low performance

[xPol]

Basil Chupin wrote:

> 
> In any case, you can check what is using the CPU and how much by looking
> at System>Administration>System Monitor.
> 

I have switched to fluxbox, to minimize visual effects. 

I'm using 'top' to monitor my system. Load average is usually about 5-6 It 
is high, but i dubt it has clear connection to my 'desktop' slow perfomance. 
No applications is taking 100% of the cpu time. 
Firefox is taking about 30%; yet, as the numbr of tabs increases (several 
tens, in 5-6 windows), everything gets slower; mainly refreshing pages is 
affected, but also switching tabs and opening drop-down menus from the 
fluxbox panels.
Several applications are running at the same time (virtuoso, amarok..) but 
none seems to be heavily loading the system,
I have also tried to monitor the i/o by the 'iotop', but i was not able, 
being no expert, to spot heavy processes. 

My guess is that the graphic card is overloaded rather than the cpu. 
Since the slow down effect is global, Xorg should be the main cause
So my questions: how to closely monitor the graphic card activity and how to 
closely monitor the X acitvity. 

Thank you 

---P