Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty and high CPU on xorg

I'd noticed recently that my CPU usage had crept up on my ACER laptop with an ATI graphics chip and was slowing down simple things like scrolling. I switched off my folding@home client straight away, and then delved deeper.

I tried the usual fix-all of moving my .gconf path so it would be recreated next time I started the Gnome GUI but this made no difference.

I discovered an option however on the Xorg file xorg.conf which controls the graphical setup. Simply adding the following 2 lines to my xorg.conf file and then restarting gdm and all was back to normal. I love it when a problem like this can be fixed by typing 2 lines into vi ;-)

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "ati"
Option "Accel"
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"

Sweet potatoes, as they say.

JB