Xorg uses excessive CPU

[Amy H.]

Binary package hint: xorg

I'm running Ubuntu Natty Narwhal beta and Xorg is using from 20 to 90 percent CPU.

I ran top:

gamerchick02@Sidle:~$ top

top - 10:30:10 up 8 min, 2 users, load average: 0.67, 1.54, 1.10
Tasks: 204 total, 4 running, 198 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
Cpu(s): 44.7%us, 1.8%sy, 2.5%ni, 50.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 4023832k total, 2336612k used, 1687220k free, 82616k buffers
Swap: 6144856k total, 0k used, 6144856k free, 728852k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 1230 root 20 0 155m 46m 25m R 83 1.2 3:02.27 Xorg
 4312 boinc 39 19 110m 78m 38m R 7 2.0 0:25.34 einsteinbinary_
 5728 gamerchi 20 0 936m 92m 22m S 3 2.3 0:03.41 chrome
 2708 gamerchi 20 0 685m 150m 43m S 1 3.8 0:26.19 compiz

This results in sluggishness, high fan use, and general frustration.

Sometimes it's cured by restarting (sometimes up to 3 times) other times it happens after a reboot. Sometimes it doesn't manifest itself until after Ubuntu's been running for a few minutes.

Sorry for being vague, but this is not easy to pin down.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

High X CPU bugs are almost always bugs in clients rather than a bug in X. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/HighCPU for help in diagnosing the problem.

[Amy H. (gamerchick02)]

Ok, I know this has been marked as "invalid" (and to tell you the truth, I was a little mad that it was) but I think I figured it out.

I installed the nouveau drivers, disabled the proprietary ones, and enabled the nouveau drivers with "experimental 3D support".

Compiz is working just fine. I'd recommend if someone is using Natty, has an nVidia graphics card, and is having the same issue as I was, to please install the nouveau drivers, enable them, and see if that fixes it. It fixed it for me.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

you're probably going to hit known crashers with the nouveau dri driver, that's why it's not used by default.

[Amy H. (gamerchick02)]

I understand that, but my laptop is now usable with the nouveau driver and I wanted to inform anyone who stumbles on this bug report that it's a fix, even if temporary.