Hi. I'm having a problem with the 2.1.4 release, ktorrent is taking up about 35% of my CPU and all it's doing is downloading a couple torrents.
I'm running KDE 3.5.6, Ubuntu fiesty. This is the first I've noticed of it though I've been using this version for a couple days now. I can give whatever information yall might need to work out what's going on if you need, just lemme know what I'd need to do.

Does it go away, if you get rid of upload and download limits ?

Yes to a certain extent. Without limits it's averaging around 18% and spiking as high as 26%, and going as low as 11%.
With limits, I'm seeing usage around an average of around 27% and going as high as 40%.
But it usually only takes up a very smaller amount of my CPU in other releases, I'd guess a max of about 11%.

Have you tried the SVN version yet ? You can tweak the CPU usage in the current development version.

Okay, I just installed that latest svn snapshot deb. Man those things are handy. I do also see somewhat of an improvement when I make adjustments in the cpu settings on the svn version, but it's still way higher than normal.

I went ahead and reinstalled 2.1 just to make sure I wasn't imagining things and ran it on the same 5 active torrents that I've been testing with the latest versions today, and there's just no mistaking that there's something wrong. The top command shows CPU% at about 4% with the 2.1 release on the same torrents and same settings that 2.1.4 is showing as 27% and 2.2 is at 18% after changing the cpu settings.

We still have to optimize things for the 2.2 release (we intend to release the beta in the middle of the month).

Is there anything an average user such as myself can do to help?

Not without changing code.

Any chance of seeing that optimization anytime soon, since we're on 2.2rc1 now?

Settings -> Advanced and drag the slider to slow CPU