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Asked: 2018-02-26 21:27:47 +0800 CST

GNOME system monitor and top showing different CPU usage

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When I play a movie with SMPlayer (video:mpv) and I check my CPU usage with GNOME system monitor, it shows %4 or %5 CPU usage (1 second update interval), but htop shows %45 CPU usage:

mpv cpu usage

top shows the same load as htop:

top mpv cpu usage

Since My CPU fan RPM goes higher when I'm playing movie with SMPlayer. I suspect top is reporting CPU usage more accurately.

I have Intel i7 920 with 6GB RAM.

Why do I have high CPU usage and why do I see different results on top and in GNOME system monitor?

system-monitor cpu-load top mpv-media-player htop

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Notice that one reading is 8 times higher than the other. You have 8 cores (or execution units). The simplest explanation is that one is calculating it as a percentage of a single core, and the other as a percentage of all eight of them.

    According to this, top does indeed show CPU use per process as a percentage of a single CPU core.

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