2006 Mac Pro Laggy Window Resizing?

[Tucom]

I just received a killer 2006 highly upgraded Mac Pro, quad core Xeon, SSD boot drive, Radeon 4870 512MB GPU running a fresh (not upgraded) install from USB drive of OS X 10.7 Lion.


Thing is, resizing a window is more laggy and less smooth than that of the newer 2011 iMacs, but don't they have an inferior GPU? Is it the Core i series processor that allows them to resize windows smoother? Scrolling is for the most part buttery smooth, if a bit "behind" the cursor every now and then, but any ideas as to why it's not silky smooth on resizing?


And the Mac App store is like 10 FPS when resizing LOL, but that's for everyone is it not?

 

[cryingrobot]

I have the same MP with a very similar setup and same GPU. I noticed the lag after upgrading to the 4870 from the 7300. Although the 4870 is a much more powerful card, it doesnt play well with this MP and there is some performance lag even from the 7300. Anyway, its a minor thing but other things on that GPU will be annoying like the loud fans and an occasional crash. The only reason I havnt upgraded is because the machine itself is so old (7 years old) and an update is due.

 

[Tucom]

I have the same MP with a very similar setup and same GPU. I noticed the lag after upgrading to the 4870 from the 7300. Although the 4870 is a much more powerful card, it doesnt play well with this MP and there is some performance lag even from the 7300. Anyway, its a minor thing but other things on that GPU will be annoying like the loud fans and an occasional crash. The only reason I havnt upgraded is because the machine itself is so old (7 years old) and an update is due.

So you're saying windows resized smoother with the less powerful 7300??


And you're saying the 7300 is what will cause the occasional crash and has the loud fans, right?



Does anyone know a card that enables smooth resizing on a 2006 Mac Pro? The card performs flawless in games and such, so is it just a bug for the 4870 and a 2006 Mac Pro?


Thanks!

 

[bax2003]

GeForce 7300GT has passive cooling, so no fan.
I experienced smooth window resizing on 2008 Mac Pro with Radeon 2600XT.

 

[Tucom]

GeForce 7300GT has passive cooling, so no fan.
I experienced smooth window resizing on 2008 Mac Pro with Radeon 2600XT.

Maybe he meant loud Mac Pro fans to cool the passively cooled card.


What OS were you running that had the smooth resizing? And how smooth was it? Because resizing a Finder window is silky smooth, it's just Mail, Safari, and the App Store that aren't AS smooth as a new 2011 iMac, but still relatively smooth I guess you could say.

 

[bax2003]

Very smooth in Snow Leo, and just a bit choppy on Lion.

 

[Tucom]

Very smooth in Snow Leo, and just a bit choppy on Lion.

And this is with a 2006 Mac Pro?

 

[bax2003]

And this is with a 2006 Mac Pro?

Look at post #4, so Mac Pro 2008, 2 x E5462 Quad Core Harpertown.

 

[cryingrobot]

So you're saying windows resized smoother with the less powerful 7300??


And you're saying the 7300 is what will cause the occasional crash and has the loud fans, right?



Does anyone know a card that enables smooth resizing on a 2006 Mac Pro? The card performs flawless in games and such, so is it just a bug for the 4870 and a 2006 Mac Pro?


Thanks!

Yes. Sorry if not clear. The 7300 was quiet and smooth and handled the osx graphics better. The 4870 was loud and was a bit laggy on snow leopard and now lions. I don't boot camp anymore so can't say how they run in Windows but the 4870 seems to game games ported to Mac fine though the temperature gets hot.

I think after the 4870s you run into other bottlenecks and your motherboard will not be able to really access the full power of the card. If you just want the osx to run well then you might look into nvidea cards as they seemed to be better supported.

Before doing that, it maybe a problem with the individual card. In my case it's just slightly laggy but nothing that made me want to swap the card out.