Jerky mouse movement/seq performance issues

[Kuonji]

I have a k6-2 550 with 196 megs of pc-133 ram, diamond viper card running completely fresh install of redhat 7.2 and cvs version of seq and I notice that while running seq sometimes I'll get very jerky mouse movements across all of xwindows, and extremely slow response times when clicking on things in seq itself. Then after a while it'll go away....and then be back again. Turning on or off 'Fast computer' doesn't seem to be making any signifigant difference either way. Changing the frame rate doesn't seem to help much either.

Any suggestions?

[Yendor]

have you taken the framerate all the way down to 1?

[Kuonji]

I don't believe the framerate is an issue...this is an intermittant problem. I'm in OT right now, full map view, 10 fps...and I'm getting no mouse or client lag at *all*.....but i can be in splitpaw, zoomed in, with like 3 things on the map and it can be jerky.

It's random..

[Cryonic]

Have you verified that it is SEQ causing the lag and not some external program eating up resources that SEQ needs?

top is your friend.

[Kuonji]

As I said. This is a completely fresh install of Redhat 7.2. If there are any programs running in the background eating up resources, they are there because RH 7.2 wants them there I suppose.

[Cryonic]

In other words, nope. Makes it kinda hard to troubleshoot the issue on what little information you have given.

Customer "My computer doesn't work, make it work"
Tech "What doesn't work?"
Customer "My computer doesn't work, make it work"

top is your friend.

[Kuonji]

ARGH! wtf man =p


Clean install of RH 7.2. Gnome environment. NO background programs running.


I ran the cpu usage applet that showed cpu usage over time.


Sometimes (Such as in OT I've noticed), I can run at 10fps with 2 map windows open, zoomed fully in or fully out, and I'll have smooth system performance, the cpu usage hanging around 60%.


Then, I'll camp and bring in a character in a different zone, qeynos north or paw. The mouse will be jerky, response time slow, and CPU usage at a constant 100%, no matter how many maps are open, no matter what the framerate...

What exactly do you want to know that I haven't told you? My setup isn't more complex than what I've already described.

[fee]

Clean install of RH 7.2. Gnome environment.

hmm, i think you might have discovered the problem...

fee

[Kuonji]

So I should *not* have chosen Gnome Workstation?

Isn't that the default?

Isn't that what most people choose?

[fryfrog]

i would suggest dropping down from 10fps to about 2-3fps. unlike most first person shooters, having a fast frame rate on your map isn't going to do you a ton of good. most of these mobs (including yourself) don't really move that fast to start off with. it will save you a lot of cpu time. i personally play at 2fps and can't say that i miss those 8 frames per second.

i believe that a large number of people prefer kde over gnome, but in redhat and mandrake (as long as you have installed both kde and gnome) it is fairly easy to switch back and forth. try them both out.

personally, i found that mandrake seems to just perform better than redhat. i personally think its due to the optimization for pentium+, but i spose it could be something else.

[Kuonji]

I've tried down to 1fps, the CPU usage does *not* drop down from 100%.

I'm assuming by the responses that this isn't a common issue, so I won't expect a common fix. I suppose I will mess around and perhaps upgrade my system with a faster processor. The thing that upsets me the most is the randomness of this problem. Sometimes it will be fantastic, other times it's jerky, slow, and processor intensive. I see no common denominator between those times.

[high_jeeves]

Run "top" from the command line, and look at what is taking all of your processor time. On some systems, Xapm (power management) appears to take 100% of processor time when it really isnt. Watch top when ShowEQ slows down so we can see if it is really a ShowEQ problem or something else.

"NO background programs running"

Wow, how are you running ShowEQ without atleast running X and about 15 other standard services? Thats impressive...

[Kuonji]

None as in none initiated manually by me.

I will look at top and see what it has to say...hopefully it'll help..

Thanks for the advice =)

[Kuonji]

Update:

I logged on a newbie in qeynos with seq running. I started getting the jerky mouse movement so I ran top in a terminal window on top of my seq window.

Seq itself is using 11 percent of the cpu, X itself is using around 90 percent of the cpu.

If I switch to another workspace where seq isn't being displayed and look at top again, seq is using 1 percent of the cpu and X is using under 1 percent of the cpu. Mouse movements return to normal.

Nothing else is using anything over 1 percent of cpu or memory usage...

[high_jeeves]

What window manager are you using? Some people on these boards have mentioned issues with certain window managers...

(ie, KDE, Gnome, or some other WM?)

-jeeves