MAC SLOW WHEN PLAYING GAMES

Hello, see how many of these you can answer...

See if the Disk is issuing any S.M.A.R.T errors in Disk Utility...

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7029

Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?

How much RAM & free Disk space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.

Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.

In the Memory tab of Activity Monitor, are there a lot of Pageouts?

COCO68 wrote:

Hello I have followed your instructions and there are no pages out. This is the information I have.

System Memory

Free: 5.98 GB In Green

Wired: 939.2 MB In Red

Active:1.04 GB In Blue

Used: 2.09GB

VM Size: 218.16 GB

Pages in: 217.7 MB

Pages Out: o bytes

Swap used: o bytes

DISK Usage

Space Utilized: 94.67 GB 94,674,366,464 bytes (in blue)

Space Free: 904.67 904,670, 478,672 (in green)

I am not computer savvy but I am pretty sure I have more than enough Ram. I have been reading recent threads on the update of Thunderbolt and there are many people who are suffering poor graphics on games recently due to the Thunderbolt update. I am thinking maybe this is the problem.

To check the RAM amount.....Go to Apple>About This Mac>More Info>Overview

Please post the amount that you have.

For HD amount, click on Storage

Post your HD amt & the amt you have left (free).

Your model iMac is using the minimal amount of RAM. Reason why I suggested you either max it out or increase it.

To little RAM is just one reason why "games" play slow on a Mac. If you do a forum search you will see thousands of recommendations to max out the RAM. I like recommending both - increase or max out.

I think we need to know a few more facts to get beyond this impass:

1) What processor/speed do you have in the iMac? (from "About this Mac" in your Apple menu)

2) What video chipset is it using and how much VRAM ? (Applications > Utilities > System information. In the left-hand "Contents" pane click "Graphics/Displays")

3) Run the computer a while normally--brwse, type something, run you emails. Then close all apps you have started. In Activity Monitor (also in your Utilities folder), set the "Show" window to "All Processes" and highlight the "#CPU" column to sort by usage. Are any of the processes using more than about 10 percent of the CPU resources when the computer is idling? (This checks for "runaway background processes" which can drag performance to a crawl)

And last, if you tell us the name of the game I, for one, am will to help research it to see if any red flags show up.

My 2010 iMac 2.93gHz quad-core i7 with 12GB RAM, an ATI Radeon 5750 chipset and 1TB VRAM runs games quite well, including the flight sim X-Plane which will grab every resource possible. I could run the X-Plane demo smoothly at high settings before I upgraded the RAM from the original 4GB to the current 12GB.

I'm thinking you have runaway background process

Thanks, give me some time to research. Today got busy so I may not get back to it until this evening.

I take it that Second Life is an online game? If so, your way of connecting to the internet may be part of the picture. How are you connected (dialup, DSL. cable, sattelite, etc) and what does this site show for your connection speeds:

http://www.speedtest.net/

All the games I've tried have been run from my hard drive, not online.

I decided to reply due to your certain reluctances.

OS X Mountain Lion, alone can use between 2-4 GBs of your installed 8 GBs of RAM.

OS X Mt. Lion is a serious CPU, GPU and RAM resource hog!

You maybe using half your RAM just for OS X activities leaving you with only an additonal 4 GBs of RAM for other third party applications. That is not a lot of RAM.

How many applications do you, usually, leave running in the background while using another application?

So, adding either another 4 or 8 GBs of additonal RAM may help with your situation.

It would still be prudent to run as few additonal applications as possible and maybe while gaming online, quit all applications you are not immediately using.

I know of Second Life.

This is an online game and is played exclusively through a web browser. Second Life is a pretty serious CPU, RAM and also pretty intense on the GPU. It also, probably, also needs Adobe Flash Player which is another big Mac and OS X resource hog.

So, the web browser with Adobe Flash active and running is a big Mac and OS X resource eater that is also running an online game that is, in additon, a big Mac and OS X resource eater at the same time.

Your Intenet connection could be adversely affecting game play, also, but if I recall, Second Life uses some serious graphics power. With only 512 MB of VRAM, Second Life could, also, be taxing your GPU.

Typically, high graphics style games, usually, need a better than a 512 MB VRAM GPU. High intensity graphics games, usually, scream for a 1 or 2 GB VRAM GPU. Unfortunately, you cannot upgrade the GPU in your iMac.

So, you maybe stuck graphics power-wise.

Your best bet is, even with the additonal RAM, is to keep the amount of running background apps to a minimum and make sure your Internet connection is of sufficient speed for playing this online game.

Your Intenet connection can be adversely affected by the number of other Internet users accessing your ISP's servers at any particular time.

The more Intenet users tapping the servers and connection stream, the slower your Internet speeds/connection rate will be.

Do you run any antivirus software on your Mac? Antivirus software can slow down the normal operation of OS X.

Do you run any "crapware" like Mackeeper or any other type of "crapware" like so called hard drive "cleaning" apps?

Here are the minimum and recomended system requirements for Second Life.

http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/

I am wondering if there is a GPU incompatibility or issues with OS X 10.8 Mt. Lion.

I think there maybe still issues with playing Second Life with a Mac using OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

I found this article/link from last year on Second Life's own support forums.

I do not know if this has been resolved as yet.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Mac-OS-X-10-8-Mounta in-Lion-why-hasn-t-Linden-Lab-kept-up-to/td-p/1624589

Here's Second Life's support page to aak them questions about playing Second Life on a Mac running OS X 10.8 Mt. Lion.

https://support.secondlife.com/contact-support/

You may have better luck posting your issues there.

Hi

This is very interesting because Second Life is the only game that I play and I have been wanting the new 27 inch iMac. You are stating here the exact fear that I have for using this computer with Second Life. The main problem that I have been able to read about by searching all over the Web, is the issue with video drivers and OpenGL. I don't know if that is the cause of your problem or not, but I am fearful that this issue will not be solved for you by adding RAM or changing settings. I have friends who say thier Mac does great on SL, but I talk to even more who say that the Mac is always slower in SL than the PC, especiailly in FPS, which is very important in SL. The nVidia GPU is the one that is always stated to work the best in SL.

I don't know how anyone at Apple could tell you that Second Life will work on your machine. I was in the Apple store this week trying to answer that question and the Appler person told me to search Google to find the answer. Well, that retured a very mixed bag. I don't think this is a big deal for Apple, so you may not get much help from them. But, SL does not seem to help a lot either.

Good Luck. I hope you will keep posting here if you find some way to fix your MAC in relation to SL. As an SL citizen, I totally understand your frustration.

Joey