Normal load? [Solved]

cpoon · 2014-06-20 10:04:53

Hi, my average loadtime on my i7 4770k with just 2bwm and a bar (also tried bspwm and dwm etc all with sort f same results) seems to average around 0.30 to 0.50ish on semi idle, is that normal?

Here's a screenshot with top and some system info etc.

http://i.imgur.com/QScQyp5.jpg

Thanks in advance.

Last edited by cpoon (2014-06-20 22:08:14)

samiam · 2014-06-20 10:38:19

The load average triplets indicate the number of processes waiting in the run queue at 1, 5 and 15 minute intervals. You have 0.3x (less than one) processes waiting in the run queue. On a 4 core CPU you're not really working the box until you get 4 - 8. I've seen 32 way boxes with load averages approaching 100 that were performing their function fine at ~50% average CPU usage.

See http://www.teamquest.com/pdfs/whitepaper/ldavg1.pdf , http://www.teamquest.com/pdfs/whitepaper/ldavg2.pdf and finally http://www.teamquest.com/pdfs/whitepaper/ldavg3.pdf for more information that you ever wanted on the triplets.

cpoon · 2014-06-20 11:02:52

Thank you very much , much more at ease now.

Last edited by cpoon (2014-06-20 11:03:05)

karol · 2014-06-20 14:33:35

'uptime' has a man page too.
I'd say it's a pretty high loadavg, but you have a web browser open in the screenshot, so it's not just '2bwm and a bar'.

samiam · 2014-06-20 15:03:40

It's really not. From my i7-3840QM laptop:

top - 09:51:53 up  2:04,  6 users,  load average: 0.71, 0.78, 0.77
Tasks: 219 total,   1 running, 218 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  5.7 us,  1.4 sy,  0.1 ni, 92.2 id,  0.6 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem:  16064648 total,  3071272 used, 12993376 free,    71072 buffers
KiB Swap: 25165820 total,        0 used, 25165820 free.   635960 cached Mem

It's also worth pointing out that while cpoon's screenshot shows the CPU's clock speed, it doesn't indicate whether or not it's actually running at that speed. The top output from my laptop was taken while all cores were at 1.3GHz of the 3.8GHz they're capable of.

Last edited by samiam (2014-06-20 15:04:27)

cpoon · 2014-06-20 17:02:37

Well load was pretty much equal with dwb closed (gonna grab i7z and take another screenwithout with dwb to see if it's being downclocked) brbrb and thanks .

Here we go, i don't think it's underclocking but i think nowadays with intel cpu's the thing is the c7 states etc, the % in c7 etc jumps around a bit which i think is normal but the averages remained sort of the same, doesn't matter if i have dwb open or not really (i waited some minutes after closing dwb to run this tests.

http://i.imgur.com/EvnYBgF.jpg

Last edited by cpoon (2014-06-20 17:15:37)

samiam · 2014-06-20 17:45:15

You're fine whether it's governing or not. From `man uptime`

       System  load  averages  is the average number of processes that are either in a runnable or uninterruptable
       state.  A process in a runnable state is either using the CPU or waiting to use  the  CPU.   A  process  in
       uninterruptable state is waiting for some I/O access, eg waiting for disk.  The averages are taken over the
       three time intervals.  Load averages are not normalized for the number of CPUs in a system, so a load aver-
       age  of 1 means a single CPU system is loaded all the time while on a 4 CPU system it means it was idle 75%
       of the time.

And really, it's not always that simple, but that's a good place to start. If it were though - if your 1 minute average were 1, your box is still only 25% utilized. No need to worry until your 15 minute average is above 6. Then you're making it work a bit

EDIT: And just to reiterate - a load average higher than the number of CPUs in the box does _NOT_ mean that it's about to halt and catch fire. It's just busy, and you should be figuring out why.

Last edited by samiam (2014-06-20 17:46:38)

cpoon · 2014-06-20 20:41:00

Thanks samiam once again .

jasonwryan · 2014-06-20 20:43:39

Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

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#1 2014-06-20 10:04:53

Normal load? [Solved]

#2 2014-06-20 10:38:19

Re: Normal load? [Solved]

#3 2014-06-20 11:02:52

Re: Normal load? [Solved]

#4 2014-06-20 14:33:35

Re: Normal load? [Solved]

#5 2014-06-20 15:03:40

Re: Normal load? [Solved]

#6 2014-06-20 17:02:37

Re: Normal load? [Solved]

#7 2014-06-20 17:45:15

Re: Normal load? [Solved]

#8 2014-06-20 20:41:00

Re: Normal load? [Solved]

#9 2014-06-20 20:43:39

Re: Normal load? [Solved]

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