9.3 Process Averages

[Alex]

>  I have recently built FreeBSD 9.3 (i386) from the ground up (making our
> next gen server build). 
> 
> Once complete I have been allowing it to run under no load, and have noticed
> that the load averages Hovering around 0.40 - 0.50 



I encountered a similar situation. Here is a Forum post discussing one resolution:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/high-load-average-with-idle-state.38757/

And here is a snippet:

I suspect you've encountered an issue that WAS* reported as: kern/173541.
[See the 'Problem Reports' database.]

Skipping to the useful stuff:

Like Johan Broman, I was able to work around the problem using the following

# sysctl -w kern.eventtimer.timer=LAPIC

He also points out:

"You can list your clock sources using:
# sysctl kern.eventtimer.choice"


*the PR was not found when I checked today.