PowerPC :: IMac G5 - Non-Responsiveness, CPU Usage Maxed Out
Aug 7, 2008
I have an iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor) that runs Leopard pretty slowly, even with 2GB of RAM. Sometimes, it's a pretty severe lag: Type a sentence, twiddle your thumbs, bam, it's all inputted at once. Sometimes, the whole system is non-responsive for 60-120 seconds, before, bam, accepting all your key- and mouse-strokes at once.
Activity Monitor also reports extremely high CPU-usage. I've been using it for a couple of hours this morning and it's been maxed-out or nearly maxed-out basically the whole time.
There aren't any processes that appear to be hogging resources. Sometimes, it's finder / time machine that's using the most. Sometimes it's Safari or Mail.
I'm open to the possibility that it's just time to upgrade, but I was wondering if the forums had any suggestions on how to troubleshoot or reclaim some CPU cycles.
I recently bought a Power Mac G5 with 3 20" cinema displays, each with their own video card. I've since stopped using one and it sped up some. But even with the most simple tasks, it is hella slow and freezes sometimes. If I just have Firefox and iTunes open, it runs slow and the fans kick in overdrive. The main video card is an ATI Radeon x800 with 256 RAM and the other is a 9200 with 128 RAM. how to free up my RAM and speed it up?
so as you can see from the tittle of this thread i maxed out my g5 on ram, which is only a total of 2.5 gb but i really like the performance, definitly helps alot with alot more demanding programs. =) im so hapy i finally got this done! any body else have there g5 maxed out?
I just upgraded my powerbook 1.5ghz g4 to 2 gb of ram. It runs multiply applications fine now. The only thing that I'm still disappointed with is when I am viewing videos on youtube or elsewhere my CPU maxes out and the video is all chopping.
I know it's old (6 years!) and I need a new computer (which I'm thinking of getting the 27" iMac i5) but I feel as if it should be able to view videos on youtube without being chopping and maxing out the CPU...
Hi Everyone I have an iBook G4 with 800MHz and 512 MB. I understand this is the max I can run this on. I really cannot afford a new one now and wondered if there was a way to increase the memory at all or get it to run faster. I deleted programs I do not use but it is still slow.
I know there had been some discussions here about the new i7 quad, and before I spend my hard earned cash I wanted some last minute opinions.
I post this here in the Mac Pro forums because I figure there might likely be more FCP users...which is what my main use for my new machine will be.
I have been wanting a new unit for several months now, and have been just waiting to pull the trigger on a Mac Pro. In fact, it has gotten to be a running joke around my house with my wife and I...we can be talking about something totally non-related and I will say "I just have one word for you...OCTO!!!" Anyway, I digress.
While I simply cannot justify (or afford really) a maxed out octo, I have been considering a "fairly" maxed out quad MP. But now that the new iMac has appeared, I am having more trouble.
I am not a pro...meaning I am not paying my bills with FCP. I would characterize myself as prosumer...which describing myself really means consumer who likes nicer equipment. I do want a "respectable" machine that will handle FCP with somewhat ease.
My current video set up is an HMC150 mixed with Canon 7D. Converting to ProRes 422 (not the HQ flavor) and using things like Magic Bullet. Not doing much Motion work...mostly because I have not learned that process yet. I am currently doing it on a maxed out 2008 iMac. And so far it has not been all that bad. Ingesting is not taking long enough to bother me really...and editing is nice and smooth. The only really long times are for rendering and encoding to H.264.
So, given these facts, am I way out in left field here considering a maxed out iMac? I am sure that during the process, the render and encode times will be what taxes the machine the most. And I am not even really sure that those times would be much different on a quad MP. Octo, sure. But even then I am not sure what kind of differences we are talking about. I mean would a similarly configured octo have double performance from the quad? Would a 2 hour render or encode on an octo take 4 hours on a quad?
The other thing I am thinking is this...Even if the iMac turns out to be way less than what I would like, I am thinking I can use it for awhile (as long as I can stand it) then maybe down the road look again at the MP...say after the 6 or 12 core thing plays out. I could always use the iMac as the monitor for a MP down the road. The glossy thing is not a factor for me...it doesn't bother me at all.
I have the fully loaded 3.06GHz iMac with the upgraded video card. The native resolution is 1920x1200, which even with the iMac's decent specs, is a hefty performance dump being forced to run games in this high resolution. When I try lowering the resolution, literally every other resolution option looks like crap, while 1920x1200 looks crisp and perfect. Most of the other options aren't a matching aspect ratio for the widescreen monitor. Is there a good resolution you recommend, and if it isn't available in my game, is there a way to make it available?
Do I need to hack each game to display other resolution options that match my aspect ratio? How can I get better performance besides turning the graphics to crap? I would be happy running in a lower resolution with all other settings maxed, rather than most settings low with such a high resolution.
Do I have any options here or am I screwed? I'm sure some of you guys must have come across this issue! I'm a new Mac convert who can't get rid of my PC gaming.
Note: Preferably I would like to find an alternate widescreen resolution, rather than finding a way to use 4:3 with black bars, but either would be better than how it is now.
So by now most, if not all of us know about Apples change to the responsiveness of the Caps lock button on all new keyboards, including the MacBook Pro. Do you prefer the old Caps lock which may have caused some accidental caps or the current, less responsive Caps lock to curb accidental activation?
I was watching a show on my mid-2012 15' rMBP when my keyboard and trackpad suddenly stopped working. I tried to hibernate (closing and opening) my laptop to no avail. it was only after i had reset it (held on to the power button) did my keyboard and trackpad return to the normal state. Is there any logical explanation to this?
I finally pulled my old, very dead, Powermac Dual G4 MDD out of the closet. I like the case design so much that I would like to keep it around if possible. Only thing is I'm not sure what I can do with it. Plant pot, aquarium, lamp, etc. Any ideas of what this thing can become in it's afterlife?
I need more USB ports, but want to add an internal component, like a PCI-E card (NOT a USB Hub). I just want a clean look, not an additional component. Does anyone have any recommendations? Does one even exist (?). I saw a PCI USB card at Office Depot & Best Buy, but I'm pretty sure that won't work.
I figured about now, in 2008, that machines would come with 6 USB ports (on the back) standard, considering everything is USB. Consumer Dell machines do it, so does HP and others... my $3000 Professional MP... 3 USB ports standard on the back.
I'm running 10.6.4 with the newest flash 10.1, and when I load a page on safari or firefox with a flash video on it on my iMac the scrolling on the page doesn't work and the video takes about 5 minutes before I can press play. I have tried running different versions or flash (uninstalling old ones and things) but nothing fixes it.
Just got a MBA and learning the machine. Are your MBA's really quiet? I have no problems with volume on my MB or MBP but on the MBA I find it quiet even when maxed.
I purchased my first Mac ever, the iMac with 3.06ghz, 8GB and 1T.
I LOVE THIS iMac.
Now, I got this iMac to use Protools with plugins. Now I'm only using 3 tracks with virtual instruments and is already asking me to increase CPU usage or remove RTAS(virtual instruments).
Is there a way to chip off CPU usage from other programs that the computer may be using? Anyone has solution except removing some virtual instruments, I mean I got this iMac to work with music.
I bought one of the new-gen iMacs last month--my first Mac! My computer will often start making a low-droning noise, and it sounds like a fan. I have iStat, and usually during this time it will say that my Optical Drive and CPU Fan are both running at around 4000rpm. This happens when there is very little CPU usage too. It's happening right now, and I only have firefox running.
For those of you with a new i7 iMac, if your machine is completely idle, what does your CPU usage look like in Activity Monitor? I'm routinely seeing Finder consume 70-90% of my CPU. The single CPU bar meter view in the dock is basically pegged most of the time. The graph shows it as system usage. If I open the CPU History window, all 8 threads look like they're just about maxed out.
This morning I installed Windows 7 Upgrade ($30 student price) from XP running via boot camp on my 2007 24" iMac. I had to do the clean install, but it worked flawlessly. I ran the bootcamp setup from the Snow Leopard disk (3.0) and it installed fine. My problem is the screen resolution. My resolution is maxed out at 1280x1024. Windows 7 handles this nicely, though, by simply putting the desktop in the middle of the display with black space around it (it could have stretched it out and made it really bad). I'm not sure what to do, since the driver is installed properly (ATI, RadeonHD2600). I'm also trying to run dual-screens, and that doesn't seem to work either. All these things worked perfectly on XP.
I've been running some deinterlacing jobs with Compressor on our Mac Pro 3,1 dual processor. We'd added some RAM so I was interested to have a look in Activity Monitor to see how it was faring and noticed that the CPU activity never went above 50%. I find it very hard to believe that Compressor isn't intended to take advantage of both processors.
My 2011 21.5" iMac has a 1TB hard drive. In the Finder, it reports 238GB used, 744GB available. But, in Disk Utility and in DiskWave analyzer, it shows 460GB used. "About this Mac" reports 460GB used with 206GB of "backup" that is not there (not invisible files, not showing up in detail reports). When DiskWave reports 460GB used, the detailed list of files & apps only adds up to 238GB - a mystery in that it cannot show the extra "used" space, but only reports free space as 539GB thus not accounting for the remainder. How can I reconcile these differences?
currently i have a blackbook and imac core duo, 17 ". My macbook beats the imac in everything except graphics. Before i got my imac i seriously considered a g5 dual 2.0, but the money wasnt there. I see an apple refurb dual 2.0 for 1599, and im sure i cud get one a lot cheaper used here or on another board. How much of a performance increase will i see IN APERTURE going to the PM, if any? i would need a good increase to justify it, and eve then im not sure my parents would be ok with me spending a few hundred bucks to upgrade
I am doing a presentation for a class thingy in technology about new media and i'm trying to express how when macintosh youtubers started uploading video blogs when they switched to intel/intel made iMacs and about this media blah blah blah. In the pic attached is that a iMac G5 or intel. I see spot light on the top right so it's either running tiger or leopard. I thought I saw a apple remote magnetic thingy on the side. Did the iMac g5 have one?
My intel 2006 iMac recently died, and I'm wondering if I could one of the 1GB RAM sticks into the a G3 iMac I own. And more importantly: If I could put the hard drive from the intel iMac into the iMac G3.
The intel iMac was made in late 2006 and the iMac G3 was made in 1999, 1998 or 2000.
So I want to see how high the temps get on my laptop with the new AS5 application. I know of a free program on windows that maxes out the CPu to 100% usage, but any app exist for OSX? I using SL. I have been ripping my home DVDs all day, but doing the same 3 over, gets old quick. Do any of you know any free app that will stress the CPU? Also is there an App that will stress the GPU?
Is this normal? I'm pretty sure it's not, at least the iTunes bit. I am using cover flo and I know that's supposed to increase the RAM usage but I don't even have the window open (it's in another space.) I've been seeing this high amount of RAM usage lately so I ran techtool deluxe and there was an error with the volume structure. I repaired permissions from the OS X install disk and since then the volume structure test passes but I'm still getting the unusually high numbers.
My computer has been running incredibly slow lately. I think it has to do with the disk usage as every time it has to access the disk, it slows to a crawl. I've had a huge amount of beach balling, especially when loading a new App or a new page in Safari.
Here is a picture of the disk usage. Does this look normal? Does anyone know what the problem could be?
I'm new to OS X and just had a quick question about the way that it uses memory.
I have the istat widget on my dashboard, and I've been monitoring the amount of free and used RAM. After I reboot the system, only about 20 percent of my memory is being used between the OS and the programs I normally use (adium, safari, itunes, etc.) Over the course of a couple days, the amount of used ram increases to about 50 percent, even though I'm just using the same programs.So, I'm just wondering how exactly the operating system deals with used and free RAM. Once the system uses ram for something, will that ram be reported as used until I reboot? Why does used ram continue to increase even though I'm doing the exact same things?
I'd just appreciate if someone could enlighten me on how the system uses RAM and whether I need to reboot every few days for optimal performance. I know it's still only using 50 percent (i have 4 gigs) - I'm not afraid of running out, I'm just wondering for my own knowledge.
I have an iStat Menubar and it's constantly showing me 40% CPU usage. It also shows the same number in Activity Monitor. However, when I look at the processes running, they don't add up to 40. In fact, they only amount to around 6% or so. I did click "All Processes", but nothing was running that would cause it to be 40%.
i want something similar to Window's Performance Monitor (Perfmon) on MAC. i need logs for the CPU usage of a particular process on MAC OSX. let me know if there is an in-built MAC utility or suggest some external application.
I've noticed more general CPU usage, although less with Flash (), namely WindowServer has been getting up to about 20~30%+ when doing something as simple as scrolling down a webpage.
