Slow Screen Saver

[Mac_linux]

Finally after swapping an old hard drive for a new one, upgraded my CD-ROM to a 52X CD-RW, and a fresh new install onto the new hard drive... I have noticed that my screen saver is not performing very well at all.

Specs:

AK32A mobo w/ VIA KT266A chipset
512M ram
AMD XP 2000+ (1.67Ghz.)
OS - SuSE 8.1

The screen saver in question is the one titled Matrix... just like out of the movie..

On the old system.. a much slower drive I might add, the screen saver worked very well, not choppy at all. Now after the upgrade to a much faster hard drive... and fresh OS install, the screen saver performs chuncky... using the same settings in the screen saver setup as well.

I dont know why it would perform slower? I need some ideas why. Could it be a BIOS setting? Is it due to the new CD-RW.. since its using a scsi emulator to work correctly?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[kriss]

Do you have (u)dma enabled at your harddisk?

Could you run something like, hdparm -tT /dev/hdX where X is your harddrive?

And what video card do you have?

Good luck

[Mac_linux]

(u)dma what? lol

Not sure what that is nor the command line you asked me to type..

Please give more details... thank you.

[variant]

this is what Kriss means:

1. hdparm is a linux application: hdparm - get/set hard disk parameters - if you type "man hdparm" in a terminal window you will get all the info you ever need concerning this app.

2.Heer is what the -Tt options he asked you to use mean:

-T Perform timings of cache reads for benchmark and comparison pur-
poses. For meaningful results, this operation should be
repeated 2-3 times on an otherwise inactive system (no other
active processes) with at least a couple of megabytes of free
memory.
-t Perform timings of device reads for benchmark and comparison
purposes. For meaningful results, this operation should be
repeated 2-3 times on an otherwise inactive system (no other
active processes) with at least a couple of megabytes of free
memory.

(u)dma is an acsess mode on modern drives that increases hard disk performance in a big way. with linux it is not allwase on by default. the command he asked you to perform would give and indication of your disks current performance. for example heer is what the command does with my first hard disk (hda): bash-2.05b#

hdparm -tT /dev/hda
hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 956 MB in 2.00 seconds = 478.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 8 MB in 3.53 seconds = 2.27 MB/sec
bash-2.05b#

[Mac_linux]

Thanks...tested my results below:

on average...

hda - fresh linux SuSE 8.1
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.52 seconds =246.15 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.15 seconds = 55.65 MB/sec

hdb - just data, and stuff
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.56 seconds =228.57 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 7.18 seconds = 8.91 MB/sec


Woops... will post anyway... just noticed the mb differences..
will do a couple more tests and post again

[Mac_linux]

I can't find where to change the ram settings.. (from 128 & 64)

Is this a setting or an automatic thing?

Also strange to note... why is my secondary drive, which is much older and slower have almost an equal result for the 128 but much less on the 64?

More questions... thanks for the info!

[Dolda2000]

That's not a RAM setting - it's just how large transfer it tests. Since it doesn't matter that much, it's not a setting.

The buffer-cache read test doesn't test the hard drive - it tests the kernel's buffer cache throughput when run through that driver. It's only the buffered disk read test that tests the hard drive. The reason that it runs both is to be able to compensate the result from the disk read test with the data from the buffer-cache read test.
Thus basically, it's really just the result of the buffered disk read test that is of interest when testing the hardware.

[Mac_linux]

OK...

So how do my results compare and what do they mean as far as my problem with the screen saver being so chuncky?

Thanks for the info, its so cool learning more and more about linux everyday!

[Dolda2000]

The result on hda was most impressive. I've never gotten beyond 40 MB/sec on any hard drive. I don't think that the HD performance would concern the screen saver anyway. It's more likely that some other process is running in the background, stealing CPU cycles from the screensaver (which usually runs at nice level 10 or so). Another possibility is that you might not have optimal video card drivers.

What video card do you have? Are you running GNOME or KDE?

[Mac_linux]

Am using an older card.. that I recycled from an older computer..

ATI 3D Rage II+ 215GTB (Mach64 GTB)

Im running and have always ran even before this new install KDE 3

Everything was fine until I did this new install with the hard drive...

Linux is finding the driver for the card, the monitor, etc...

Am not sure what process would be causing such a drain..

For example, right now im running xmms, mozilla 1.5, konqueror file browser, system guard, and the mozilla mail client.

and am only at .5 - 1.5 % on user and system loads..


BTW-- the hard drive I have upgraded to is a 120GB. SEAGATE ST3120026A 8mb buffer

Well thanks for continuing the help, I appreciate it!