[jon l. dawson]

Not exactly, but...

My new G5 is noticably slower today. At least, the graphical functions are. When I minimize a window, the genie effect is a bit choppy. It was never like that to my knowledge. The only thing I have done is installed the Developer Tools (XCode). And probably a coincidence, but last night it crashed. I was woken up last night by the fans roaring. The system was locked up after it had put the monitor to sleep so I couldn't see what happened.

I just showed the window animations to my girlfriend and she agrees that it has suddenly become slower. I'm not sure why. Nothing is taking up cpu in the background-- it's like 98% idle. It just feels like either the cpu or video card has been throttled down somehow.

[jon l. dawson]

Skidmarks is saying Int: 133, FP: 245, Vec: 182

Does anyone have a G5 DP 1.8 to compare this with? ThinkSecret was saying that a DP 2.0Ghz was Int: 170

edit - I also ran XBench and everything seems about normal. My computer was about 180 total. I dont know, it just seems slower. The dock, the animations, the overall responsiveness.

[jon l. dawson]

I'm sorry to keep replying to my own posts... I am happy to report it's not the computer. But, it's something to do with my account. If I do a fast user switch to another account and do the same stuff, it's fluid as can be. Switch back, it's choppy again. I'm not running any apps on here, I even changed my desktop to a solid color. I'm a bit stumped.

Why would one user's display be faster?

[djohnson]

Try fixing permissions. It might help since it is only your account.

[jon l. dawson]

Nope, didn't help. Still happening. Thanks though. I may try re-creating my account, although I'd really like to know what did it.

[osiris]

Try running Xbench.... I don't know what Skidmarks is.

Here's my dual 1.8 G5 results:

Results 193.52
System Info
Xbench Version 1.1.3
System Version 10.3.2 (7D24)
Physical RAM 2560 MB
Model PowerMac7,2
Processor PowerPC 970x2 @ 1.80 GHz
L1 Cache 64K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.80 GHz
Bus Frequency 900 MHz
Video Card GeForce FX 5200
Drive Type Maxtor 6Y160M0
CPU Test 140.00
GCD Loop 93.55 3.65 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 286.32 1.04 Gflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 89.35 2.60 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 140.42 2.18 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 310.80 12.44 Mops/sec
Thread Test 173.30
Computation 122.26 1.65 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 297.49 3.73 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 303.02
System 316.08
Allocate 665.25 433.94 Kalloc/sec
Fill 252.00 2005.88 MB/sec
Copy 248.77 1243.85 MB/sec
Stream 290.99
Copy 246.83 1804.34 MB/sec [G5]
Scale 256.13 1890.26 MB/sec [G5]
Add 337.72 2161.39 MB/sec [G5]
Triad 353.43 2159.44 MB/sec [G5]
Quartz Graphics Test 235.87
Line 236.27 6.01 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 190.49 13.40 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 223.24 5.15 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 209.28 2.27 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 406.79 6.63 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 185.09
Spinning Squares 185.09 129.53 frames/sec
User Interface Test 312.88
Elements 312.88 100.64 refresh/sec
Disk Test 140.43
Sequential 144.37
Uncached Write 173.15 72.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 133.69 54.75 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 136.41 21.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 140.41 56.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 136.70
Uncached Write 167.61 2.51 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 191.07 43.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 100.37 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 123.48 25.41 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[jon l. dawson]

XBench results for me...
I know they are normal. The computer is fine, I think, it's just the animations for some reason are choppy with my user account (which incidentally I ran XBench with, so I have no idea whatsoever). I'm going to make the account over again...

Results 181.36
System Info
Xbench Version 1.1.3
System Version 10.3.2 (7D24)
Physical RAM 512 MB
Model PowerMac7,2
Processor PowerPC 970x2 @ 1.80 GHz
L1 Cache 64K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.80 GHz
Bus Frequency 900 MHz
Video Card GeForce FX 5200
Drive Type ST3160023AS
CPU Test 140.29
GCD Loop 93.10 3.64 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 285.36 1.03 Gflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 88.99 2.59 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 142.50 2.21 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 318.48 12.75 Mops/sec
Thread Test 172.08
Computation 121.74 1.64 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 293.41 3.68 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 304.13
System 336.36
Allocate 663.94 433.09 Kalloc/sec
Fill 281.92 2244.12 MB/sec
Copy 258.67 1293.37 MB/sec
Stream 277.54
Copy 240.01 1754.48 MB/sec [G5]
Scale 239.96 1770.89 MB/sec [G5]
Add 319.07 2042.04 MB/sec [G5]
Triad 339.66 2075.32 MB/sec [G5]
Quartz Graphics Test 225.41
Line 230.34 5.86 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 186.79 13.14 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 212.72 4.90 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 209.03 2.27 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 333.11 5.43 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 188.08
Spinning Squares 188.08 131.62 frames/sec
User Interface Test 301.15
Elements 301.15 96.86 refresh/sec
Disk Test 107.58
Sequential 113.45
Uncached Write 144.98 60.43 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 130.35 53.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 76.15 12.05 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 132.35 53.47 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 102.29
Uncached Write 93.45 1.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 104.55 23.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.12 0.64 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 117.07 24.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[massey]

*bump*

[jon l. dawson]

I'd been meaning to update-
The cause of the slowdown was Virex. I received it with .mac and thought I would install it as I paid for it and all. I had ruled it out initially because I looked in the process list and didn't see Virex anywhere, and nowhere in any of the application does it say anything about active scanning or staying resident. Even when I narrowed it down to Virex I could not find any indication that it was running in the background. All I know is that it would pop up on login then go away immediately because I disabled the option to scan my home directory on login.

Whatever it was doing it was enough that it slowed down my dual G5. I've been playing music, copying files over the network, decompressing large images, etc., and never noticed anything like I did by simply having installed Virex. My question is, does it even do active scanning? Why isn't there an option to turn it off, if that's the case? I guess I could turn off where it starts the program on login, but I didn't even know where to do that until today.

In the end I narrowed it down when I threw Virex in the trash, logged back in and everything was running smooth again. Re-installed, it, logged in again, and it was choppy.