From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Aug 25 03:16:58 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C1AD16A41F for ; Thu, 25 Aug 2005 03:16:58 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mark@mkproductions.org) Received: from ylpvm29.prodigy.net (ylpvm29-ext.prodigy.net [207.115.57.60]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 382FD43D45 for ; Thu, 25 Aug 2005 03:16:57 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mark@mkproductions.org) Received: from pimout3-ext.prodigy.net (pimout3-int.prodigy.net [207.115.4.218]) by ylpvm29.prodigy.net (8.12.10 outbound/8.12.10) with ESMTP id j7P3Gn4u002788 for ; Wed, 24 Aug 2005 23:16:49 -0400 X-ORBL: [66.139.109.225] Received: from [192.168.1.25] (ppp-66-139-109-225.dsl.stlsmo.swbell.net [66.139.109.225]) by pimout3-ext.prodigy.net (8.13.4 outbound domainkey aix/8.13.4) with ESMTP id j7P3GqtO310912 for ; Wed, 24 Aug 2005 23:16:53 -0400 Message-ID: <430D3823.9070301@mkproductions.org> Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 22:16:51 -0500 From: Mark Kane User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (X11/20050816) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Performance Issues with AMD64 3000+, 1.5GB RAM, FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 03:16:58 -0000 Hi everyone. Last night I finally worked out some issues with my AMD64 machine and got it up and operational. It's an AMD64 3000+ with 1.5GB RAM, and five 7200RPM hard drives (total of 720 gigs) running FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE (amd64). When doing testing and initial install/configuration of this machine (compiling apps and such) I didn't notice this too much, but now that I'm actually using it this is starting to be noticeable. The issue I'm having is that every minute or two, I will hear some stuttering in any audio/video playback (will see the video freeze if video), and my mouse will freeze for a few seconds as well while this happens. It seems to happen more frequently if I have something doing disk I/O, such as downloads running, untarring files, or torrents. Right now, I have the following applications open: Xorg Xfce X-Chat Mozilla Firefox (Only about 10 tabs, as opposed to my normal 40-50 tabs) Terminal XMMS Mozilla Thunderbird rtorrent I initially noticed it on this machine when untarring a 20MB tar.bz2 file, and I figured with it untarring that a little audio stuttering would be expected. Then today, I started noticing it when doing normal things. All I'm doing now is just light browsing with XMMS and X-Chat open, and maybe one download going. While my AMD64 was out of commission, I was using an Athlon XP 2000+ with 1GB of RAM and an old slower hard drive. It ran FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE as well. I noticed the same stutters in audio/video playback and freezing of the mouse there, although it was much more frequent. Here is a top output from just now: last pid: 59025; load averages: 0.07, 0.08, 0.12 59 processes: 1 running, 58 sleeping CPU states: 4.3% user, 0.0% nice, 2.3% system, 1.6% interrupt, 91.8% idle Mem: 841M Active, 245M Inact, 194M Wired, 72M Cache, 162M Buf, 2300K Free Swap: 3045M Total, 96K Used, 3045M Free So basically I'm wondering if there are any OS optimizations or anything I am missing to reduce this? I'm not sure why on this type of hardware with not even using half of what I normally would have open (at least Firefox tabs wise) it would cause so many hiccups like this. Thanks in advance for any opinions or suggestions. -Mark