On Wednesday 23 May 2001 07:14 am, you wrote: > s, > > Thanks for posting this information -- could you clarify a few things > just for my edification: > > 1. Do you know what motherboard he is using? No, we can't id it, nor find the manual. It does have a sis530 chipset. > > 2. Is performance really significantly worse than your Intel machines or > are you basing performance just on the CPU usage (with kapm)? I'm basing it primarily on it taking konqueror or the control center or anything ~20-30 seconds to open, and if restoring from minimized it takes 8 - 10 seconds to repaint the widgets. That's what prompted me to look at top and try to see if I could ascertain what was wrong. And that with the kapm-idle showing 50 - 60% cpu used up. When kapm-idled is on 0%, it does better. However, it's rarely on 0%. I had run 8.0 on a Celeron 433 with hardly any noticeable performance difference from my PIII 733. > > 3. It sounds like you are not using Mandrake 8.0, based on my inference > that you have not seen the kapm idle thing on your machines? I'm using 8.0 on all of them. I've seen it on mine, but it's always way down the list and says 0% cpu usage. And mine always has setiathome (with ksetiwatch), korn and a terminal open, and commonly kmail, konqueror and knode all running at the same time. And I just fly along - can even open gltron in addition with no noticable performance hit. > > 4. If you are using Mandrake 8.0, would you post the relevant specs on > one of your machines so we have a basis for comparison (CPU, clock > speed, RAM (amount, type, speed), HD (size, RPM, MB/sec (if available). Mine1(main): PIII 733 with 133 bus speed, with Crucial 256M 133 ram (215 swap), Abit SE6 mobo (with intel 815 chipset), two hdd - main Maxtor 7200rpm 20gig ~24 mb/s. (other rarely used-storage only) Mine2: PIII 667 w/133 bus, Crucial 512M 133 ram (313 swap), Biostar M6VCG with VIA 82C686A chipset, Maxtor 10gig 5200 rpm ~14 MB/sec. Mine2: Celeron 433 w/66 bus, crucial 128mb 100 ram (at 66) (256 swap), unided mobo (a Florida or something, it's an emachine), samsung 10 gig 5200rpm hdd. All these do fine. Of course the celery is a little slower, but not much. 2 or 3 extra seconds to open an app. Takes the other two like 3 - 5 seconds to open something like netscape, his (the amd) takes like ~30 seconds to open netscape if that kapm-idled thing is showing 50% used, if it's not, it takes netscape an acceptable 7 - 9. His: AMDK-2 450, 192mb 100 ram, unided mobo with sis chip & AmericanTrends Bios (might be hint), Seagate (assuming 5200rpm) 17 gig hdd, ~5MB/sec with kapm-idled showing > 50% cpu usage, about ~14mb/s when not. (Bearing in mind that the former occurs 99% of the time.) By the way, it may not be relevant, but his is quite speedy in windows. That's why I thought it would smoke with Mandrake. > > Thanks very much for any clarification you can offer. > Randy Kramer My non-technical hypothesis: this kapm-idled is supposed to be a little app to report cpu usage, done so by fooling the cpu into thinking some little thing else is running so kapm idled can get a measurement of what is free. But this kapm idled is faulty, and actually does eat up the cpu cycles in some configurations. Questions to ponder: I wonder if a large percentage of people having performance issues are using amd products, or sis products? What could be the common denominator? Any why is this kapm-idled commonly involved? Why do people think it is kapm idled that is eating their cpu cycles? > > s wrote: > > Hi all, > > I just installed 8.0 on a die-hard windows user's machine, and it didn't > > make a very good show. This machine has the same voodoo card as in one > > of mine (voodoo3 2000), and tho mine's 3d performance is lacking, his is > > non-existant. The installer installed XFree86-3.3.6 by default without > > asking (tho in expert mode), so after boot I found out why. I went into > > display to set it up, I was finally given the choice of 4.0.3, but not > > 'with acceration'. I chose 4.0.3 anyway, and then it wouldn't boot into > > X. Without gaming support, we're gonna lose him. > > > > Also, I finally know what some people are saying about poor performance. > > 8.0 runs good my three intel machines, but his amd k-2 450 is sad - most > > of the time. I did the hdparm thing and raised that performance a > > little, however this kapm-idle thing in top is showing over 50% of the > > cpu being used up by something, when nothing extraneous is open or > > running. Made sure no servers or unnecessary processes were running (as > > I always do). Sometimes it goes back down to 0% like mine always show, > > but most of the time something is going on. > > > > Any advise/info would as always be appreciated. > > > > -s > > > > As said, its has an amdk-2 450 with 192Mb100m ram, 256 swap, seagate > > 5200rpm 17gig hdd with 4 given to LM, voodoo3 2000, onboard sound (that > > comes and goes, sis on-board video (that's supposed to be disabled, yet > > shows up - but is not configured). Phillips something cdburner. Nothing > > special about install - not recompiled.
