Periodic Lag in games and even screensaver

[TheChaos0]

Hey, I noticed thins wierd problem. Whenever I play games...or if the screensaver is running...it lags...Well every 10 seconds the picture stops for couple miliseconds and then continues...and so on.

It's pretty annoying. Any suggestions?

[dolny]

I have the same problem with ATI Radeon 9600 Pro and latest drivers. PLEASE HELP!!! :( Thats extremely annoying when I want to play and online game :(

[rider343]

I have the same problem with ATI Radeon 9600 Pro and latest drivers. PLEASE HELP!!! :( Thats extremely annoying when I want to play and online game :(
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=24557&highlight=ati+drivers

[dolny]

Erm, how is that supposed to help? I have the drivers installed, I just get the lag in games :/

[foxy123]

it may be that something causes it on the background... in my case it is gdesklets, when I close it, everything is running almost smooth...

[Moobert]

install htop to stop overly cpu using programs

then run from a terminal and press shift + p.. it will list by cpu useage (shift + m does memory useage).. then just press k followed by an action to kill the program... (you wil need to sudo to kill root things... but avoid X and gdm ect :) then just press q to close htop.

[dolny]

Thanks to your advice I have found the source of the problem, but it looks bad because the process is:

http://www.echostar.pl/~dolny/ubuntu/freezes.png

I was playing Quake in the window mode to check the freezes and the freezes occur exactly when this progarm jumps from about 0.7% cpu usage to like 15-20% suddenly for a second. Then it works okay for some time and it happens again.

Help, help, help - PLEASE! I can't play online.

[dolny]

I BEG YOU. HELP!!!

I'm having this damn periodic hardware lag on almost (if not all) every game I play :( It is not a huge problem in single player but I can't play Jedi Academy or any other online game - PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

I'm so depressed ;(

[crane]

I'm having the same problems. I have tried to see if the problem exists on another distro or if it is maybe just Xorg and nvidia.

I Didn't have this problem when I first moved to Hoary though. What nvidia driver is everyone using?
Also what is the easiest way to install newest driver? I know there is a how to but I can't find it.

[dolny]

I'm using ATI Radeon. I also didn't have that problem earlier. Maybe its because of some new kde files? Kde-libs, kdenetworkconf? Dunno. Somebody must give us the answer :(

[crane]

I'm using ATI Radeon. I also didn't have that problem earlier. Maybe its because of some new kde files? Kde-libs, kdenetworkconf? Dunno. Somebody must give us the answer :(

Ok if your running ATI then my guess it's not video card related. I'm running nvidia. I'm also not KDE because I don't have it installed either.

It has to be some process running that is causing it.

[dolny]

Well I mentioned the process thats taking up to 45% of my cpu every 10-15 seconds. I mentioned it before (you can find the screen couple of posts earlier). Unfortunately its the X server.

I installed the newest KDE: 3.4.1
I tried almost every possible fglrxconfig configuration

Still no change :( I can't play games on Kubuntu. This SUCKS!

[dolny]

After spending the whole day on checking everything, installing new KDE, configuring fglrxconfig in different ways and reading many pages in the net, I SOLVED the problem :D

I killed the 'kicker' process in KDE (even though it wasn't even using 1% of cpu, according to kde system guard and htop) and checked the performance. No hardware LAGS! Then I switched 'kicker' on - again - 10 seconds of good performance, 2 seconds of lag (45% cpu occupied by Xorg) etc.

So... I have to find another taskbar... or turn it off when I play.

Check if killing the 'kicker' process (from root) worked for you. If it did - we can send the bug to bugzilla.

Edit: On my kicker, an 'mbar' applet (custom) was probably causing it. But it as well may be for example kmix on your kicker.

[crane]

After spending the whole day on checking everything, installing new KDE, configuring fglrxconfig in different ways and reading many pages in the net, I SOLVED the problem :D

I killed the 'kicker' process in KDE (even though it wasn't even using 1% of cpu, according to kde system guard and htop) and checked the performance. No hardware LAGS! Then I switched 'kicker' on - again - 10 seconds of good performance, 2 seconds of lag (45% cpu occupied by Xorg) etc.

So... I have to find another taskbar... or turn it off when I play.

Check if killing the 'kicker' process (from root) worked for you. If it did - we can send the bug to bugzilla.

Edit: On my kicker, an 'mbar' applet (custom) was probably causing it. But it as well may be for example kmix on your kicker.

I'm running gnome and I don't see kicker running. I think I'm going to install Xfce and see if the problem is there as well.
I do have a notification aplet running. I wonder if that could be it.

So all you Q3 players, what servers do you play on? Would be cool to meet up wit other Ubuntu users for some fraggin!

[Gnobody]

I had this problem only it was gamin in Gnome.

[crane]

Just recently installed the latest Nvidia drivers. Will play tonight and see it I notice a lag.

[cofko]

I was having the same periodic lags in normal desktop usage (not gaming or whatever) - it was gDesklets . I was using 0.35.3-4ubuntu2 version from gutsy gibbon repos. I removed it and installed this 0.36 deb package : http://greenie.sk/ubuntu/gdesklets-0.369_i386.deb

Now it works with no problem :)