nvidia-settings: Unusual high pitch and X CPU spin

[devsk]

Problem: X spins on CPU and machine produces high pitch whine for 1-2 seconds. Mouse freezes for 1-2 seconds and becomes normal, only to again go back to freeze. If I don't run gkrellm (or nvidia-settings), everything is normal. All this happened after resume from suspend-to-ram.

Software: gkrellm-2.3.1 (2.3.0 also same). media-video/nvidia-settings-169.07. x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-100.14.19. linux 2.6.24.

Hardware: gt6600 PCIx. AMD 3800+X2, nVidia Corporation CK804.

Debug: gkrellm queries temperatures using "nvidia-settings -q GPUCoreTemp" and "nvidia-settings -q GPUAmbientTemp". The strace shows that the nvidia-settings child program goes for lunch for 1.3 seconds, makes X spin and make mobo/cpu produce whine for that period. A manual run of nvidia-settings also confirms that.

.....
[pid  5645] 08:01:32.362488 read(4, 0x7fff78494700, 32) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
[pid  5645] 08:01:32.362541 poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN, revents=POLLIN}], 1, -1) = 1
[pid  5645] 08:01:33.677691 read(4, "\1\0/\0\0\0\0\0\1\0\0\0\23\0\0\0\200\357\221\4\0\0\0\0\0\361/\1\0\0\0\0", 32) = 32
[pid  5645] 08:01:33.677765 ioctl(2, TIOCGWINSZ, 0x7fff78494570) = -1 ENOTTY (Inappropriate ioctl for device)
.......

$ time nvidia-settings -q GPUCoreTemp

  Attribute 'GPUCoreTemp' (localhost:0.0): 25.
    'GPUCoreTemp' is an integer attribute.
    'GPUCoreTemp' is a read-only attribute.
    'GPUCoreTemp' can use the following target types: X Screen, GPU.


real    0m1.369s
user    0m0.014s
sys     0m0.005s

$ lspci
00:00.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a3)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 ISA Bridge (rev a3)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation CK804 SMBus (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 IDE (rev a2)
00:07.0 RAID bus controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev a3)
00:08.0 RAID bus controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev a3)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600 GT] (rev a2)
04:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 03)
04:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 03)
05:07.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)

Does anybody have any idea what could be the issue here?