mysql CPU spikes? are they normal?

[madmac]

on our server (PIV 2GHz, redhat 9, 1GB RAM), when I browse my one website and watch top in shell, mysqld takes up 99.9% of the CPU on some of the queries (sure only for a very brief moment but still, let me continue).

I have the same website (same coding, same database, same php version, same mysql version) installed locally on OS X here (a 1GHz G4 powerbook), and out of curiosity, I ran my local site and top in terminal as well. under OS X, the same queries that were taking 99.9% CPU on our server, were only taking ~1% CPU , topping off occasionally at ~3-4% CPU.

Now we just recently got the server, and at the time I ran this test, I am the only one on my server using a site with mySQL. Now I know the OSes here are a bit different, and the CPU arcitecture is far different as well, but surely these 2 system are not so far different that a mySQL query will eat up 99.9% CPU on redHat but only ~1% on my Mac under basically the same conditions??

Is this normal for mysqld to spike 99.9% CPU on x86 machines and/or OSes? If so then i guess nothing much I can do, though I don't really like it (guess I could pray for the day I can afford an XServe)

[seasoned]

There are a LOT of configuration settings in the system and mysql(and even things like Apache) that can affect this. They are probably different. ALSO, a cache filled with non-relevant data will take MUCH longer, and be more CPU intensive than one with data it can use, or that is empty.

TWO LARGE TABLES A and B(on a just booted machine withe plenty of cache)

select * from A (moderate) (load cache while reading)
select * from B (slow)(manage cache and load while reading)
select * from A (slow)(")
select * from A (fast)(select from cache)

Steve

[haze]

You may want to look into opomizing your my.cnf if you haven't done so already, or if you have, you may want to look into tweaking it a little further. There are other things to look at as well but I'd end up writting a book about it. There are a lot of sources of information out there, just google it up.