Interpreting Activity Monitor

Question

Level 1

65 points

Interpreting Activity Monitor

On the CPU page, there are two windows with a rolling bar chart in red and green showing proportional amount of usage. Do each of these windows show a separate CPU?

If a process takes up 90%, and I see the usage evenly represented in both windows, does that mean the app is multi-threading and would be helped by more cores?

Like many of you, I'm waiting for barefeats to give more insight on the new Mac Pros and trying to weigh more power versus more cores for various apps. Thanks.

Powermac G5 (late 2005) Dual 2GHZ, Mac OS X (10.5.6), 4.5GB RAM, 2 WD Caviar SE 640 HDs, ATI X1900, 2 Samsung 2343BWX

Posted on Mar 12, 2009 2:03 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Mar 12, 2009 2:33 PM in response to BOBBOBKK

Each graph is a CPU if you are running a dual single core CPU system like the Power Mac G5, and each graph is a CPU core if you are running a computer with multiple cores, like the Mac Pro. The red bars are system processes, and the green are user processes.

Most newer applications take advantage of mulit-core and multi-processor computers, so you will likely get a performance boost from more cores.

Reply

Answer 2

BOBBOBKK Author

Level 1

65 points

Mar 12, 2009 2:54 PM in response to darkshark0159

Thanks.

Reply