Xorg issue I can't stand...

[Paulo J. Matos]

Hello all,

I'm having, what I guess, being a Xorg problem. My version is
xorg-server 1.1.1. I have an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500. Laptop is a
Pentium4 2.2Ghz. The symptoms I have range over all my apps but one is
consistently there: X.
For example, whenever I'm browsing, from time to time, X goes up to
share 66% of CPU against 33% of firefox. When I'm seeing a movie, be
it with Xine or mplayer, everything is ok for the first couple of
minutes and suddently X starts eating my CPU again which hinders me
the possibility of continuing to watch the movie since the player
video stops (although audio keeps going). This happens no matter if I
use KDE, Gnome, or Enlightenment. I can't seem to know where to start.
I've enabled/disabled dozens of options in my xorg.conf but things do
not change. I've even tried (when X started eating my CPU) to strace
it by (as root) attaching strace to X process but as soon as I did
that my system blocked and I had to turn it off and on again.

I'm just curious if I can do anything to debug, test, or anything. I'm
getting depressed as my system gets unusable and it seems I can't to
anything. Worst is, I'm not 100% sure it is Xorg. It might as well be
something else but I've already gone through kernels 2.6.18, 2.6.19
and 2.6.20 and the issue remains... :-/

Any suggestions, advice is extremely welcome.

-- 
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at soton.ac.uk
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm
PhD Student @ ECS
University of Southampton, UK