles from running at full-speed and dropping to a crawl. This is best seen while watching Flash videos online, compressing/encoding video, or compiling. Everything is fine for a few minutes, then suddenly the rate of compiling/compression/playback etc. drops to a crawl for about 1-3minutes, then back up to full speed. I don't know why it's happening. I've tried various kernel options with no change in behaviour. Outside of that though, I don't know what to try. Suggestions welcome :-(