Maxed out Mac Pro (nearly new) DEAD SLOW - why???

CS2 is a little slower than the new version as it wasnt made for new machines
but it shouldnt be that slow

When (on rare occasion) my mac pro has gound down to a crawl, it's been because something is constantly accessing the disk. As a couple others suggested, start the process monitor and sort by CPU usage. The process that's accessing the disk is likely to also be using the most processor time (thought it may still be very little). A common culprit is spotlight re-indexing. Look at the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the screen. Does it have a dot in the middle of the "glass"? If so, spotlight may be re-indexing constantly. I've had this happen, and it makes the machine run... Like a Ferrari (sp?) chained to a tree. If so, there is a post somewhere in these forums about how to make it recognize that it's done indexing and stop.

got seagate drives? if so, consider a replacement strategy. i did and it has made all the difference.

i went from transfer rates varying from 40mb/s -.3mb/s on BOTH OEM seagate drives to sustained 70+mb/sec with my WD RE2... then even higher with the raptors...

point is, check your hard drives out. if you're not sure if they're working well, transfer all your data off one drive and try to zero it out. if it is a 500GB drive, it should zero out in less than 3 hours... if it takes more than 3 hours (my seagates took about 10 hours) then there is something wrong, even if apple says it is normal.

and, i reported this same steaming pile of bullocks quite a while ago.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=778039&tstart=0

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4233790#4233790

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=868850&tstart=0

the thing is, i have since replaced the garbage seagate drives it came with and got some WD equipment that works. don't question it, just go out and get the stuff you need and watch the difference. if i had left the drives it came with in there, i would be stuck with transfer rates below 10mb/sec. and the genius told me it was NORMAL for a 500GB drive to take 9+ hours to zero out... nauseating

i also run photoshop hard for a living - harder than most here... and CS3 is a must have. then you will need to read this:

http://homepage.mac.com/boots911/.Public/PhotoshopAccelerationBasics2.4W.pdf

based on the info there, i set up a RAID0 array for my scratch disk, enlarged the size of it in the settings, and changed the amount of RAM the OS can use. i changed all the cache locations to the new scratch disk, and made sure there was plenty of room for all of them.

there is a lot you will need to do and learn about. but start with the drives... pick one, and try to zero it out after you get all your data off it. if it is a seagate, i'd personally set it on fire and spit on it several times on it for all the trouble they caused me - and no one here or at the apple stores admits that firmware issues exist between the seagates and the mac pro... whatever. that's fine.

back here on earth, those garbage seagates are history from my machine, and so are my issues now that i have had enough time to accumulate the equipment necessary to accommodate my workload.

in my experience, seagates have been the root of my machines' issues. as a result, WD is my choice for storage needs and they have been a marketed improvement.

One note about memory. For all of you 8-core owners out there, the spec for 8-core memory is a little tighter than for the other Mac Pros. If you don't install the right memory, you could have performance issues. For everyone, check your system caches and logs for any clues that some app is creating more overhead. There's a reasonable explanation for these pokey issues, and usually it's because some process is out of whack and eating up all your resources. Open the activity monitor, or in the terminal, use the top command (ctrl-c to exit) to see what's going on. I'm not a big fan of 3rd party utilities, but I do like Micromat's Tech Tool Pro. I'd say that there's about a 90% chance it's software. It doesn't hurt to take a mean, hard look at your RAM. Small errors in RAM (especially ECC) can give you a performance hit too. Also, check your Energy Saver settings and find out if the system is putting drives to sleep when they have been passive for a few minutes. I find that's a little annoying, so when I'm doing my photo or graphics work, I turn that off.

The final (and unfortunately, painful) option is a complete system re-stack. That's where you determine which of your applications are essential, backup all your data, wipe the system drive, install the original system bundle, run all the updates, then install all your apps, one at a time. Find out which/where you start getting system bloat. Sometimes PPC apps start to get a little leaky (memory wise) under Rosetta. I've also read about issues with Boot Camp and mixed drives (partitioned with both apple and windows formats).

Hope this helps.

BTW, the current max memory you can get is 32GB. As far as I can tell, 3 GB/core is optimum (unless you're doing a lot of RAM intensive work like ... video and realtime 3D graphics rendering). 1.5 to 2 GB per core is plenty for most.

Opus_Maru wrote:
One note about memory.

BTW, the current max memory you can get is 32GB. As far as I can tell, 3 GB/core is optimum (unless you're doing a lot of RAM intensive work like ... video and realtime 3D graphics rendering). 1.5 to 2 GB per core is plenty for most.

I am confused. According to the iStatPro widget on my machine, my new but slow Mac Pro has CPU's that are over 85% idle; Free + Inactive RAM = 3.4 GB out of 7 GB of RAM. I bought 6 GB of my RAM from OWC. When I run iMovie, iDVD and NeoOffice, it struggles and pinwheels. I have several HD partitions and one RAID 0 made of 2 Seagate HD's. While some partitions are intentionally quite full, the partitions involved with these programs are quite empty. Sleep HD is off, Tech Tool Deluxe passes all RAM and disks. I would like to keep running some background programs (MoreClocks, Desktop Transporter, etc.) and erase some large files while running iMovie and iDVD.

My question is, if 3.4 GB of 7 GB RAM is reported to be free or inactive, is it worth getting more RAM to boost the speed? According to your suggestion, I should have 16 - 24 GB RAM, but is the problem elsewhere?

Elsewhere.

You would need to do something that needs 8 (or 16, etc) GB of RAM.

You aren't running anything that is memory intensive.
Some programs are cpu-intensive.
You could have cpu AND memory intensive, and end up thrashing memory between each core. Just when you think you have everything.

You will see better designs in cpus in the coming year or two.

Memory latency might kick in when you populate with 8 x 4GB DIMMs.

Some things are just cpu hogs and even small things can make a system run more sluggish.

A dedicated boot OS/Apps drive should also be fastest ($179 for WD 750GB Caviar)
Dedicated scratch disk.
And data.
Any of which could be a RAID if need be (and because it really fits your WORK).

Get rid of the Seagates would be first thing some of us would suggest (and HAVE if you read through).

Only if you run 3GB size files in CS3; only if you see 1-2GB of swap files being created; only if you see pageouts that are high enough.

I would use Memtest for memory, and other tools for media and bad blocks.

Ideal would be start over. Fresh OS. And use 4 x 1GB of memory (2 x 1 on each Riser) and see how that goes. After you replace the Seagate drives (use those on a external RAID controller).

I ran MemtestOSX 5 times and all the RAM passed. I didn't realize Seagate HD's were such a problem. I just spent $250 on new Seagates - ouch. I think writing to an external drive via Firewire 400 is the main problem. I think I have a better idea what to spend my money on next. Thanks.

FireWire 400 is an ouch! but then you are using PATA/ATA and not SATA.
It is the internal SATA Seagate drives that are a problem.

FW400 = 40MB/sec
eSATA = 75
FW800 can be iffy on some setups.

There are SATA drives capable of 85-90MB/sec now, or double plus FW400.

Just to clarify what you are saying, the four internal HD's are all SATA300 Seagates; the external drive is a SATA300 Seagate too. Are you saying I should first replace the internal HD's with WD HD's before replacing the external Firewire 400 enclosure?

Use the FW400 for an emergency boot drive and replace it with external SATA.

SATA RAID controller.
Disk drive enclosure.
Throw your Seagate SATA drives in there.

And pick up some WD drives.
10K Raptor 150GB or 500-750GB Caviar RE2 (SE16 is okay for non-RAID and some use them in RAID as well, but not recommended or endorsed).

Thanks for the help. Will do.