Comment 19 for bug 107545

Stange, on my working system (8.04.2, Pentium M 2GHz) the sampling_rate_min is 10000 and setting sampling_rate to this value is possible. Did you try the 2 commands "sudo su; echo ..." or only "sudo echo ..."? The first one works here.

As I understand it: lowering the sampling_rate makes the measuring of CPU load "more instant". 40000 makes a CPU load of 70% mean: during the last 40000 ms the CPU was used 70% of the time. So if a flash video decoder encounters more complex frames then the system will detect this only 40000 ms later.

You could try it with a Live-CD of Jaunty final, without changing anything in /sys. If it is still reproducible on your machine then there is a (serious) problem and you should report it here and add what CPU you have:

$ sudo lshw -C processor

Also try disabling any Desktop effects ("Compiz"). Video drivers seem under heavy development since Jaunty.