100% CPU usage in Wine-0.9

[Mark Knecht]

On 11/10/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/10/05, Stefan Dösinger <stefandoesinger at gmx.at> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > >    NOTE - I do not think this is somethign new. I've seen programs
> > > running under Wine in the past using 100% CPU, but they were big
> > > complicated programs and not available freely so it would have been
> > > hard to work on. I think with the information I've given in the first
> > > post this should be something more people should be able to look at
> > > more easily.
> > This is odd, I downloaded the programs, but I can't reproduce the behaviour.
> > Triangle seems to work just fine - I can play sounds(or, better, I could, if
> > I had more idea of music ;-) ). Hardly any CPU usage.
> > With crystal running, I get 1% user, 0.3% system cpu usage, but I can't hear
> > any sounds. Are there any settings I have to change to make the program play
> > something?
>
> No difference here. Both play fine for me on Linux and Windows with no
> fooling around.
>
> >
> > So the usual questions arise:
> > *What kernel do you have(I have 2.6.14.1)
>
> 2.6.14-rt6
>
> > *What X version(X.Org 6.8)
>
> xorg-x11-6.8.2-r6
>
> > *Graphics card + driver(Radeon mobility M9, fglrx)
>
> Radeon X300 (PCIE), radeon driver from the kernel
>
> > *Sound card + driver(some realtek audio, snd-intel8x0)
>
> NForce4 CK804 + snd-intel8x0
> RME HDSP 9652 + snd-hdsp
>
> >
> > The high system cpu usage looks suspicios, there might be a driver issue. I've
> > seen this behavior with the radeon driver from X.org and Battlefield 1942.
>
> Indeed, I am using that driver. I have not discovered how to build the
> fglrx driver using 2.6.14-rt6. Additionally there is no DRI support
> (as I understand it) for PCI Express cards until 2.6.15. I have
> 2.6.14.1 unbuilt right now as I normally need realtime capabilities,
> but I'll build it and test it for this problem.
>
> >
> > The fact that the same .exe file produced different behavior is easy to
> > explain: The program seems to be just a loader for a dll file with the same
> > name. So if you exchange the crystal.dll and the triangle I.dll, it's likely
> > that you get changed behavior. So you can even save disk space if you just
> > create symlinks to savihost.exe ;-)
>
> Probably true. I'll try it as I will eventually end up with 100 of
> these little VSTs and Savihost is often bigger then the VST it's
> hosting.
>
> >
> > I suspect my no-sound issue to be connected with the problems you describe.
> > You could try to use different sound drivers(oss, alsa, arts, esd). Arts and
> > esd might be interesting here, because there's no direct hardware access, so
> > there should be no high system cpu usage.
>
> Good ideas. I'll give it a try.
>
> In a related vein, we in the Linux audio community are dieing for
> someone here to pick up maintenance of the Jack driver as most all of
> our apps are Jack based. Currently the Jack driver seems broken as
> there was a Jack API change circa 100.0. Is there anyone here looking
> after that driver?
>
> I'll try other sound options and come back later.
>
> Thanks!
>
> - Mark
>

Hi Stefan,
   I switched to a vanilla 2.6.14.1 kernel and tried both radeon and
fglrx. Identical results:

Wine-0.9 + 2.6.14.1 + radeon driver runing Crystal:

Cpu(s): 16.3% us, 83.7% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si

Wine-0.9 + 2.6.14.1 + fglrx driver running Crystal

Cpu(s): 16.3% us, 83.7% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si

   One thing I noticed about Crystal is that the default sound
actually requires that you press a key hold it for a bit before the
sound gets started. Maybe that's why you didn't hear anything?

   LATE BREAKING NEWS: It appears that when I switch to the Alsa
driver the CPU usage does down to normal. Were you using Alsa or OSS?

Cheers,
Mark