[herbsman]

last week i got the deal of the century. my good friend sold me his used mac pro at a very good price because he wasn't satisfied with the mac for his own reasons. anyway, one thing that i notice with the mac pro is OS X doesn't run as smooth as my old dual 2.5 power mac.

Here are a few examples

1. The Mac Pro definitely feels like it bogs down and turns sluggish after a few days of running without a restart, shut-down, etc. My power mac which runs like a champ is VERY smooth, nothing really feels sluggish and i haven't restarted it in over a month.

2. The Mac Pro has zero login items that launch at startup, yet it still takes a lot longer than my power mac which has 5 login items. I remember when he first showed me the computer my jaw dropped because of how fast it booted up!

Those are the main issues that I notice. My friend made an observation that when he first bought the machine, everything was zippy and extremely fast. He could launch every default application in the dock one by one and things felt snappy. I still have the original OS installed with all of this extra 3rd party apps, and really, it isn't that much. Has anyone else noticed these issues with the Mac Pro?

Technology-wise I don't think anyone questions that the intel procs in the mac pro are way faster than the power mac's dual 2.5 processors. But the system really runs sluggish and I'm having to restart the mac pro at least once every 4-5 days. It's still better than Windows but my power mac has gone at least 2 months without a restart and always runs OS X like a champ.

Maybe it's the RAM? Power mac does have 4, but the mac pro has 3 gigs which of course is less, but would that extra gig make that big of a difference? Apps on the Mac Pro are all universal too.

Here's a brekdown of the main specs:
Power Mac Dual 2.5
4 gigs of RAM
Nvidia 6800 GT
250 HD 7200

Mac Pro Quad 3.0
3 gigs of RAM
ATI x1900
250 HD 7200

Anyway, I'm about to sell my power mac, but I'm going to miss how well and smooth it ran!

[mitchell_pgh]

The RAM could make some of the difference, but I'm guessing not as much as you see. I'm assuming everything is up to date running the most current OS.

Strange... but I think you will see those differences disappear with Leopard.

10.4 was released before the transition to x86 and while Apple has been developing both OSs, I think we will see them starting to really optimize for Intel with the next releases.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh 

10.4 was released before the transition to x86 and while Apple has been developing both OSs, I think we will see them starting to really optimize for Intel with the next releases.

10.4 is completely optimized for both architectures. They don't develop `both OS', it's really just one that is compiled for two architectures. Only with non-native apps, you'll see a serious impact on performance.

[CheesePuff]

I have no answer for you, but with those specs the Mac Pro should only be quicker then the Power Mac G5 in every test, even in most Rosetta applications.

Not sure what to tell you except make sure you reformat the Mac Pro, upgrade to the latest 10.4.8 and see if it's still like that.

[mduell]

I'd put more memory in the Mac Pro and see how it does... it's pretty well accepted that you need more memory on Intel Macs (change in Apple's optimization strategy, possibility of running code through Rosetta, etc).

[Dzokayi]

Do a fresh OS install on the Mac Pro and get back to us.

[Captain Curt]

My 2.66 Mac Pro flies on 3 gig of ram. Next time before you shut down, you may want to go to the activity monitor and check to see how much free ram you have left. How many page outs do you have?

[imitchellg5]

In my sadly limited Mac Pro experience, it has seemed quite a bit faster than even the Quad 2.5 GHz. I would try possibly keeping an eye on Activity Monitor and maybe doing a reinstall of the OS.

[Waragainstsleep]

I have seen the boot times on most of the Intel Macs get longer and longer since they were released. I think the first iMac we got booted in about 17 seconds when it came out of the box. If you look at the size of the updates since then, its not all that surprising. This shouldn't be such an issue for the Mac Pro though. Not nearly as many updates since that came out.

Have you tried repairing permissions? You could check your system logs for any signs of weirdness too.

[herbsman]

thanks for all the responses.

i have done everything possible in terms of updating software. permissions are all repaired, and HD checks out fine when running 'repair disk' from an external OS X volume. i need to pick up an extra HD to backup some data, but my next step will be a clean install. i was really hoping to avoid doing that and wait until leopard comes out, but this sluggishness is driving me crazy.

THANKS AGAIN

[SierraDragon]

Repair Permissions should be done before and after each installation of any app (e.g. drivers, etc.). A one time repair does not necessarily undue previously developed issues. Do an OS "Archive and Install." Always Repair Permissions immediately before and after each installation. You may even want to do a clean install of everything, but personally I would probably wait for OS 10.5 before performing that chore.

Note that typically Rosetta and Safari are both gobbling RAM, and MacIntels do seem to want more RAM, so 3 GB is not really a lot on a Mac Pro.

-Allen Wicks

[MacGallant]

Did you try running the maintenance scripts? That helps sometimes.

[SierraDragon]

Later versions of OS X now run scripts automatically and are not disabled by turning the Mac off at night.

-Allen Wicks

[cgc]

Originally Posted by SierraDragon 

Later versions of OS X now run scripts automatically and are not disabled by turning the Mac off at night.

That's good to know, I always used Anacron.

[booboo]

I just got my Mac Pro 2.66. I was a heavy user of my previous G5 2.0GHz and immediately noticed a few issues. Some of these may be due to having less RAM in the Mac Pro: 1.0GB vs 1.5GB in the G5. I'll be adding-in another 1GB in a few days.

Firstly, whilst snappier™ than the G5, the Mac Pro seems less good at mult-tasking. Applications (all UB, btw) such as eyeTV, which ran perfectly smoothly in the background on the G5, are much more easily interrupted by other activity, such as opening and/or using other app's on the Mac Pro. Also, movies in VLC or QuickTime Player are much more prone to stuttering in the background than they were on the G5.

The USB bus seems even more flaky on the Mac Pro, at least with eyeTV. On the G5, opening an app such as Logic Pro, which accesses its USB dongle for copy-protection, would sometimes render eyeTV inoperable. On the Mac Pro, many more audio app's do this much more predictably.

A minor intel-OSX-Mac Pro bug, can anyone confirm? In View Options, you can set the window background colour. (I had a few of mine set to about 97% white) these window backgrounds display much darker - in fact, the saturation slider does not remember where you set it. The value it remembers seems randomly related to the value you set.

I did wonder whether the priority of background processing is different on the Intel Mac OS X, but this isn't something that ever occured to me using my MacBook. In fact, so far, this Mac Pro does not seem to be in a different league from the MacBook 1.83 (with 1GB RAM) that I sold to part-finance it!

[osiris]

No solution, but I share your observation on two portables. I have two rev b Intel MacBookPros, both with 2gbs ram.

When they were brand new, Safari and Mail would launch faster than I could reach for the menu bar.
Now Safari takes upwards of 6-7 bounces (FYI I only have 20 bookmarks), Mail takes 2 or 3.

Both machines still boot rather quickly, and permissions come clean. I just can't figure out the slow-down-iness over the months. I do miss my .10 second Safari launches.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by osiris 

When they were brand new, Safari and Mail would launch faster than I could reach for the menu bar.
Now Safari takes upwards of 6-7 bounces (FYI I only have 20 bookmarks), Mail takes 2 or 3.

Both machines still boot rather quickly, and permissions come clean. I just can't figure out the slow-down-iness over the months. I do miss my .10 second Safari launches.

Try deleting Safari's cache, or doing a reset of Safari. While you may only have a few bookmarks, every site favicon gets cached by Safari. This was a source of major slowdown in OS X 10.3.x if I'm remembering correctly. Clearing these all out may help.

Might be able to speed up Mail by clearing the cache of downloaded attachments with a utility like Onyx. Do be careful though if you're not keeping all your mail on an IMAP server (or not erasing it from your POP server) - clearing this cache, if you don't have another copy of all the attachments somewhere, will result in the loss of the attachment(s). Don't say I didn't warn you.

[zaghahzag]

i'd guess that on booting you have something starting that uses rosetta. that would cause a lot of slowdown.

also if the drive gets full, i think it's total performance goes down significantly. how full is the HD?

[booboo]

Two small tip-ettes.

Activity Viewer allows you to see which running app's are PPC and which are Intel - go to Columns from the View menu and select Kind.

(Might be useful in tracking down less-than-expected performance, or slow start-ups on Intel Mac's.)

Another tip-ette. Target mode for importing settings from another Mac also works using FireWire drives. . . . sweet.

[Headshot]

Keep Safari in its appropriate folder, I think it is something like .trash???
(Firefox baby!)