OK - so I have the following:

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
8192 MB RAM (1333MHz)
UbuntuStudio 12.04 LTS
AMD Radeon HD6750
1 TB HDD
http://paulororke.net/hardinfo_report.html

I'm not using Unity but XFCE4 and I seem to be barely able to use the desktop. The mouse is jerky and often won't move then leaps across my screen. Firefox and the Plugin container peg my CPU frequesntly and have to be killed to get the mouse back.

Even if I shut down FF then even just using Transmission and I'm grinding to a haly.

I have accepted the defaults in the BIOS for best performance as a friend suggested that there may be a misconfigureation in there - no change - it's still unresponsive and almost impossible to use.

I switched to Studio because I heard is was a little better optimized and uses XFCE because Unity is a bit of a system hog.

I'm at the end of my rope and actually thinking I'll to go back to the dreaded Windoze (Win 7 at work is pretty snappy on older hardware...)

Can anyone suggest some reading where I can find out what is going on and how to fix this? I don't believe it's just Linux, this thing is slower than my old Athalon 32 bit machine that ran Mandrake...

The symptoms you describe may be caused by an overheating system. Check your cooling system, especially if your CPU cooler is sitting correctly on the CPU.

Thanks Tobi,

I've been watching the temperature and the CPU hovers around 29 C it creeps up to 30 under load and drops to 28 when idle - I don't think that's excessive.

I have this un a low profile case that fits in my TV cabinet and I have 3 fans with temp sensors on them that speed up when things get hot - they neber need to.

I seriously question the hardware timing or something. I've had much lower spec machines out perform this and I'm really scratching my head.

thanks for the suggestion.

Here are some ideas to get your pc back in shape:
- try live cds of ubuntu or fedora
- monitor cpu usage (top etc ...), disk usage, etc ...
- open a new forum thread about your problem.

It could be anything at this stage (system paging, bios set to some strange value, graphic board driven as 2D, the list is endless).

That is very unlikely. I have the same CPU in a high airflow case and a high performance aftermarket cooler attached to it (for overclocking purposes). I get around 25°C idle and around 48°C when compiling a kernel on all cores. Are you sure you are reading from the correct sensor?

Since your problem is unrelated to this thread I asked a moderator to move it to a new thread.

Studio isnt made for desktop use, its meant to be for audio/video work. Its probably 'better optimised' for audio/video work, but its not if you want to use it for normal desktop use.

The 'load best performance' BIOS settings are not actually 'best performance', its just a generic 'slightly faster than standard' setting.

Aside from overheating, you could have memory problems, you can try running memtest.

Another possibly is that you have an unsupported CPU in your system. I dont normally put much trust into hardinfo benchmarks, but looking at yours they are incredibly low. I think you have CPU issues. There are 2 different M68MT-S2 versions (that is your motherboard), and 2 different X6 1055T versions. Neither M68MT-S2 version will support the Phenom II X6 1055T 125watt TDP model, only the 95watt TDP model. What happens when you install an 'unsupported' X6 into the M68MT-S2 I dont know, but the problems you are having could be the symptoms.

I've never been impresed with the nForce 630a chipsets used in that board either, they tend to be junk.

Oh, tested that accidentally with a Athlon X2 6000+ back in the time on a Biostar NF520, the voltage regulators will burn at some time, but I haven't seen issues before that happened.

When I look at the temperatures and the low performance, may it be that your system is set to the powersave_governor, so that it never clocks with more than 800MHz?
Please post the output of

There are a whole lot of other distributions out there that are not as bloated as Ubuntu but still works great as daily desktop OS's. Why do the DRASTIC thing of going back to Winbloze when you're having problem with one spin-off of a distro?

Try Fedora first, or openSUSE, or Mint. Don't give up. Have you tried the other Ubuntu spins: Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu?

Hi there folks. Look, I might not know anything about CPU things but I can assure you one thing, Ubuntu 12.04 running with Compiz is very unstable and buggy, I mean it 'cos my own experience: it crashes everytime I want to login so I decided to give a try to Linux Mint 12 and my desktop looks, feels and works awesomely. I try to know, mainly if you have Compiz enabled, if so disable it and try that way. Otherwise it is also a good idea to try other distros like Zorin OS, Linux Mint, Fedora, openSUSE and many others you could like.
Good luck.

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If you installed Ubuntu and then added the Xfce4 desktop you are still carrying the entire Ubuntu load.

If you are installed on 2 partitions installing Xubuntu without formating your /home would be simple.

If you are installed on one partition you would be better off with a clean install of Xubuntu if you want to stay in the Ubuntu family.

LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) Xfce runs very nicely and is based on Debian testing so it is about the same as 12.04 which is based on Debian testing.

I am typing this from Debian testing (currently Wheezy) with Xfce4.8. Been using it since November of 2010. Would recommend it highly. There are quite a few update/upgrades so you should not go several days with out running them. You should also install, first thing, the package "apt-listbugs" which will warn you of known bugs against any package you are installing or upgrading.

By avoiding upgrading or installing buggy packages it is at least as stable as Ubuntu and much more nimble. Have not run my update/upgrades today but it is quite a while now since I had a package with a bug against it. Should be going into "freeze" fairly soon too so that will lower the number of bugs a good bit (after freeze most package upgrades will be performance or bug fixes).

Runs better than either Xubuntu 12.04 or LMDE Xfce. Both of those have a lot of Gnome packages installed to "improve" it.

I did that with my install for a while until I learned the ropes of Xfce and realized it was just damned silly.

Folks have mentioned Fedora here. I have Fedora 17beta Xfce installed on here. Runs, pretty buggy. Fedora 16 did not impress me. You may want to try it but use the Live Session on the Live CD and be sure to install something (you can do that with out persistence but it will be gone when you reboot). The reason I say that is that you may not like the package management system. You may love it. Many folks do. I hate it and always have.

Other than that it is a pretty nice distro.

I think you will find that Ubuntu is going down hill stability and quality wise.

Ubuntu studio isnt the same as 'normal' ubuntu.

Besides a few other differences, ubuntu studio 12.04 uses the Xfce destkop, not unity.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/12.04release_notes

Ah, quit keeping track of Ubuntu. Probably should check up on it from time to time.

Install debdelta and forget using upgrade manager (I know you personally don't use upgrade manager). Try this instead

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Thanks for all the input guys,

I've been away and just now seen all this response. Very cool!

I simply installed psensor and was referring to that. I cold go into the BIOS and see what it says I guess or is there a better way to ensure I have the right temp readings?

That seems likely the crux of the issue. I guess when I checked the supported CPU's I missed that. I'll need to go to Gigabyte and see what I can do, maybe a BIOS update...

Was that suggestion aimed at me? Will try that this week end.

I actually threw a small drive in there and installed Win7 just for sh!%$ and giggles. While the graphics card performed poorly I believe that is just because it was cheap and low spec. The 'Rate this Computer' showed a 7.4 for both CPU and RAM which seemed reasonable and the UI was snappy. I'll not go back there for real use on principal so all the input here is most appreciated.

Hopefully over the week end I can do some of the things mentioned here and get back with the results. Again thanks for the great feedback thus far, despite using Linux as my desktop since '97 I am just a user and some of this more 'esoteric' stuff is, I must admit, a bit beyond what I would come up with myself.

regards

I loaded Ubuntu 12.04 on a 64-bit computer with 8 gigabytes of RAM.

It was slower than the Ubuntu I loaded on a 32-bit computer with 2 gigabytes of RAM.

Are there ways to speed up Ubuntu?