Strange cpu activity

[S3R3NITY]

Hi,
I've got Mandriva 2008 Spring running on a machine with an AMD 3800 Sempron processor, integrated ATI graphics and 1.5GB of RAM. I've noticed the fan kicking in really often when I'm only doing fairly routine things like emailing or web surfing, so I checked in Htop and there's a process that's internittently hogging up to 95-96% of my CPU.
I've included a screengrab below, and if anyone can help me find out what's going on I would be very grateful.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

X Server is creating problems. It looks like you haven't configure graphics card and using wrong driver. Have you installed ATI Proprietary driver?
Execute this

su -
/sbin/lspci | grep -i vga
grep -i driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Post output here.

[S3R3NITY]

Hi devils casper - thanks for your welcome and quick reply.
I tried your suggestions and here's the output:

root@localhost steve]# /sbin/lspci | grep -i vga
bash: /sbin/lspci: No such file or directory
[root@localhost steve]# grep -i driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Driver "kbd"
Driver "mouse"
Driver "fglrx"

As you can see, the first command bombed out, but the second reveals I have the fglrx driver running, which is correct AFAIK for my ATI graphics.

[devils casper]

As you can see, the first command bombed out,

Try this

lspci | grep -i vga

the second reveals I have the fglrx driver running, which is correct AFAIK for my ATI graphics.

Yes. Thats correct for ATI. How did you install ATI driver?

[S3R3NITY]

[root@localhost steve]# lspci | grep -i vga
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 [Radeon X1200 Series]

And re the ATI fglrx driver - I didn't install anything, it came with the initial Mandriva 2008 Spring install which is only a few days old. All I have installed are a couple of apps from the repo - Leafpad, Thunderbird, some Mplayer plugins, w32 codecs etc. The updater icon has been flashing for two days but I haven't run it, either, as there are hundreds of MBs of packages listed.

[devils casper]

It means Mandriva support your card out of box but as its hogging CPU, something is wrong.
Replace "fglrx" with "vesa" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and check if lower down CPU usage. vesa doesn't support 3D and we are going to use it for testing only.
Edit file and reboot machine.

su -
nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

In case nano is not pre-installed, use pico or vi.

[S3R3NITY]

Hi devils casper,
Looks like you were right - I changed to the vesa driver and cpu activity is dramatically reduced, down to 1 or 2%, and fan isn't firing up anywhere near as often.
Given that I don't actually need 3D performance on this machine, I'm going to leave it running the vesa driver.
It does make you wonder, however, why this happened in the first place - I've installed Mandriva 2008 on other machines and not seen this happen with the fglrx driver.
Thanks very much for your help.

[devils casper]

Glad to help you !
Mandriva didn't install correct driver for your card. I will look for driver of your card, ATI Technologies Inc RS690 [Radeon X1200 Series] and let you know pretty soon.