High xorg CPU usage

[mcouper]

Recently I got the Tiny Core Linux forum community to help me configure a dual screen setup so I could use rdesktop on my Wyse 9450xe thin client to connect on the LAN to the work Windows 2008R2 server.

The only problem I now have is that some applications via rdesktop (especially scrolling in Excel) cause CPU usage to get past 70% (per htop) and things go sluggish.

My video card is a radeon 7000VE series and I have installed the ati video extension.

I am (still) very much a noob at linux, so if you need any logs etc you may have to explain in detail (or steps) how I go about getting this information.

Any idea how I can tackle this high CPU usage problem?

[curaga]

It's a very weak cpu. It's possible scrolling is a bad case for remote desktop, and that cpu just cannot handle it - if you test on a more powerful machine with the same setup, does the cpu spike there too when scrolling?

[mcouper]

Hi curaga

My comparison would be against our previous hardware, being Wyse S10 thin clients with an even lower spec CPU that Remote Desktop had no problems with.

Any other suggestions?

[curaga]

Was that with the same software?

[Rich]

Hi mcouper

It's possible scrolling is a bad case for remote desktop, ...

Scrolling is a bad case for a remote desktop connection. It is video intensive due to all the repainting going on. It can
also be network intensive when scrolling through a large file by grabbing and dragging the scrollbar. Less so when
using the mouses scroll wheel.

[mcouper]

Hi curaga and Rich,

The Wyse S10 (SX0) uses its own proprietary software to RDP (looks like some form of Linux).

It has 128Mb RAM and a AMD Geode GX 366MHz processor.


The Wyse 9450xe has 256Mb RAM (I actually have 2x256MB RAM in mine) and uses a VIA 550MHz processor. I am running Tiny Core 3.0.21 and using the latest xorg and rdesktop extensions. My video card is PCI Radeon 7000 VE and I have installed xf86-video-ati and firmware-radeon extensions.


My scrolling issues in Excel are even for small files and I mainly use the mouse scroll wheel.

I have googled the issue and wonder if there is some sort of rendering or acceleration issue? (not sure as most of this video stuff is well over my head)

[mcouper]

Just getting back to some basics for comparison;

With a fresh TC install, no Xorg or ati video drivers, but rdesktop loaded: function of redesktop is pretty fast and scrolling in Excel not bad (still a little bit of latency for large mouse scrolls, but short scrolls instantaneous).

Of course this is with having the two monitors showing the same mirrored screen.

So at this stage I would have to presume the difference between the basic setup and my Xorg Radeon 7000/VE dual screen setup must be something to do with either the video driver or something in Xorg?

Is there anything else like Xfree86 that I could try instead?

[curaga]

Well, there are some tunables in xorg.conf you can try, like Option "NoAccel" "on".

[mcouper]

I have tried Option "NoAccel" "true"  and Option "NoAccel" "on" in my xorg.conf file but both cause the monitors to go black with no output (turn off).