[real]

ok I want to hear from all the unix,OS X power users on the top 10 ways to speed X.1 up. prebinding whatever, and how to preform them, software, terminal stuff whatever. Thanks
REAL

[aleph_null]

10. Drop it from a great height.


(Sorry -- couldn't resist. Too much Letterman...)

[Scrod]

Only ten ways? I'm sure there are many more than that.

Anyway, here are a few tips from most important to least important:
Use top--all the time. Use it to weed out programs that hog the CPU and to make sure you aren't having any pageouts. Typically a program should NEVER use more than 3% of the CPU when you aren't doing anything with it. If you have any programs that use any significant percentage of the CPU when they're doing nothing at all, TRASH THEM--THEY'RE CRAP.

You can never have enough RAM.
Oh, but I've got 384 megs of RAM, surely that's enough!
NO! It's not enough. You'll still get pageouts frequently.

Make the dock significantly smaller than the length (or height) of the screen. If the dock stretches to the end of the screen and you minimize a window or launch a new application, every single icon in the dock will have to resize to make room for the new icon. This slows things down.

Anchor the dock to one side of the screen so that it grows away from the edge. When the dock is small and anchored, the only thing that has to be redrawn is the new icon that's being added to the dock.

Popup folder menus in the dock are always slow to load (apparently it takes several supercomputers to compute the 16x16 icons for the files inside it, as evidenced by the wholly unnecessary hard disk grinding every time you click the icon.) Instead, use something like the Snard dockling.

If you use any AppleScripts for common tasks, DON'T make them launchable applets; put the compiled scripts (not the apps) in the AppleScript menu instead.

Hide applications and window frequently. Generally, window operations (such as dragging) will become slower if there are many windows on the screen at the same time.

[malvolio]

Scrod,
Major thanks for the Dock tips! I've been using Snard mostly as a launcher for my favorite apps, and have my Dock center-pinned. It totally escaped my mind that Snard can store folders that I currently have in the Dock (and they craaaawl when rendering their submenus).


[ 01-18-2002: Message edited by: malvolio ]

[ 01-18-2002: Message edited by: malvolio ]

[ckohler]

Rather than using Snard, I just create a folder with aliases to the applications I use from time to time. Then I drag the folder with the aliases to the dock. Aliases require no load time to display so the menu always pops up instantly.

Other speed tips:

• Have no less than 256mb physical ram! This has a huge impact.
• If you can, use 16bit rather than 24bit on your desktop.
• Don't use large filesized images as your wallpaper.
• Learn keyboard shortcuts (CMD-Q, CMD-TAB, etc).
• If you use Classic, shut it down when you're done so it gives back the physical ram and CPU cycles it was taking. Same goes for VirtualPC.

[ 01-25-2002: Message edited by: ckohler ]

[DannyVTim]

It doesn't say much about X when a thread like this goes around.

[boots]

Originally posted by Scrod:
<STRONG>Only ten ways? I'm sure there are many more than that.

Anyway, here are a few tips from most important to least important:
Use top--all the time. Use it to weed out programs that hog the CPU and to make sure you aren't having any pageouts. Typically a program should NEVER use more than 3% of the CPU when you aren't doing anything with it. If you have any programs that use any significant percentage of the CPU when they're doing nothing at all, TRASH THEM--THEY'RE CRAP.

</STRONG>

This is kinda funny cause top shows that word v.X ALWAYS used 35-50%...even if another app is active rather than word. I thought that was odd, but your right. It's crap!

[pdjr]

Originally posted by DannyVTim:
<STRONG>It doesn't say much about X when a thread like this goes around.</STRONG>

Why do you say that? It's always possible to speed up a OS with tricks such as these. ???

[AKcrab]

Originally posted by Scrod:
If you use any AppleScripts for common tasks, DON'T make them launchable applets; put the compiled scripts (not the apps) in the AppleScript menu instead.

Thank you Scrod! I have started collecting scripts, and when the scripts don't go into /Library/Application (iTunes) I had no idea where the hell to put em. A folder in the dock wouldn't work, cause that stops the ability to drag and drop to them.

Anyway, great tip.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Scrod:
<STRONG> Use it to weed out programs that hog the CPU and to make sure you aren't having any pageouts. Typically a program should NEVER use more than 3% of the CPU when you aren't doing anything with it. If you have any programs that use any significant percentage of the CPU when they're doing nothing at all, TRASH THEM--THEY'RE CRAP.</STRONG>

I guess you have never used iTunes then.

[Spacemanspiff]

Scrod - great tips! Thank you!

This is kinda funny cause top shows that word v.X ALWAYS used 35-50%...even if another app is active rather than word. I thought that was odd, but your right. It's crap!

If you turn of the "live word count" (Prefs -&gt; View) and the "live" spell- and grammar check, word hogs much less cpu time!

Just tried with a 10 page document:
With Live WordCount, spell and grammarcheck: 40 -70 %, even when minimized...

Without those things: 5 - 18 % !!!

Suppose animated text and such stuff hogs cpu as well...

[Scrod]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
<STRONG>

I guess you have never used iTunes then.</STRONG>

Oh, I have, and if you've seen my other posts in which I state my opinion about the efficiency of iTunes you shouldn't be surprised. But it's not total crap; it is playing an MP3 while it uses all that CPU time, so it's not quite doing "nothing at all".

[mpmchugh]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
<STRONG>

I guess you have never used iTunes then.</STRONG>

Something a friend of mine figured out via top, is that if you minize itunes to its smallest window size (i.e. only showing the play/pause and volume and NO display information), it will use a lot less CPU% (about 5-10% less) than even just showing the track name.

[edddeduck]

Buy a G4 MP

Sorry couldn't resist!!

I you have memory and the app plays nice (ie low CPUwhen idle) leave them open as the impact is not that much as memory management is ALOT better in OS X.

Cheers Edd

[[email protected]]

Changing my resolution from millions to thousands helped scrolling A LOT in browser windows. It made OS X on my Dual USB 500 iBook feel...how should I put it...snappier, I guess.


Luke
BOOMER SOONER!
BEAT THE JAYHAWKS!

[real]

good stuff thanks to all, oh yeah DannyVTim, you can start a topic like this for any OS. keep'em coming
real

[atari 800]

run as root, use shadow killer, drop to thousands of colors
for some damn reason my system runs about 15/20% faster in root, and that's real speed, as in no missed frames in big movies, not imagined "snappy-ness"
odd innit?

-s

[ 01-18-2002: Message edited by: atari 800 ]

[moreno]

speed?

system prefs &gt; startup disk &gt; Mac OS 9 &gt; Restart.

just back to the real world.

[--Helen--]

Let's get rid of some of these drop shadows. Or at least minimize them to be a third of their current size.

[starfleetX]

Originally posted by atari 800:
<STRONG>run as root</STRONG>

NO!!!!!
By running in root, you throw away the entire security structure OSX set up. One bad app may destroy everything on all your drives.

:o

[ 01-19-2002: Message edited by: starfleetX ]

[AKcrab]

Originally posted by --Helen--:
<STRONG>Let's get rid of some of these drop shadows. Or at least minimize them to be a third of their current size.</STRONG>

Shadow Killer: http://www.unsanity.com/products.php

[rw]

You can never have enough RAM.
Oh, but I've got 384 megs of RAM, surely that's enough!
NO! It's not enough. You'll still get pageouts frequently.

(Scrod)

� Have no less than 256mb physical ram! This has a huge impact.

(ckohler)

I have an iMac with a 500 MHz processor -- a fairly low-end machine to be running OS X on. Originally, I had 288 MB RAM. My impression was that performance was barely tolerable. In particular, using Classic was very unpleasant. Now, I have 640. Performance, while hardly snappy, is just fine. It compares quite favorably to my Windows box at work (WinXP, 950 MHz, 256 MB, Dell Something-Or-Other). Classic doesn't faze me at all; it used to be my aspiration to be "Classic-free", but now I could care less.

Moral: Scrod is right, 384 MB ain't enough. I'd say 512 is a minimum. (In that sense, DannyVTim, OS X fares miserably vis-�-vis Windows. OS X requires far more memory. But heck, it's the cheapest upgrade you can buy.)

Make the dock significantly smaller than the length (or height) of the screen.

(Scrod)

That sounds fine, until you've got every app you ever use open. And of course, two of the most compelling reasons to use X instead of 9 are that you never have to close apps, and you rarely have to reboot.

Moral: The Dock is going to get out of hand no matter what you do.

� If you can, use 16bit rather than 24bit on your desktop.

You know, I have never (under X or 9) noticed a performance difference between Thousand and Millions of colors. I guess that's weird. I mean, I know there ought to be a difference, but I can't detect it.

� If you use Classic, shut it down when you're done so it gives back the physical ram and CPU cycles it was taking.

(ckohler)
See remarks about memory above. If you have enough, Classic becomes a non-issue.

We're all bummed about the performance issue. OS 9 sure was fast! If it makes you feel any better, things are no different in the Windows world. At work, I've gone from WinNT 4.0 to Win2000 to WinXP, and at each step, there was a tremendous drop in performance.

(PS. ckohler, my brother lives in Evansville, too. How's the weather?)

[unregistered]

Originally posted by rw:
(PS. ckohler, my brother lives in Evansville, too. How's the weather?)[/QB]

http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USIN0190_f.html

[KidRed]

Wait for a 2.0ghz G5 with 5 gigs of DDR ram.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by atari 800:
<STRONG>for some damn reason my system runs about 15/20% faster in root, and that's real speed, as in no missed frames in big movies, not imagined "snappy-ness"
odd innit?</STRONG>

Have you tried just creating a new, untouched user and comparing it to root? I've noticed that accounts seem to be a little faster when they haven't been heavily used.

[atari 800]

Originally posted by starfleetX:
<STRONG>
NO!!!!!
By running in root, you throw away the entire security structure OSX set up. One bad app may destroy everything on all your drives.</STRONG>

well, yes, just like os9 and almost every other os. i back up regularly and have a restore image of my drive ready to go (and i only have a ppp connection to the world).
i apreciate what your saying, but frankly there's already plenty of things in the world that can screw your system, incuding hard disk failures
it's certainly no bigger threat to my data than a disk first aid app that can't verify my startup disk (all you reckless "uptime" competitors listening? )
honestly, for the modest speed increase and the lack of permission alerts, i feel it's worth it for me

[ 01-19-2002: Message edited by: atari 800 ]

[ 01-19-2002: Message edited by: atari 800 ]

[atari 800]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
<STRONG>

Have you tried just creating a new, untouched user and comparing it to root? I've noticed that accounts seem to be a little faster when they haven't been heavily used.</STRONG>

mmmm, worth a go. i cloned my drive with a tool by Mike Bombich, when i booted from the clone my user account was indeed faster. the root account hasn't lost it's performance though.
i wonder what causes the initial speed and slowdown? i'm on a g4 450 so it probably isn't so noticable on faster macs but it's a very real difference.
there's an old thread about it somewhere (here or macfixit)

[Jerommeke]

ok

i have an imac 500 mhz

and it runs os x

and guess... 192 mb ram

yeah, i want more, because i am a little scared about the pageout ratio but i have not enough money and i want to wait until my warranty is over before removing the 64 mb from the slot

[Geobunny]

You could always make a list of which apps you use most often, and which are the most important to you, then renice them to some value below zero (in the terminal). That ought to make your most frequently used/important apps run a wee bit faster.

One of the reasons we're experiencing a slowdown is because of the inherent nature of pre-emptive multitasking. Mac OS &lt; X is somewhat of a hack when it comes to multitasking, it uses a technique called co-operative multitasking.......but that's not really what this thread's about, so I'll drop my line for now.

[theolein]

1. All the above
2. Enable window compression
3. Renice the window manager to -20

[tinrib]

keyboard maestro as an app launcher - cmd-opt-e from any app to open explorrer cmd-opt-m to open entourage (mail) cmd-opt-t top open terminal - you get the idea. awesome bit of software.

[jokell82]

Originally posted by rw:
<STRONG> (ckohler)
Moral: Scrod is right, 384 MB ain't enough. I'd say 512 is a minimum. (In that sense, DannyVTim, OS X fares miserably vis-�-vis Windows. OS X requires far more memory. But heck, it's the cheapest upgrade you can buy.)
</STRONG>

You seen the prices for a 512mb SODIMM chip? Not really cheap compared to most other 512mb chips. And RAM has been on the rise lately, and it's only going higher.

[SillyMonk]

Originally posted by KidRed:
<STRONG>Wait for a 2.0ghz G5 with 5 gigs of DDR ram.</STRONG>

Confirmed!!! Uh, this is not the Future Hardware forum.

As for the "top" suggestion it is a very good one.

Try this:

See top run.
Start Internet Connect and keep it visible.
See it's CPU %
Hide Internet Connect (not quit)
See it's CPU go to nothing.

NOTE: you haven't stopped the program working, just the window. I have AIrport running with a dial-up connection on an iBook 2001 and the IC goes from 50% usage to less than 1%. Amazing.

-SillyMonk

[kongtomorrow]

Originally posted by Scrod:
<STRONG>
Use top--all the time. </STRONG>

Er, most of the time I run top, you know what takes either the most or the second most cpu usage? top. How about use top when you want to know what's up.

It isn't exactly a speedup, but LaunchBar is what makes OSX tolerable on my G3 PB 233 with 256 megs of ram.

There exist applications such as Broadband Optimizer which claim to reconfigure your net settings to better take advantage of broadband, if you have it. I have it installed, but I can't really tell if it's doing any good.

The locate command at the command line is a heck of a lot faster than Sherlock on my machine. I find sherlock pretty unusable. The disadvantage is that locate consults a pre-made index, not the disk, so it's useless for files that have changed since the index did. One can get around this to some extent by setting the index to update every night. This can be done with the system crontab. If anyone's actually curious about this let me know.

Anybody know any free ways to defrag in OS X? Or is that not an issue for some reason? I was trying to look up how it's done in linux with no luck.

[Scrod]

Originally posted by kongtomorrow:
<STRONG>

Er, most of the time I run top, you know what takes either the most or the second most cpu usage? top. How about use top when you want to know what's up.</STRONG>

Or how about you actually use top properly and specify the -d flag so that it doesn't perform all those CPU-intensive memory calculations?

top -du

There you go.

[Hi I'm Ben]

I found that killing the shadows helped a ton at window resizing.

[Drizzt]

Anybody know any free ways to defrag in OS X? Or is that not an issue for some reason? I was trying to look up how it's done in linux with no luck.

That for shure... there is no way to defragm in Linux..

I'd like it.. my MP3 partition on my Linux Box is 25% not continuous.. youch!

[Geobunny]

Originally posted by Drizzt:
<STRONG>

That for shure... there is no way to defragm in Linux..

I'd like it.. my MP3 partition on my Linux Box is 25% not continuous.. youch!</STRONG>

Again I'm slightly avoiding the issue, but if it's only mp3s, surely you can't notice that 25% fragmentation. Oh, BTW it's non contiguous, incontiguous or fragmented (not getting at you, just thought you might like to know!)

Back on track, I've tried defragging my OS X drive with Norton Utils 6 and a Speed Disk profile someone created specifically for OS X, but I've noticed no speed ups at all. My guess is that somehow it's not making much difference how fragmented a drive is in X. If I'm wrong then we're all fscked, 'cos OS X seems to take a perverse pleasure in fragmenting hard drives

[real]

good stuff .
I find it werid that some apps when I look at the in top they are using all od the cpu's and others dont there 50% of the cpu standing by idle is that baddly writen app or just one that does really know what to do with the second processor. I find that resarting the machine everysome offen helps with speed. every 5 days or so. I find that really werid. I have aan ibook runnning just X with 256 MB of ram it runs great.
I have one question _Renice the window manager to -20_
what is that and how Do I do it. it sound like something in the terminal oh boy look forward to it I getting to like the terminal.
Have a good one guys
REAL

[iSore]

Originally posted by real:
<STRONG>good stuff .
I find it werid that some apps when I look at the in top they are using all od the cpu's and others dont there 50% of the cpu standing by idle is that baddly writen app or just one that does really know what to do with the second processor. I find that resarting the machine everysome offen helps with speed. every 5 days or so. I find that really werid. I have aan ibook runnning just X with 256 MB of ram it runs great.
I have one question _Renice the window manager to -20_
what is that and how Do I do it. it sound like something in the terminal oh boy look forward to it I getting to like the terminal.
Have a good one guys
REAL </STRONG>

The "back to full speed" through rebooting is an interesting issue: I wonder if only MP rigs manifest this phenomenon (my single proc. G4 tower never slows over time, so far as I can tell).

Also, I'd like to hear people's opinions on renicing Window Manager (particularly to such an extreme). From reading through a previous thread on this issue I was left with the impression that it wasn't such a great idea: some extra UI speed, but at the expense of everything else happening under the hood. True?

[MemeTransport]

Originally posted by Geobunny:
<STRONG>
Back on track, I've tried defragging my OS X drive with Norton Utils 6 and a Speed Disk profile someone created specifically for OS X, but I've noticed no speed ups at all. My guess is that somehow it's not making much difference how fragmented a drive is in X. If I'm wrong then we're all fscked, 'cos OS X seems to take a perverse pleasure in fragmenting hard drives </STRONG>

Defragging your disk will trash all the pre-binding (when you install an app and it says it's optimizing that's what it is doing). You can restore the pre-binding with a nice little app called Xoptimize. It's put out by CodeFab, Inc. and is free. Just run it after the defrag and you should get back the benefits you expect. Available at VersionTracker.

[atari 800]

Originally posted by real:
<STRONG>Renice the window manager to -20_
what is that and how Do I do it. it sound like something in the terminal
Have a good one guys
REAL </STRONG>

there's a painless lil' gui for nice called "nicer" ,version tracker's the place to pick it up

[mrtew]

Originally posted by mpmchugh:
<STRONG>


Something a friend of mine figured out via top, is that if you minize itunes to its smallest window size (i.e. only showing the play/pause and volume and NO display information), it will use a lot less CPU% (about 5-10% less) than even just showing the track name.</STRONG>

Or close the window completely! You can still control iTunes with the arrow keys and the space bar or reopen the window instantly by clicking on it's dock icon.

[zerologic]

From my personal experience those with performance issues are largely on G3 systems. Seldom does a G4 user complain about the speed of OS X.

Just a thought: Altivec?

0

[Geobunny]

Originally posted by MemeTransport:
<STRONG>

Defragging your disk will trash all the pre-binding (when you install an app and it says it's optimizing that's what it is doing). You can restore the pre-binding with a nice little app called Xoptimize. It's put out by CodeFab, Inc. and is free. Just run it after the defrag and you should get back the benefits you expect. Available at VersionTracker.</STRONG>

Yeah, I should've mentioned that that was the first thing I did after restarting (not that I believe prebinding actually binds to physical block/sector information on my HD, but I knew it couldn't do any harm so did it anyway.)

Didn't bother with Xoptimize though, just did sudo update_prebinding / root

[milhous]

For older systems (like my Pismo), I would really like to see the option to use a more stripped down classic-like UI in X for better responsiveness and to cut out the fat, if you will.[/LIST]

[iNeusch]

Originally posted by edddeduck:
<STRONG>Buy a G4 MP

Sorry couldn't resist!!
</STRONG>

I was going to say it

Get RAM too !

[real]

ok I installed the nicer apps pretty amazing but isn't that app kinda taking it back to the OS 9 days. I dont care about window resizing. keep that the same but say you take IE and turn that up So when your browsing it runns as fast as it can. All the cpu or as much as it can give. or word or final cut but when it in the vack ground rendering or playing a MP3 it doesnt get all the cpu or it doesnt get as much isnt that what happening correct me if I wrong. I have a ibook which runs OS X great but you can always get more right. So say I turn the value up for IE and Word and MAil the things that I use the most on the ibook hows that going to effects the proformance of the rest of the system. any thought is this a good thing to Do or not.
By the way I tried to get Xoptimizer from versiotracker but when I went to DL it took me to a page of much nothing but scammbled code it looks like. whats up with that. Was wondering if that app is the same as doing the prebinding in the terminal which I do.
thanks
one more thing we all know that getting the a sh*t load of ram and a 50 ghz G10 will make it faster it would make OS 9 faster but that wasnt the question

system prefs/startup disk/OS 9/ restart that was funny the rest WE KNOW.

REAL keep it coming

[Geobunny]

Originally posted by edddeduck:
<STRONG>Buy a G4 MP

Sorry couldn't resist!!
</STRONG>

Nah, there are too many problems with the MP machines. Better to get two single proc G4s and just keep one for iTunes and use the other for day to day stuff!

If you're feeling really adventurous, you could even bung 'em together with an ethernet cable and control iTunes with AppleScript over IP, that way you don't even need to get off your seat to change the song

[Charles Bouldin]

You can make -one- app at a time faster by looking at macosxhints.com and getting "A simple priority-changing AppleScript". Get Scriptmenu from Apple and then put the priority script in the list. It is a pretty easy way to do a renice and it seems to work. Not a panacea, but then TANSTAAFL.