SuSE 9.3 slow on Turion64 (nx6125)
I got a new HP nx6125 laptop and installed SuSE 9.3 on it. The install went well, but undortunately the machine runs very slow. At first it would ONLY run at 800MHz - no scaling. Then I disabled the PowerNow in the BIOS (after some googling) and now the machine runs at its proper speed. It seems that the powernow_k8 module does not work. These are messages that I see in the logs: --<snip>-- powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron processors (version 1.00.09e) powernow-k8: 0 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x4 (1450 mV) powernow-k8: 1 : fid 0x8 (1600 MHz), vid 0x6 (1400 mV) powernow-k8: 2 : fid 0x0 (800 MHz), vid 0x16 (1000 mV) cpu_init done, current fid 0xa, vid 0x2 powernow-k8: ph2 null fid transition 0xa --<snip>-- Unfortunately it is still slow, becuase the CPU would go up to 100% and stay there for the smallest thing, like opening a menu. The CPU never really settles down. When nothing is happening on the machine, the CPU usage would jump up every now and again. So, I ran top to see what is keeping the CPU so busy and this is where it gets weird. There are no processes taking up lots of CPU time, but the 'si' value hovers between 45% and 50% all the time. I have no idea what cause that and I also connot figure out what 'si' refers to - man page on top does not say. See below for top output and cpuinfo. I also see a lot of APIC errors in the log: --<snip>-- kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 40(40) --<snip>-- It is like working on a PII 256 MHz machine with 128 MB RAM. Very frustrating. top: --<snip>-- top - 04:08:04 up 1:13, 4 users, load average: 0.55, 0.97, 1.11 Tasks: 104 total, 1 running, 103 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 10.9% us, 3.1% sy, 0.0% ni, 31.7% id, 2.3% wa, 4.2% hi, 47.8% si Mem: 1929324k total, 448652k used, 1480672k free, 57132k buffers Swap: 2104504k total, 0k used, 2104504k free, 179708k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 7169 root 15 0 169m 28m 6136 S 14.1 1.5 6:53.50 X 7495 andre 16 0 56960 8900 6260 S 8.6 0.5 7:40.22 gkrellm 7852 andre 15 0 115m 22m 9.8m S 3.9 1.2 3:50.76 gnome-terminal 9856 andre 17 0 4284 1176 868 R 3.4 0.1 0:01.26 top 7033 root 17 0 14492 2644 1644 S 0.5 0.1 0:28.45 hald 7532 andre 15 0 81104 9556 7476 S 0.5 0.5 0:14.56 battstat-applet 6785 root 15 0 11444 1468 1272 S 0.3 0.1 0:18.61 powersaved --<snip>-- cpuinfo: --<snip>-- andre@fullyautomatix:~> cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 15 model : 36 model name : AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile ML-34 stepping : 2 cpu MHz : 1795.607 cache size : 1024 KB fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 pni syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni lahf_lm bogomips : 3522.56 TLB size : 1024 4K pages clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: ts fid vid ttp [4] [5] --<snip>- Any help will be appreciated. Thanks PS: I ran the machine with the SuSE 9.3 live DVD and the CPU usage was normal and the machine was very responsive, as it should be. But the DVD is only 32-bit. -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~
Hi Andre, It is a nice laptop indeed (exactly like mine), however, the linux support for the ATI chipset and the WLan card is, how to say, not perfect yet. Most of the problems go away if you can fix the "too fast clock" problem (see also a previous message "[suse-amd64] Quick System Clock" and the related ones). Since there is no official working kernel patch I'm aware of, you should do it yourself and recompile the kernel. If there will be no other tip from the SuSE gurus, I'll help you out how to make the patch. For the moment I have no time for it and the machine is currently running from the non-linux partition :-) Good luck! Ödön Ödön Farkas Research associate professor Deparment of Organic Chemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest Address: 1/A Pázmány Péter sétány, H-117 Budapest, Hungary Phone: +36-1-372-2570 Cell phone: +36-30-255-3111 Fax: +36-1-372-2620 URL: http://organ.elte.hu/farkas -----Original Message----- From: Andre Truter [mailto:andre.truter@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 2:07 AM To: suse-amd64@suse.com Subject: [suse-amd64] SuSE 9.3 slow on Turion64 (nx6125) I got a new HP nx6125 laptop and installed SuSE 9.3 on it. The install went well, but undortunately the machine runs very slow. At first it would ONLY run at 800MHz - no scaling. Then I disabled the PowerNow in the BIOS (after some googling) and now the machine runs at its proper speed. It seems that the powernow_k8 module does not work. These are messages that I see in the logs: --<snip>-- powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron processors (version 1.00.09e) powernow-k8: 0 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x4 (1450 mV) powernow-k8: 1 : fid 0x8 (1600 MHz), vid 0x6 (1400 mV) powernow-k8: 2 : fid 0x0 (800 MHz), vid 0x16 (1000 mV) cpu_init done, current fid 0xa, vid 0x2 powernow-k8: ph2 null fid transition 0xa --<snip>-- Unfortunately it is still slow, becuase the CPU would go up to 100% and stay there for the smallest thing, like opening a menu. The CPU never really settles down. When nothing is happening on the machine, the CPU usage would jump up every now and again. So, I ran top to see what is keeping the CPU so busy and this is where it gets weird. There are no processes taking up lots of CPU time, but the 'si' value hovers between 45% and 50% all the time. I have no idea what cause that and I also connot figure out what 'si' refers to - man page on top does not say. See below for top output and cpuinfo. I also see a lot of APIC errors in the log: --<snip>-- kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 40(40) --<snip>-- It is like working on a PII 256 MHz machine with 128 MB RAM. Very frustrating. top: --<snip>-- top - 04:08:04 up 1:13, 4 users, load average: 0.55, 0.97, 1.11 Tasks: 104 total, 1 running, 103 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 10.9% us, 3.1% sy, 0.0% ni, 31.7% id, 2.3% wa, 4.2% hi, 47.8% si Mem: 1929324k total, 448652k used, 1480672k free, 57132k buffers Swap: 2104504k total, 0k used, 2104504k free, 179708k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 7169 root 15 0 169m 28m 6136 S 14.1 1.5 6:53.50 X 7495 andre 16 0 56960 8900 6260 S 8.6 0.5 7:40.22 gkrellm 7852 andre 15 0 115m 22m 9.8m S 3.9 1.2 3:50.76 gnome-terminal 9856 andre 17 0 4284 1176 868 R 3.4 0.1 0:01.26 top 7033 root 17 0 14492 2644 1644 S 0.5 0.1 0:28.45 hald 7532 andre 15 0 81104 9556 7476 S 0.5 0.5 0:14.56 battstat-applet 6785 root 15 0 11444 1468 1272 S 0.3 0.1 0:18.61 powersaved --<snip>-- cpuinfo: --<snip>-- andre@fullyautomatix:~> cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 15 model : 36 model name : AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile ML-34 stepping : 2 cpu MHz : 1795.607 cache size : 1024 KB fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 pni syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni lahf_lm bogomips : 3522.56 TLB size : 1024 4K pages clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: ts fid vid ttp [4] [5] --<snip>- Any help will be appreciated. Thanks PS: I ran the machine with the SuSE 9.3 live DVD and the CPU usage was normal and the machine was very responsive, as it should be. But the DVD is only 32-bit. -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~ -- Check the List-Unsubscribe header to unsubscribe For additional commands, email: suse-amd64-help@suse.com
Hi Farkas
On 9/21/05, Farkas Ödön
It is a nice laptop indeed (exactly like mine), however, the linux support for the ATI chipset and the WLan card is, how to say, not perfect yet. Most of the problems go away if you can fix the "too fast clock" problem (see also a previous message "[suse-amd64] Quick System Clock" and the related ones). Since there is no official working kernel patch I'm aware of, you should do it yourself and recompile the kernel. If there will be no other tip from the SuSE gurus, I'll help you out how to make the patch. For the moment I have no time for it and the machine is currently running from the non-linux partition :-)
Thanks for the info. I am preparing the machine now to re-compile the kernel. I have found a link to a patch for the fast clock on a site that covers SuSE 9.3 on the Acer Ferrari. I will see if that works. Thanks -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~
On 9/21/05, Andre Truter
Thanks for the info. I am preparing the machine now to re-compile the kernel. I have found a link to a patch for the fast clock on a site that covers SuSE 9.3 on the Acer Ferrari.
I will see if that works.
Following up: I compiled a new kernel after applying the patch for the timer and the machine is running very nice now. http://www.triplenet.dk/~xerne/linux/timerhack.diff I have even re-enabled the PowerNow! in the BIOS and the CPU frequency scaling in powersaved. The machine runs nice and cool and the CPU speed is adjusted as needed. Very nice. Now I only have a problem with APIC errors in the log files and suspend does not work yet. I have tried using the kernel option 'noapic', but that cause a kernel panic. I have now made a few changes to the kernel options and compiled a new kernel. Will try it soon. -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~
Hi Andre,
It could be nice if you could make some other features work, I had no
success with suspend and the WLan card yet. The problem is that HP, ATI and
Broadcom are not very active to allow better Linux support for their
products. Anyway, sooner or later it will happen.
Best wishes,
Ödön
-----Original Message-----
From: Andre Truter [mailto:andre.truter@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 11:45 PM
To: suse-amd64@suse.com
Subject: Re: [suse-amd64] SuSE 9.3 slow on Turion64 (nx6125)
On 9/21/05, Andre Truter
Thanks for the info. I am preparing the machine now to re-compile the
kernel.
I have found a link to a patch for the fast clock on a site that covers SuSE 9.3 on the Acer Ferrari.
I will see if that works.
Following up: I compiled a new kernel after applying the patch for the timer and the machine is running very nice now. http://www.triplenet.dk/~xerne/linux/timerhack.diff I have even re-enabled the PowerNow! in the BIOS and the CPU frequency scaling in powersaved. The machine runs nice and cool and the CPU speed is adjusted as needed. Very nice. Now I only have a problem with APIC errors in the log files and suspend does not work yet. I have tried using the kernel option 'noapic', but that cause a kernel panic. I have now made a few changes to the kernel options and compiled a new kernel. Will try it soon. -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~ -- Check the List-Unsubscribe header to unsubscribe For additional commands, email: suse-amd64-help@suse.com
On 9/24/05, Farkas Ödön
Hi Andre,
It could be nice if you could make some other features work, I had no success with suspend and the WLan card yet. The problem is that HP, ATI and Broadcom are not very active to allow better Linux support for their products. Anyway, sooner or later it will happen.
Yes, I am also having problems with the suspend and Wlan. Trying to get that working now. -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~
participants (2)
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Andre Truter
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Farkas Ödön