Aperture running at a crawl since lion upgrade

From the "more info" of "about this mac" (love this feature of lion)

iMac

24-inc, Early 2008

Processor 2.8 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory: 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Graphics: NVIDA GeForce 8800 GS 512 MB

Software: Mac OS X Lion 10.7.1 (11B26)

Aperture version: 3.1.3 build 1952400.4

Digital Camera RAW 3.8.0 Build 5770000.1

My library contains 32,475 files.

So, looking at the raw hardware specs, my machine ougt to be faster than Tim's due to faster CPU and more graphics RAM. Perhaps it's the library size??

Stephen

scooper4711 wrote:

<snip> So, looking at the raw hardware specs, my machine ougt to be faster than Tim's due to faster CPU and more graphics RAM. Perhaps it's the library size??

Stephen

Stephen, Tim's Mac has an SSD which is probably making the differece. Both of you have only 4GBs of RAM, and both Macs are probably paging a lot, but Tim's SSD can handle paging at least 10x faster than than your HDD.

A fair assumption. Tim, how high is your page out rate? If it is high, the SSD is probably helping prevent the crashes that others with 4 GB systems are experiencing. If your system page out rate is low, there is something else causing it to behave well.

Very good point about the SSD vs 7200 rpm drive.

Another thought that occurred to me is it might be related to the RAW processor. I shoot exclusively Nikon D200 with compressed NEF (lossless RAW compression). Saves disk space. Perhaps the issue is related to the file format. It might explain why more people aren't complaining. I do have the latest RAW updates applied.

Stephen

Sorry - not sure where to look for the page out RATE. Page outs in Activity Monitor reads 6.75Gb but that is not a rate. I suspect that you are right - the high data transfer rate for the SSD is rescuing me.

To scooper4711's point - I am running exclusively RAW files - in my case Canon not Nokon, but this is pretty data hungry (ca25Mb/image.)

I have many libraries by the way most much bigger than the one I sampled earlier and I see no significt variation in performance with a larger library.

Tim

My point about the RAW files was that perhaps there's an issue limited to e.g. Nikon RAW format, which is different from Canon's. Indeed, different Nikon cameras have different versions of RAW. It's another vector of investigation. People who are having issues with performance might also state what they're primarily editing when having the issue.

To the question of where to find the page in/out rate, it's in parenthesis next to the total and will read e.g. 34 Kb/sec. You just need to keep an eye on that and give a feel. I don't know of a good way to get an average rate.

My page in rate when running in 64-bit mode and just enabling/disabling the retouch block with 6 retouches is around 4-5 Mbytes/sec.

Stephen

OK - when editing I peak at under 10Mb/sec but most of the time it runs at 0. The peak is transient. I cannot give any view of an average therefore.

Tim

Thanks. You are certainly getting your money's worth for your SSD. That rate is very high and most likely causes the application crashes on systems with normal disks. So, the question for Apple is, as I said from the beginning: is this high memory usage in 64 bit mode normal? If it is, they need to change the application requirements and state a much higher minimum RAM requirement. If not, they need to fix it. We shall wait and see.

As for the crashes in 32 bit mode, that is cleary a bug and a fix is in the works.

It was an upgrade.

Tim

timfromwantage wrote:

OK - when editing I peak at under 10Mb/sec but most of the time it runs at 0. The peak is transient. I cannot give any view of an average therefore.

Tim

Most virtual storage systems will show either very brief transient peaks of paging, or no paging at all. If paging is happening on a continuous basis, the system is described as "thrashing".

The peaks are usually limited by the speed of the I/O hardware supporting paging, which is why SSDs can mask an underlying RAM deficiency.

I recall a mainframe system which was showing an average of 15 pages per second, and most of the time the actual paging rate was zero, with bursts of over 1,000.

It's the burst rate that matters, not the average.

To John Kitchen,

Thanks for those instructions. I did that, but my Aperture Library was greyed out. I just clicked on the "pictures" folder. We'll see what happens. Thanks!

Mark, You'll need to choose a folder which contains the library.

If necessary, create a dedicated folder to contain the Ap Lib and exclude that folder from Spotlight

Just upgraded from 4Gb to 12Gb. Aperture is restored. No more sluggishness, snaps from screen to screen, editing all without delay. My spec is 27inch iMac early 2010, 1Tb internal plus two 500gb external.

Of course I shouldn't have had to do this, but I'm glad I did. Saved a bundle to by using mrmemory.co.uk (I have no affiliation to them BTW)

I'm guessing Aperture 4 will be out soon. They must update to use the new Cloud service.

Still a bit peeved about the way it fades (slowly) to fullscreen.

Andy

Andrew Brown7 wrote:

<snip>

Of course I shouldn't have had to do this, but I'm glad I did.

<snip>

Andy

Andy

Every time there is a step in the OS evolution, there is an increased demand for RAM. Without exception. That's why today, you no longer have a 4KB RAM on your mac, like the Apple ][ did.

Macs today typically have more than a million times as much RAM as an entry level Apple ][. That's a lot of growth!

Every time there is an upgrade in the OS, there is increased function requiring more resources, and clever ways of using RAM for speeding up the system by eliminating I/Os.

Every time a new OS comes out, those who don't anticipate the need for more RAM tend to fall into the "disappointed camp".

When "Son-of-Lion" comes out, most of us will require more RAM than we have today.