Description of problem: Running some application which spawns about 30 lines/sec to a GNOME terminal instance, Xorg adds up to > 32% of the system load according to the process list when a bitmap font is chosen. For some antialiased font, the load goes down (!) to about 18% which is still mich higher than for F8 where the corresponding system load was ~ 3%. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.901-23.20080415.fc9 How reproducible: Always. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Run some program in a shell which produces a continuous medium rate text output while running. 2. Run 'top'. Actual results: X is listed to be consuming ~ 32% percent or more. Expected results: X consumes less than 5% Additional info: - Issue is absent for a fully updated F8 system using ATI driver version 6.8.0 as does rawhide where low 1 digit figures for Xorg and gnome-terminal are observed. - Running the code in xterm does not produce any noticeable CPU load, maybe < 2%. - Choosing 'Luxi Mono' or some other --aliased-- font instead of a standard bitmap font like 'Console' allows to cut the CPU load down to ~ 18%.
Created attachment 303577 [details] xorg.conf as produced by anaconda plus a 1400x1050 mode entry
Created attachment 303580 [details] Xorg.0.log for attached xorg.conf
Created attachment 303583 [details] Xorg.0.log when run w/o xorg.conf
Created attachment 303585 [details] Xorg.0.log for accelmethod exa System load slightly increases to almost 40% when EXA is enabled. The video card is an ATI Radeon AIW X800.
As stressed in my original report, F8 is not affected even though it has the latest driver version 6.8.0, too. Setting component to xorg-x11-drv-ati thus appears questionable.
Yes, you are right, I screwed up, but I am not sure that Xserver component is much better. Let's try to blame gnome-terminal (apparently the problem is somewhere there, because you cannot reproduce it with xterm). Alternative would be xfs (because bitmap fonts suck), but let's try gnome-terminal first.
No change after downgrading to gnome-terminal-2.18.4-1.fc8.
I have checked against Ubuntu 8.04, and for antialised fonts, system load varies between ~ 20% for accelmethod 'xaa' and ~ 40% for 'exa' which is enormous, too. Bitmap fonts were not available. Here, Xorg is at version 7.3 and GNOME at 2.22 whereas F8 sports Xorg 7.2. Not conclusive ..
Changing version to '9' as part of upcoming Fedora 9 GA. More information and reason for this action is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
Issue still persists for current F9 including updates-testing. The xfs font server is clearly not involved since the Fedora default setup does not include it, and I have not added it afterwards. People using a dual core system will hardly even notice the issue but on a single core system, the impact on the system performance is significant. I still observe that using aliased fonts reduces the Xorg load from about 40% for bitmap fonts to about 20% which is still a lot.
This issue is resolved or at least greatly reduced as of GNOME 2.24.x as included in recent F10 snapshots releases.
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