actually, top's "load average" has very little to do with CPU usage. All it tells you is how many processes were competing for / using *any amount* of CPU in a given time period. It doesn't tell you what percentage of CPU is being used, you can have a load average in the 5.x range and still have the CPU sitting idle 80% of the time. Load average does help you guage performance, but it's only one factor of many that tell you how the box is actually performing and whether or not it is underpowered for the tasks it is doing. If the first of the three load average numbers is 5.2, for argument's sake, all that tells you is that in the last minute there was an average of 5.2 processes each using *some* CPU time at once. Again, it does not tell you how much CPU was actually used. It only tells you how many processes were competing for CPU. Some/all of them could be using next to no CPU, or some/all of them could be eating as much as they possibly could. You can't tell that from the load average values.
And I'm afraid everyone here that has said HT skews the CPU usage tracking are entirely correct, you can't accurately tell how much CPU is actually being used and how much is actually free/idle when you have HT turned on. It's just a fact of HT life. It doesn't relate at all to a true dual CPU machine when it comes to measuring how much CPU is being used and how much is idle, because it's difficult to actually measure when you're only using tricks to emulate dual CPUs. HT definitely helps out *some* in a multi-threaded/multi-tasking environment, but its very nature means you can't really tell how much it will help out. Nor can you easily measure exactly how much idle time you have left, because of the slight of hand that's involved. But if you turn HT off you can very accurately tell how much CPU is actually being used. So if you're having performance problems, and you need to know how much CPU is really being used, that is indeed a very good step to take. Turning HT off and running the same scenario again. On 6/24/05, Sid Stuart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Actually, the top utility will track utilization across all CPU's quite > nicely. No reason to turn HT off to understand what the system is doing. > Start the top program and then type 1 (the number one). This should give > a load average by CPU display in the summary area. -- Clayton Macleod _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
