How about this one?

[jokersloose]

I load Mint on my ex's desktop. Loaded fine got everything up and running. However, it seems to bog down when she's surfing the net. So I opened system monitor and her CPU is maxing out too 100% when she's on the net. I checked the processes and I didn't see anything that is putting such a heavy load on it. She has a Dell 2400, 2.6 GHz, 1 gig RAM, 80 gig Hard Drive, 256 ATI video card. For the most part it is a mirror of my desktop. I have a Dell 4200, same proccessor speed, same ram, 250 HD, and a 128 Nvidia video card. When I open my system monitor and put a heavy load on my system. Upload pictures to a web site,open a new tab and web surf, play a video, play the radio from Amorak it will peak to 100% but for the most part it runs at about 50% to 75% of the CPU.

Now mine is hardwired to the network and her's is wireless. Does that make a difference in how the CPU works?

Thanks for the help,

James

[MagnusB]

Are you mixing CPU frequency scaling with CPU load? If you have an applet on the panel, I am guessing you just see the scaling, meaning the CPU is scaled down to 50%, 75%, etc, not the actual load. If you want to investigate further use top (or htop) in terminal.

[jokersloose]

I could be. I'm basing this post off the graph from the pre-installed system monitor. And the fact mine just runs better. Hers seems to really "bog" down when shes loading web page like her myyahoo home page, myspace. But mine with almost mirrored spec's loads the same pages just fine. I took a few screen shots if anyone would like to take a look, I think they show better then I can explain.

This one is mine sitting idle
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/ ... ngidle.png

Hers sitting idle
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/ ... ngidle.png

Mine downloading a song from frostwire:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/ ... stwire.png

Hers downloading the same song from frostwire:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/ ... stwire.png

Sorry for the long links, don't know y'all make it do the "click here" option.

However, do to the bog her system is having and the "looks" of the graph I assume there is something drawing off the CPU on hers.

Thanks,
James

[MagnusB]

From top it looks like Xorg is the biggest culprit, using around 20% CPU at all times (which is about normal). Did you see what software that caused the spike to 100%? From the sound of it, it could either be frostwire or network related.
EDIT:
Top shows 40% usage, while system monitor shows 100%, are you running these at the same time? Didn't see gnome-system-... in top at first glance..

[jokersloose]

Yes I ran them side by side to get the screen shots I posted. Hers is a fresh install the only thing I have added is frostwire. The reason she agreed to Mint was the speed in which mine ran.

[MagnusB]

I am stomped, you might need to use top and system monitor together to find the culprit, it might be mintMenu acting up, though. Try using the process viewer in gnome-system-monitor to find what takes up 100% CPU. The strange thing is that top only shows 40% load... BTW, is it a dual core?

[proxima_centauri]

What about ATI drivers, did you install those yet?

[jokersloose]

Nope single core, 2.8 in fact. Yeah I have looked at a few different things and I can't really find a reason for it too run so slow. I even hardwired it too see if maybe the wireless card was loading to slow. But I'll re-check the process viewer and make sure I didn't miss anything the first go around. It is faster than the "other" OS that was on it, but it's not running like she wants (ie: Like mine, LOL)

What about ATI drivers, did you install those yet?

I tried to install it via Envy. But when I re-boot all I get is a white screen. Had to boot into safe grapic's to uninstall so I can have a desktop.

Thanks,
James