# MySQL CPU use

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/mysql-cpu-use/1656>\
**Category:** Other MySQL® Questions\
**Created:** [August 22, 2011, 4:05am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/mysql-cpu-use/1656 "2011-08-22T04:05:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![slnp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@slnp](https://forums.percona.com/u/slnp)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 4:05am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/mysql-cpu-use/1656/1 "2011-08-22T04:05:28Z")

</div>

Hi All,

We have a set of MySQL servers with 110GB of ram and 2x 6core intel cpus.

We get fairly good MySQL performance however when we do experience slow queries I take a look at system resources and see that RAM utilisation is good (nice and high) however CPU load is between 0.0 and 0.90.

Is this a good thing or is there settings I could change to make MySQL use more CPU to gain some performance?

I already renice MySQL to -20.

Thanks in advance

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gmouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b9e5f3/32.png) [@gmouse](https://forums.percona.com/u/gmouse)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 5:59am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/mysql-cpu-use/1656/2 "2011-08-22T05:59:26Z")

</div>

“CPU load of 0.90” means 90% of all 12 cores?

CPU cycles are not always well spent, what if a global mutex is slowing everything down? You could use a profiler to verify this.

What version of MySQL are you using?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![xaprb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/49beb7/32.png) [@xaprb](https://forums.percona.com/u/xaprb)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 9:15am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/mysql-cpu-use/1656/3 "2011-08-22T09:15:47Z")

</div>

I wouldn’t renice mysqld that much. If it goes crazy for any reason, and you have to try to log in to shut it down or something… good luck getting a command prompt 🙂