new kde on f13 is very noisy!

[Chris Rouch]

On 8 November 2010 21:07, Chris Rouch <chris.rouch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8 November 2010 17:13, Rex Dieter <rdieter at math.unl.edu> wrote:
>> On 11/08/2010 03:02 AM, Chris Rouch wrote:
>>> Over the weekend yum pulled in the newest version of kde for f13
>>> (4.5.2 I think). Since I rebooted and logged in my laptop seems to
>>> have the fan going most of the time. Gkrellm shows both CPUs are doing
>>> something, and top confirms that kwin and plasma desktop are each
>>> using between 10% and 30% CPU. For comparison on my f12 desktop at
>>> work they use between 2 and 5% cpu.  I don't know what the used before
>>> the upgrade, but I do know the fan was usually off except when the
>>> machine was loaded.
>>>
>>> This happens with only one window (firefox), and that only having a
>>> couple of tabs open.
>>>
>>> Is this something I can change? If so, where do I need to look?
>>
>> Depends on a lot of things.
>>
>> What video driver is in use?
>
> Latest nvidia, from rpmfusion
>>
>> What arch?
>
> x86_64
>
>>
>> Is flash installed, and any applets running in any of those flash tabs
>> you mention?
>
> Yes it is installed, but none of the tabs are visibly using it (I
> had/have gmail and a bbc news page open - the latter is static).
>
>>
>> Are destkop effects enabled?  Which effects?  (blur in particular, is
>> known to cause degraded performance/load with many driver combinations).
>
> Desktop effects are enabled. I had blur enabled and I've just disabled
> it. No immediate effect - the fan is still spinning, though the cpu
> percentages are now down to 10-15%.
>
> Switching off all desktop effects makes a big difference. kwin is no
> longer in top's list of cpu hogs, and plasma desktop sits around 1%
> until I actually do something, when it goes to around 15%.
>

I think it was shadow that was actually doing the damage on my laptop.
I started disabling the effects I didn't care about until the cpu
dropped.

Chris