Ubuntu Hoary - Xorg - take up lot of CPU resources
 

PC - P3 800MHz with 256Mb and Nvidia GeForce FX5200 (128Mbb)
Distro in use - Ubuntu

I posted this on Ubuntu forums but it seem it's a common problem with no answers so hopefully one you guys might know better :)

I had Warty with XFree86 - nvidia driver was installed from apt-get successful, OpenGL applications worked fine.

Move a window in xGnome however take up to 80% CPU resources according to top. (xorg)

As a result Gnome isn't fun to use, you can see windows being redrawn etc (I have 2nd PC with Windows XP) and I wanted to use Ubuntu as my work machine, but I keep going back to Windows since it does have a much more snappy feel to the GUI!

Later on I have updated my Ubuntu system to the Hoary (change Warty to Hoary in res in Synaptic Package Manager) and updated everything using Smart update. and rebooted.

Then I installed xorg and uninstalled XFree86 and rebooted - I am now running Ubuntu Hoary with xorg and the Nvidia driver is running fine without needing to configy the xorg.conf file.

OpenGL applications still fine.

Move a window in Gnome still suck up 70% CPU and so it slows down the whole system to the point that it's just silly.

In Windows you can have the card render the windows and so on - which gives it a very snappy fieel.

Can you do the same thing in Xorg so that the card is doing the work NOT the CPU?? If so, how do I do that? And don't someone dare tell me to read the readme file from nvidia - this I have done and it does not help an iota.

This problem of xorg/xfree taking up large amount of CPU is ruining what is a otherwise fantastic Linux distro and from reading in here it seem I'm not isolated If someone have a solution, please post and it should be made sticky

Cheers

Could you post your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file? Specifically the Device section.

Sorry should have done this earlier.

I've tried it with and without VideoRAM (in Kb's) HWCurosr, few dozen other options and none of them make any difference to the GUI

The Theme I use is Clearlook however even the Simple theme does not make any difference it's still taking huge amount of CPU just to do anything to do with X (move window, minimize etc) at idle, CPU is at idle so it's not conitinously using CPU, just when you do work with the GUI

Any solutions would be posted to the Ubuntu forums as well with credits as it seem to be an increasing problem for NVidia owners, I've not seen anyone with the same problem with ATI....yet :)

Perhaps you could try downloading and installing the nvidia drivers from www.nvidia.com. Maybe something bugged out when the Ubuntu team repackaged the drivers or something who knows :confused: I have the same card and I can use X with compositing enabled at a normal if not very fast speed. Maybe try adding
[code]
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
]/code]
to your device section.

Okay, honestly I have no idea but that could be worth a try :)

Tried that option, doesn't work sadly :(

I once tried the drivers from nvidia's website but I screwed up somewhere and I've not got the knowhow to be confidient of installing the drivers from nvidia directly.

Perhaps if Ubuntu team doesn't do anything for a long while then I'll take the plunge again :) In the meantime, I've submitted it as a bug to Ubuntu so hopefully the dev'll have better ideas.

Someone with same problem mentioned they installed KDE and it was smooth in there so it might just be to do with Gnome somewhere?