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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > MacPro Very very slow: are the 4 chips 'confused' on what to do?

MacPro Very very slow: are the 4 chips 'confused' on what to do?
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rotuts
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Sep 9, 2006, 08:36 AM
 
Ive had my MP for two weeks now and at first it seems the computer was very very fast. it would do several things at the dame time and most importantly switch between then very quickly

notnnow.

the HD seems to be doing things all the time. it takes a long long time for an app to open and the finder to be responsive

I ask this in hardware as I wonder if the 4 chips are not coordinating well

sorry for so techical a term! maybe this is the OS not working well with the 4 chips?

I checked activity monitor when I was doing nothing and mds (209) in root was using 15% cpu.

why is the HD always doing someting?

any ideas on how to fix this?

thanks Id love to get this back to the way it was.

now at times its much slower that my first Mac the original Mac! switchiing between apps etc

thanks and cheers
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Sep 9, 2006, 08:54 AM
 
How much RAM do you have?
     
rotuts  (op)
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Sep 9, 2006, 09:35 AM
 
I tought of that and at the moment I only have the reg 512. I have 2gb comming from Crucial soon. Ill try running the utilities and see if anything needs to be repaired

I think it might be something more complicated than RAM as sometimes its very fast sometimes not and looking in the Activity monitor even though I have a very low amount of RAM very little is used


it took 14 seconds to open my mail and then 10 seconds to open the link to firefox.

if it gets better after disk first aid Ill reply back

I have for me a very fast FiOS connection at 650KB/second, but early on that didn't seem to slow things down

cheers and thanks
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Bigfoot
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Sep 9, 2006, 09:49 AM
 
I noticed this on the MP's in the Apple Store as well. The answer I got was, "everyone screws around on these." Seems to me more folks screwing around on the imacs and mini's... and they were faster. Aperture would open right up on the MP, then after a few moves things would bog right down. PS would crash often as well.

Someone suggested in another post that 1gb of ram isn't enough, I gotta believe the stock 1gig of ram would be enough no? At least keep it from crashing. I run 768gb on my G4 and it seems to run faster than the MP in the store...?

Curious to see what answers or solutions come up here. I really want to buy a MP but after playing (screwing) around with them, I'm less than impressed.
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OreoCookie
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Sep 9, 2006, 09:57 AM
 
I have similar experiences on my ProBook.
It is said to be due to Rosetta.

x86 Macs use more RAM than PowerPC-based Macs, so 1 GB is the lower bound RAM-wise, especially for a ProMac.
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rotuts  (op)
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Sep 9, 2006, 10:11 AM
 
well maybe rosetta

but initially this machine was very very fast. I was sooooooo happy!

now the only program I haave thats not intel is THOTH.

this happens when THOTH is Not running.

the HD just keeps churning away for no apparent reason when nothing is happening. no apps open no downloads nothing

I may have to bite the bullett and Call Apple on monday

what a bummer

right now this is a very unsatisfactory machine.

and for 10 days it was fantastic!!

hoope someone knows a lot more!

Ill be getting 2 GB more ram butI don't think thats it.

cheers and thanks

rotuts
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mduell
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Sep 9, 2006, 10:31 AM
 
No, they're not confused. But thanks for the laugh.

Slow + constant disk activity = swapping
Open up Activity Monitor and look at the System Memory part at the bottom. You probably have tens of thousands of page ins/outs.

Buy more RAM; how much depends on how many apps you open at the same time, but a 2GB kit should be enough if you don't have too many. Crucial has the kit for $500.
( Last edited by mduell; Sep 9, 2006 at 11:15 AM. )
     
OreoCookie
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Sep 9, 2006, 10:42 AM
 
Rosetta is still running even after you've quit all your PowerPC apps.
Another culprit may be a Bittorrent client, they clog up any machine, be it PC or Mac, PowerPC or Intel.
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Sep 9, 2006, 10:59 AM
 
Err. Isn't it just Spotlight indexing your hard drive(s) ? The process called "mds" = Spotlight.

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rotuts  (op)
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Sep 9, 2006, 11:23 AM
 
md:

30k pages in/ 900 outs

will be getting the 2gb kit crucial is out now

cheers and thanks

too bad THOTH 's not a universal binary

cheers

rotuts
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Gregory
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Sep 9, 2006, 01:17 PM
 
The MP ships with minimum of 1GB RAM (2x512) but yes, as soon as I put a 2nd GB in I notice that I regular need 1-1.2GB most of the time. More when working/scanning.

The easiest way to have problems is to use the Migration Assistant which will turn MP to molasses. Either dump all the cache folders or keep digging - or do an archive and install which will bring it back.

Faster hard drive upgrade is nice. Whether WD RE or Raptor or your favorite make/model.
     
Chuckit
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Sep 9, 2006, 01:41 PM
 
I agree with the swapping diagnosis. Rosetta can take up way more memory than you might expect. Running Photoshop and Word on the iMac at work with 1 GB makes it cry like a little girl — literally unusable.
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rotuts  (op)
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Sep 9, 2006, 01:41 PM
 
I gave up on crucial, even though they took back my original order as the initial ones did not meet the heat sink req

then I read about the volatile memory prices here and decided to get the kingstons at new egg and save a little money. they arrive wed

so that will bring me to 3GB

Im wondering if it will make a difference to have 5GB?

if so I might buy more kingston now as there are weveral articles suggesting the the memory prices for these chips, crucial asside, will be going up

cheers and thjanks
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Gregory
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Sep 9, 2006, 02:23 PM
 
I am not a fan of Newegg when the Kingston Mac Pro RAM page says "Sorry."

I would consider Ramjet and OWC right now though.
     
rotuts  (op)
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Sep 9, 2006, 03:18 PM
 
Very very interesrting

I got the newegg link from another RAM thread here: try this:

Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM Server System Memory - Retail at Newegg.com

and it said my order was accepted

at that link there were several people that said it was 'fine'

Ill call them monday. maybe the CC was authorized automatically but on monday when everybody gets back to work they won't have any in stock?

what a pain this memory issue is.

did the link work for you?

cheers

rotuts
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mduell
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Sep 9, 2006, 03:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by rotuts
I gave up on crucial, even though they took back my original order as the initial ones did not meet the heat sink req

then I read about the volatile memory prices here and decided to get the kingstons at new egg and save a little money. they arrive wed

so that will bring me to 3GB

Im wondering if it will make a difference to have 5GB?

if so I might buy more kingston now as there are weveral articles suggesting the the memory prices for these chips, crucial asside, will be going up

cheers and thjanks
Do the Kingston modules have the extra-large heatsinks that the Mac Pro needs?
     
Xyrrus
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Sep 9, 2006, 05:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by Bigfoot
I noticed this on the MP's in the Apple Store as well. The answer I got was, "everyone screws around on these." Seems to me more folks screwing around on the imacs and mini's... and they were faster. Aperture would open right up on the MP, then after a few moves things would bog right down. PS would crash often as well.

Someone suggested in another post that 1gb of ram isn't enough, I gotta believe the stock 1gig of ram would be enough no? At least keep it from crashing. I run 768gb on my G4 and it seems to run faster than the MP in the store...?

Curious to see what answers or solutions come up here. I really want to buy a MP but after playing (screwing) around with them, I'm less than impressed.
This is my expierence as well, both on my own MP and the machines I demoed at length in the store. I don't buy that people "screwing around" with the machines will slow them down much. Unless people are installing all sorts of crap on the machines, a reboot will bring most mac os x installs back to a pretty darn clean setup.

After using my MP for a few days, I'm not sure that the 2x512 config is sufficient for the machine; I went ahead and ordered another gig but I'm not 100% sure that'll solve everything.

The big surprise for me is how disk limited this machine ends up being in daily use. Safari, particularly, seems to be accessing the disk a lot more than my G5 or my powerbook G4 and it definitely decreases "the snappy." It clearly isn't a matter of processor speed; I was playing 2 1080i streams off apple's site and the processors were showing an even half load.

I'm not prepared yet to say that there's a problem with the disk subsystems (although the idea has crossed my mind - especially given the poster who talked about drive bay 1 "hanging" the computer during large writes) but IMO there could be issues in a lot of places: HFS+ Journaling, Spotlight Indexing, etc. One thing that is becomming pretty clear though is that the Mac Pro in my brief expierences is much more reliant on the subsystems (RAM and HDD particularly) than other macs I've used. In addition to an extra gig of ram, I went ahead and ordered 3x250 gig drives and plan on setting up a raid to see where that gets me.

I'm curious where other posters are at with their new MP setups. Again, this thing SCREAMS when doing intel native, processor intensive tasks (well, except for Aperture but that app is a whole can of worms onto itself). Toss in some other variables though, usually heavy disk access (Installing in particular) and that blistering speed can dissapear. Its certainly never *bad*, but it isn't always on par with what I'd expect from a $2500 machine. Perhaps my expectations were a bit high given that I'm coming from a 1GH G4 as my "home" machine (the G5 is at work and I do a pretty narrow set of tasks on it)

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rotuts  (op)
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Sep 9, 2006, 05:36 PM
 
I really can't say about the heat sinks at Kingston Ill let you know how they look

the reviewers that bought them for the MP said they have no problem

maybe the heat sink is not really that big an issue? have no idea

Im just fed up with Crucial, the variable pricing and they cost about $120 more for the tcheers
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Gregory
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Sep 9, 2006, 05:58 PM
 
At least one problem with demo systems and Apple Store is that they had older builds of 10.4.7, there now seem to be at least three, if not more. Some of us found that the version pre-installed was older than what is on the DVD. A note on AccelerateYourMac to the effect that caused some of the sluggish video performance.

Part of why some have trouble with Parallels and BootCamp and others do not.

Even the BootROM and SMC revision can differ.

Using Migration Assistant is very likely to turn any MP into molasses.

I thought I was okay with 1GB RAM. With 2GB now I find that - as with my G4 - OS X seems to just make use of what is available, and the more the merrier up to some point. (And that could mean 5-6GB for Rosetta + CS2).

Price on Ramjet has inched up. If you look at trade mags on memory prices and supply, the fall back-to-school season, new Macs and PCs and high demand through Christmas means prices will remain high. And maybe someone "talked to Micron" about their $199 price for 2x512MB as "not playing ball with the gang." ;-)
     
CharlesS
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Sep 9, 2006, 06:00 PM
 
Kingston's a good brand, as long as that RAM was actually designed for the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro uses a different type of RAM than other Macs, and if the RAM you got is for the wrong model, that would explain them costing $120 less, as the Mac Pro RAM is really expensive.

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rotuts  (op)
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Sep 9, 2006, 07:00 PM
 
what exactly is migration assistant?

is that the app apple included to get all the cr@p off my old machine into the new one?

I did that

the new macpro ran very fast for about 10 days, now will get new RAM

how can an apple migration app ( if thats what migration is) punish a new computer?

thanks
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rotuts  (op)
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Sep 9, 2006, 07:01 PM
 
Chas!
take a look at my link above and let me know what you think

thanks
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Senbei
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Sep 9, 2006, 08:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by rotuts
I really can't say about the heat sinks at Kingston Ill let you know how they look

the reviewers that bought them for the MP said they have no problem

maybe the heat sink is not really that big an issue? have no idea
The Kingston FB-DIMM uses a standard heat spreader instead of the Apple recommended oversized one. So far, only Apple, the Mac Pro certified ones that Crucial sells, and OWC have the larger heat spreader. Someone at the Apple Discussion Boards mailed Crucial to see if they would sell the heat sinks separately and the answer was no.

There isn't enough data to determine how memory without them performs when pushed under load for lengths of times. Some folks like the person below are attaching their own.

Mac Pro 667Mhz Fully Buffered DIMM Installation

Someone else used the heat sinks from this other Thermaltake product.

Thermaltake HEAT SPREADER(A1092) DDR & SDRAM Heat Sink
     
idyll
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Sep 10, 2006, 01:57 AM
 
I got that same memory from Newegg and it works perfectly

I have 3GB now and the ram has been fine for 2 weeks now. The performance is still kind of a letdown, and I am going to go to a Quad G5 for a year, until CS 3 comes out. Really, the Quad G5 is currently the fastest Mac available until all of the applications get straightened out. Once that's all fixed I'll hop back on the intel bandwagon
     
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Sep 10, 2006, 03:59 AM
 
All matters depends, I think. I have an Apple Center (now Premium Reseller :-) in Milan, Italy and we have a 2,66 working from Aug 21st just w/t 1Gb RAM and it works perfect. We also did some demostrations of Aperture with professional photografers and the result was always a very fast machine.
We set it up with migration assistant from our "standard" machine, a MBP 2,16 we use for that purpose. I think that, any time and for any computer, it is better to avoid the use of migration assistant IF the migrated machine it is NOT an Intel Mac. This we suggest always to our customers.
We have to tell that, usually, a MacPro comes to take place of a G5 or an even older G4. And in this case I will never suggest to use migration assistant.
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Sep 10, 2006, 05:54 AM
 
Ummm, you guys don't want to tell me that when I'll buy a $2000+ machine it's acting like a Pentium 1GHz with 128 MB RAM? It's scarey.

So judging from the responses here I'd say anybody who wants to purchase MP should just wait at least till Leopard's release.
     
rotuts  (op)
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Sep 10, 2006, 08:27 AM
 
How does migration assistant slow a new MP down?

when using only Intel programs, how can it matter where the files are placed by MA?

I can see trouble if you migrate a lot of PCC p[rograms, but not intel stuff

still what do I know?

just to catch everyones eye Ill do a search and then post a new thread.

cheers

rotut
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Sep 10, 2006, 09:16 AM
 
The RAM in my iBook once failed, and while it was able to boot somehow, everything was agonizingly slow, with around 1% processor utilization. However, it sounds like the OP only has stock RAM installed, so that may not be the issue,

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P
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Sep 10, 2006, 09:24 AM
 
Reading this thread, there are three things slowing down your Mac:

1. Lack of memory. You seem to have this thing sorted already. Intel Macs require more because of Rosetta, and all 64-bit Macs require more because the need to load both 32-bit and 64-bit libs in RAM. My G5 is also slow as hell with just 512 MB under Tiger. 1.25 gigs cleared that right up.
2. Rosetta. It can go haywire and suck up all remaining CPU. This is a bug, and the only way around it is to kill the daemon. The process is kalled "translated", and you can kill it when ever the MAc gets slow.
3. Spotlight. It wants to index the entire drive, whcih kills disk performance. Best thing to do, IMO, is to leave the machine on overnight and let Spotlight do it's job. Once the index is done, you won't notice it again.

HTH.
     
kick52
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Sep 10, 2006, 09:34 AM
 
Originally Posted by rotuts
sorry for so techical a term! maybe this is the OS not working well with the 4 chips?
hahaha!

do you really think apple would bring out a new machine and not test it with its main operating system?!?!

-end of noob bash-

i agree with the other guys:spotlight is indexing for some reason. look up in the top right corner, and click on the blue icon. what does it say/do?
( Last edited by kick52; Sep 10, 2006 at 09:41 AM. )
     
rotuts  (op)
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Sep 10, 2006, 11:04 AM
 
re: spotlight: ive never 'asked' it to 'index' my HD

I thought in the past that was 'optional'

I don't plan to use spotlight so if its always on, can I turn it off??

I clicked on the spotlight in the top right and the small window opens where I type what I guess id like to spotlight

the machine is on most nights.

cheers

rotuts
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mikemako
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Sep 10, 2006, 02:45 PM
 
You can tell Spotlight not to index your Hard Drive this way:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Click on the Spotlight icon
3. Click on the Privacy tab
4. Click on the plus sign
5. Choose your Hard Drive

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himself
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Sep 10, 2006, 09:37 PM
 
Originally Posted by rotuts
re: spotlight: ive never 'asked' it to 'index' my HD

I thought in the past that was 'optional'
Actually, you have to "ask" it to not index your HD. Otherwise, by default, it will index your drive.
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Chuckit
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Sep 10, 2006, 11:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by rotuts
re: spotlight: ive never 'asked' it to 'index' my HD

I thought in the past that was 'optional'

I don't plan to use spotlight
You're sure you'll never want to search for anything?
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Sep 11, 2006, 12:20 AM
 
Don't bother disabling Spotlight. Once it finishes its initial indexing, you won't notice it's there. The temporary slowdown will only be during the first day or so that you use the computer.

If you've had your Mac for two weeks, I'm pretty sure it's not Spotlight slowing it down. However, you can check by going to the Activity Monitor and seeing how much of the CPU the "mdimport" task is taking up.

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Sep 11, 2006, 03:18 AM
 
Originally Posted by himself
Actually, you have to "ask" it to not index your HD. Otherwise, by default, it will index your drive.
It would be nice of Apple offered an option to have it the other way around. I'd prefer to specify which volumes to index rather than have it try to index everything.
     
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Sep 11, 2006, 04:25 AM
 
Originally Posted by Simon
It would be nice of Apple offered an option to have it the other way around. I'd prefer to specify which volumes to index rather than have it try to index everything.
And then not being able to search your harddrive and mail by default? Yeah, I can see that one going down well with the non-geek crowd.

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Sep 11, 2006, 08:18 AM
 
Originally Posted by - - e r i k - -
And then not being able to search your harddrive and mail by default? Yeah, I can see that one going down well with the non-geek crowd.
As I said, an option is just fine. Apple can leave it the way it is for the 'non-geek crowd', but it would be nice if there were an option to have it the other way around.
     
rotuts  (op)
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Sep 11, 2006, 08:58 AM
 
just so I get this right: spotlight is the method that the ordinary "find" uses to search ie find stuff? therefore if I turn spotlight and indexing the drive off and then search in "find" it won't find all the stuff thats new ie out on the drive after I turned it off?

so 'find' relies on indexing and that reliles on 'spotlight' being on?

cheers and thanks
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kingtj
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Sep 11, 2006, 11:14 AM
 
I just received my Mac Pro (dual 2.66 model, upgraded to 3GB of RAM) last week, and I've noticed a problem I also encountered on my Macbook Pro notebook.

It seems like fairly regularly, the dock behavior gets weird. The "genie effect" suddenly decides to stop working, or objects in the dock quit magnifying when the mouse is rolled over them. If I confirm the dock settings, those features are still shown as enabled though.

On my PPC-based Macs, I practically never ran into this issue. So thinking about your point #2 you mentioned, I'm now starting to suspect Rosetta might be the culprit here? Has anyone else experienced the same type of issue with the dock after using their Intel-based Macs for a while?


Originally Posted by P
Reading this thread, there are three things slowing down your Mac:

2. Rosetta. It can go haywire and suck up all remaining CPU. This is a bug, and the only way around it is to kill the daemon. The process is kalled "translated", and you can kill it when ever the MAc gets slow.

HTH.
     
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Sep 11, 2006, 11:19 AM
 
rotuts: Yep, that's right. The old Finder Find feature is no longer there, it seems, so if you disable Spotlight for the entire HD, you can't Find anything. The terminal commands find and locate still work though.
     
pheonixash
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Sep 11, 2006, 11:30 AM
 
Originally Posted by P
rotuts: Yep, that's right. The old Finder Find feature is no longer there, it seems, so if you disable Spotlight for the entire HD, you can't Find anything. The terminal commands find and locate still work though.
Not exactly correct. The way it works is that, initially Spotlight indexes your hard drive which keeps your drive busy for say 2-3 days depending on the data you have on it. After that, all new files you create are automatically indexed, in the sense that when you save a file, an entry is added to the Spotlight index. Therefore, theoretically, indexing shouldn't be a reason to slow down your computer beyond the first week. I would say it's your RAM.
     
selowitch
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Sep 11, 2006, 11:46 AM
 
Originally Posted by rotuts
I gave up on crucial, even though they took back my original order as the initial ones did not meet the heat sink req
How did you know what the heat sink requirements were? Does one have to check those even when the RAM is of the appropriate type, speed, latency?
     
rotuts  (op)
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Sep 11, 2006, 12:05 PM
 
Crucial initially offered RAM for the MacPro, which I bought for 2x1GB for about 380. the day before I got mine from them they emailed me and 'recalled' them saying they did not meet the heat requirements for the MP

it took them a long time to come up with the ??? new crucial RAM and the price jumped to 500 for 2.

if you seach or just follow the RAM theads you will see this discussion

also Ive discoverd thartr Crucial, where Ive been getting RAM for a long time has dymanic prices: they seem to beable to to see what they offered yoou before and maybe milk the prices up. just a guess this is also mentioned in the threads.

so I gave up on this supper dupper stuff and got kingston for 180/GB

some have this and say no problem we will see.

it seems very very odd thatonly two or three RAM-ers make MP RAM with the "Correct" ehar sink

my fan can run a little faster, Im Hoping!!!!!!
MacPro 2.66 dual 3GB RAM 1.5 TB HD's
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Miglia mini HD (Great!)
     
P
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Sep 11, 2006, 04:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by pheonixash
Not exactly correct. The way it works is that, initially Spotlight indexes your hard drive which keeps your drive busy for say 2-3 days depending on the data you have on it. After that, all new files you create are automatically indexed, in the sense that when you save a file, an entry is added to the Spotlight index. Therefore, theoretically, indexing shouldn't be a reason to slow down your computer beyond the first week. I would say it's your RAM.
Eh... Did you read the post I responded to? It was this one:

just so I get this right: spotlight is the method that the ordinary "find" uses to search ie find stuff? therefore if I turn spotlight and indexing the drive off and then search in "find" it won't find all the stuff thats new ie out on the drive after I turned it off?

so 'find' relies on indexing and that reliles on 'spotlight' being on?

cheers and thanks
     
lllab
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Sep 11, 2006, 04:27 PM
 
i have a mac pro and it is extremly fast, even faster than my new quad opteron pc.
no slowdowns, no problems as some here wrote.

just the standard config from the apple store.

cheers
stefan
     
rotuts  (op)
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Sep 11, 2006, 04:35 PM
 
stef:

your RAM? 1GB? dividedinto 512 x 2?

my Kingston comes tomorrow so Ill know

Ill get the cooper heat sinks later

cheers
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24" + 21" Samsung flat panels
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Spliffdaddy
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Sep 11, 2006, 08:57 PM
 
Originally Posted by lllab
i have a mac pro and it is extremly fast, even faster than my new quad opteron pc.
no slowdowns, no problems as some here wrote.

just the standard config from the apple store.

cheers
stefan
You must have a problem with your quad Opteron rig.

Mine is unbeatable in any benchmark against a dual Xeon - or Mac Pro.
     
Detrius
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Sep 11, 2006, 10:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by rotuts
...I tought of that and at the moment I only have the reg 512...

Wait a minute... I thought the Mac Pro came with 1GB. If your machine is only seeing 512MB, you have a stick of bad RAM.

Also, the 512MB that came with our iMac was absolutely unbearable (it made the machine feel slower than the G4 mac mini). Of course, I'm a programmer, so I knew full well I needed at least 2GB in my machine. It just took a while for the RAM to show up.
ACSA 10.4/10.3, ACTC 10.3, ACHDS 10.3
     
©öñFü$íóÑ
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Sep 11, 2006, 11:33 PM
 
i remember when upgrading from OS 8.6 to 9.1 and every now and then, 'something' kept indexing the stuff on my hard drive..... at first, i thought it was some kind of mac virus or something..... turned out that it was Sherlock..... I really wish all System Software options would be -presented- to the user either on the first boot after a fresh re-install of OSX or if installed on a new Mac purchase. Cut the confusion *cough*... and bring everything up front...... no hiding of features!!

Don't bully me, I got an Uzi... HOO-HAH!
     
 
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