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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > Performance problems with Cube

Performance problems with Cube
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Hanul
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Join Date: Jan 2003
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May 12, 2005, 06:34 PM
 
While ripping my CD collection I experience a dramatic performance decrease not only in iTunes(4.7), but with the whole system, when iTunes is running. The Cube has the original CPU with 450MHz, 1GB RAM, an 80GB HD, a SuperDrive, and it runs Tiger. I have now close to 10,000 songs in my library, which takes 36GB on the HD. The iTunes library data file is 13MB. As the library grows bigger the system slows down terribly.

I see the spinning beachball a lot and it takes sometimes up to 30 seconds to select another song. When I type into the search field I can see the characters "crawl" along, they are visibly delayed to my typing. This behavior seems to affect other programs as well like Safari or Mail, which also slow down, when iTunes is running.

Is this normal? Is a 450MHz G4 too slow to handle 10,000 songs? Anybody experiencing similar problems on a Cube? 'top' doesn't reveal any useful hints: playing a song takes about 10% CPU, but selecting one 40%.
     
Thade
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Join Date: Aug 2002
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May 13, 2005, 12:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by Hanul
While ripping my CD collection I experience a dramatic performance decrease not only in iTunes(4.7), but with the whole system, when iTunes is running. The Cube has the original CPU with 450MHz, 1GB RAM, an 80GB HD, a SuperDrive, and it runs Tiger. I have now close to 10,000 songs in my library, which takes 36GB on the HD. The iTunes library data file is 13MB. As the library grows bigger the system slows down terribly.

I see the spinning beachball a lot and it takes sometimes up to 30 seconds to select another song. When I type into the search field I can see the characters "crawl" along, they are visibly delayed to my typing. This behavior seems to affect other programs as well like Safari or Mail, which also slow down, when iTunes is running.

Is this normal? Is a 450MHz G4 too slow to handle 10,000 songs? Anybody experiencing similar problems on a Cube? 'top' doesn't reveal any useful hints: playing a song takes about 10% CPU, but selecting one 40%.

Yep, it's normal. I think you'd see a huge speed increase from a cpu upgrade. I've since sold my cube but the jump from 450 to Sonnet 1.2 was huge. CPU or a mac mini would do a better job of managing the database/data. You didn't mention how much space is free. A full drive will also slow things down.

Jeff
     
Hanul  (op)
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May 15, 2005, 04:52 PM
 
So, it's about to buy a new PowerMac, isn't it? ;-)

At the moment, I'm looking at the Dual 2GHz and Dual 2.3GHz. I probably won't use the PCI-X slots (don't even know what kind of cards would make use of it) and I think I won't go over the 4GB RAM barrier either. But I would like to have the 2x 300MHz more, because the machine should serve me a few years. And the older the system gets, the more every MHz counts?
     
   
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