2008 Mac Pro very slow

[stringzz]

I have a Mac Pro (early 2008) with 6gb memory running Yosemite v10.10.5.

I was getting a lot of beachballs when I was in Safari. I thought maybe the hard drive was old so I replaced it with a 1TB Seagate hybrid hard drive.

The new hard drive is only half full and Safari is the only major application running. I still get the beach balls, even when just typing into a text box, really frustrating. The problem seams intermittent but it happens quite a bit.

Is there anything I can do to determine the issue? Could my memory be going bad?

 

[h9826790]

Which GPU do you have?

 

[filmak]

Do you have other application running at the same time?
Have you check the activity monitor about other tasks running?
What is your memory's sticks arrangement? specs? are all the same brand?

Anyway I think that you will need at some point to install more memory, imho 6 gb are too low.

 

[Silencio]

6GB is not a lot of RAM these days.

Unfortunately, the PC6400 FB-DIMMs for the Early 2008 Mac Pros are still pretty expensive for what you get. It gets hard to justify sinking more money into a machine that age, even if it is capable of running Yosemite and El Capitan.

 

[stringzz]

Which GPU do you have?

ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

I have a pair of 1GB ram modules and a pair of 2 GB ram modules. I believe they are not the same manufacturer.

I guess do I sink $120 bucks and get 16gb ram, or is the computer too old? I would go iMac but I can't use my KVM switch and windows business laptop with a shared monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Thanks

 

[h9826790]

The Mac Pro 3,1 is a bit old, but shouldn't be that old for just use Safari.

5770 should be good enough, even my old 4870 can do well in Safari.

6G RAM is a bit less for Yosemite, but if there isn't anything running in the background, than it should be more than enough for just Safari.

It seems this is a software issue (especially if there is no beachball in Chrome, Firefox, etc). Did you try to reset Safari? I couldn't remember the exact procedure, but it should be very easy to get the answer from Google.

 

[austinpike]

6GB for Safari with nothing else running is plenty; more RAM isn't going to fix the problem.
Did you do a clean install on the new drive, or just clone your old OS over to the new one?
Have you ever done a clean install, or have you just been running updates on the OS for years?

If you try FireFox or Chrome do they work better than Safari?

My guess would be several years worth of cookies, history, and temp files. First thing I would do is delete the cache files. Go to your desktop, hold down the option key, go up to the "Go" menu and open Library. (note Library only appears when you hold the option key.) In there go to Caches -> com.apple.Safari. Delete Cache.db, fsCachedData folder and Webpage Previews folder. On one of my older machine the Website Previews folder had thousands of files; just deleting that fixed Safari from being nearly unusable.

 

[stringzz]

My guess would be several years worth of cookies, history, and temp files. First thing I would do is delete the cache files. Go to your desktop, hold down the option key, go up to the "Go" menu and open Library. (note Library only appears when you hold the option key.) In there go to Caches -> com.apple.Safari. Delete Cache.db, fsCachedData folder and Webpage Previews folder. On one of my older machine the Website Previews folder had thousands of files; just deleting that fixed Safari from being nearly unusable.

I did do a clean install of Yosemite. I also recently used latest version of Onyx to clear out all cache and logs.

I tried using Chrome this evening and the computer was hanging up on me again, so not sure if it is just Safari related.

My Caches folder has about 1.1 mb of file data and about 10 files in it.

I appreciate all the feedback.

 

[h9826790]

For testing purpose, you may only install one RAM stick (e.g. Only one 2G stick in slot 1) to check if that's the non-matching RAM issue.

Also, if you have any other partition. Try 10.11 or 10.9.5, then you will have an idea if it's OS related.

So far, I can't see anything wrong in hardware spec, except if the RAM is not matching / faulty. Or if the GPU / HDD is faulty and causing all the beach ball.

And since now you said the computer freeze in Chrome as well. Then it may not be just Safari related, but something else.

 

[nigelbb]

6GB is not a lot of RAM these days.

Unfortunately, the PC6400 FB-DIMMs for the Early 2008 Mac Pros are still pretty expensive for what you get. It gets hard to justify sinking more money into a machine that age, even if it is capable of running Yosemite and El Capitan.

The 800MHz FB-DIMMs are very expensive as Apple was about the only company to use them. However the 667Mhz FB-DIMMs were the standard for that generation of Xeons & can be purchased very cheaply used pulled from a Xeon server. The last I bought was 32GB (8x4GB) for the equivalent of about $100. Even in benchmarks the 667MHz parts are only 4% slower & in real life you will see no difference in fact if you install 8x4GB you have all slots populated with matching RAM so the overall performance will be better than 6GB of mixed parts.

 

[L Caputo]

So I too have a 2008 Mac Pro, with 6Gbs RAM (mixed apple and another,2x1Gbs Apple and 2x2Gbs other.) and am glad to say this works well and has no hangs. I operate it using Lion,Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan all work as well as each other. so my initial guess would e that it is software rather than hardware. sometimes Safari Extensions can prove problematic and slow things down, do you have any installed? also check to see what gets launched when you boot up, some third party apps can cause poor performance, and remove any anti-virus software as it is not necessary. You may want to install an item called etrecheck which will scan your Mac and its Software and will give you an overview of the system and point out items that may be causing problems. you can download it from here http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck, the software is safe and is recommended by many people who use the Apple Support Communities. you may want to post the results here so we can point out where the issue may lie.

 

[OS6-OSX]

I agree with nigelbb get some 667Mhz. Since you have 6GB, get 4X4GB and end up with a total of 22GB. Any more than 4 pieces and you have to remove some. I have 26GB and have no problem in 10.10.5 with any app.

 

[filmak]

I agree with nigelbb get some 667Mhz. Since you have 6GB, get 4X4GB and end up with a total of 22GB. Any more than 4 pieces and you have to remove some. I have 26GB and have no problem in 10.10.5 with any app. View attachment 581642

A question. The OP states that he has the single cpu (4 core) 3,1, Are there, in this model, two risers for ram available as in 8 core 3,1 one?

Isn't it one riser available per cpu?

 

[nigelbb]

I agree with nigelbb get some 667Mhz. Since you have 6GB, get 4X4GB and end up with a total of 22GB. Any more than 4 pieces and you have to remove some. I have 26GB and have no problem in 10.10.5 with any app. View attachment 581642

The 667MHz FB-DIMMs pulled from Dell, HP etc servers are so cheap it seems crazy not to go for a full 32GB. You might even be able to recoup some of what you pay by selling the 2GB & 1GB 800MHz DIMMs to Mac Pro owners who are not as clued up as you. Here are some on offer on ebay.com. The cheapest is $49.95 for 32GB http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odk...ac.TRS0&_nkw=667mhz+fb-dimm+32gb+mac&_sacat=0

 

[haralds]

I have a Mac Pro (early 2008) with 6gb memory running Yosemite v10.10.5.

I was getting a lot of beachballs when I was in Safari. I thought maybe the hard drive was old so I replaced it with a 1TB Seagate hybrid hard drive.

The new hard drive is only half full and Safari is the only major application running. I still get the beach balls, even when just typing into a text box, really frustrating. The problem seams intermittent but it happens quite a bit.

Is there anything I can do to determine the issue? Could my memory be going bad?

Given the loading with one application, the 6GB of RAM and graphics card should have no bearing on the delays.
- Check the Console to see, whether you have a continuously crashing application or service.
- Pull up the activity viewer and see, whether you have any runaway processes in the CPU pane gobbling up resources
- Look at the memory panel to see, whether there is a leaker taking up all your RAM.
- Disable all Safari extensions
- This could be a network issue. I have seen TCP block UI responsiveness, which is the real cause of the BeachBall indicator. Do you have other systems on the network and do they behave normally?
- Try Firefox to see, whether this is application specific.
- Create another user, do not migrate any settings, and see, whether that user has the same issues.

 

[cw48494]

The 667MHz FB-DIMMs pulled from Dell, HP etc servers are so cheap it seems crazy not to go for a full 32GB. You might even be able to recoup some of what you pay by selling the 2GB & 1GB 800MHz DIMMs to Mac Pro owners who are not as clued up as you. Here are some on offer on ebay.com. The cheapest is $49.95 for 32GB http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odk...ac.TRS0&_nkw=667mhz+fb-dimm+32gb+mac&_sacat=0

You can get them cheaper if you buy in 16gb (4x4gb) kits. I just picked up 32gb for $40, nice black heatsinks.

 

[haralds]

Given the loading with one application, the 6GB of RAM and graphics card should have no bearing on the delays.
- Check the Console to see, whether you have a continuously crashing application or service.
- Pull up the activity viewer and see, whether you have any runaway processes in the CPU pane gobbling up resources
- Look at the memory panel to see, whether there is a leaker taking up all your RAM.
- Disable all Safari extensions
- This could be a network issue. I have seen TCP block UI responsiveness, which is the real cause of the BeachBall indicator. Do you have other systems on the network and do they behave normally?
- Try Firefox to see, whether this is application specific.
- Create another user, do not migrate any settings, and see, whether that user has the same issues.

Thinking about it more, although it could be any of the things above, my hunch is with DNS problems. I have seen this behavior especially with versions of 10.10 through 10.10.4. If you are not on 10.10.5, update. They reverted to an older version of the DNS subsystem due to the type of problem you are seeing. Ideally, you would be able to check your overall network from another system to see, whether you have delays.
Other causes for DNS issues:
- Misconfiguration. Try a manual setting of 8.8.8.8 that bypasses your ISP subsystem and router passthrough.
- Router problems - fw or hardware - friend of mine went trough hell with that with the same issues you are seeing plus low throughput overall
- ISP problems

 

[ZVH]

I have a Mac Pro (early 2008) with 6gb memory running Yosemite v10.10.5.

I was getting a lot of beachballs when I was in Safari. I thought maybe the hard drive was old so I replaced it with a 1TB Seagate hybrid hard drive.

The new hard drive is only half full and Safari is the only major application running. I still get the beach balls, even when just typing into a text box, really frustrating. The problem seams intermittent but it happens quite a bit.

Is there anything I can do to determine the issue? Could my memory be going bad?

Safari can bottleneck depending on the website being visited and how many tabs are open and how many web processes are running. I use Scannerz for hardware testing and it comes with an application named "Performance Probe" which shows real memory use in a pie chart similar to the way the old Activity Monitor did (memory reporting isn't the same, it's just presented in a similar manner). In any case, If I open a bunch of tabs up, the red (used) section of memory goes up, the CPU starts taking hits, and eventually it bottlenecks. If I close the tabs the red memory used pie chart section decreases accordingly as each tab is closed. If this is the way you're using Safari (lots of tabs open) then that might be the problem. Chrome will be even worse. I know a lot of people like to knock Safari but it seems to be at the very least competitive with FireFox and better than Chrome (obviously my opinion!)

The other thing that's occurring to me is that maybe you have a bad network connection. If it's wired ethernet you might want to try another I/O port and/or replace the ethernet cable with a new one, or move to wireless to see if the problem goes away. If it's wireless, try a hard wired connection.

Since it's Yosemite, you might want to go to the App Store and read the reviews of Yosemite on there. Some people are having lots of problems with networking, especially WI-Fi.

I'm obviously thinking this isn't Safari related but network related.

 

[sarah362]

I have a Mac Pro (early 2008) with 6gb memory running Yosemite v10.10.5.

I was getting a lot of beachballs when I was in Safari. I thought maybe the hard drive was old so I replaced it with a 1TB Seagate hybrid hard drive.

The new hard drive is only half full and Safari is the only major application running. I still get the beach balls, even when just typing into a text box, really frustrating. The problem seams intermittent but it happens quite a bit.

Is there anything I can do to determine the issue? Could my memory be going bad?

Your configuration is good enough for a fast Mac. I doubt the OS X version 10.10.5. I had painful issues while browsing Safari in 10.10.1 version. I downgraded to 10.8 and everything came back to normal. 6GB is huge for a lower version of OS X. I read somewhere both 10.9 and 10.10 are RAM hungry and 8GB is minimum along with a SSD. Also try resetting Safari Browser or download better browsers like Chrome which is quicker or Firefox (FF freezes too). You should also delete old caches which might be producing hinderances in browsing.

1. To remove Caches - Finder<<Go<<Go to folder<</Library/caches and clear all caches files from it
2. Using Activity Monitor<<Quit unresponsive apps
   
3. Stop all animation on Mac OS X (if any)

If you feel your hard drive is cluttered then use Omnidisksweeper to flush out crap files from Mac HDD.

 

[filmak]

better browsers like Chrome

Sorry but I'm afraid that as it is believed, and proved in general, Chrome is a power and resources hog...

 

[h9826790]

Try Chrome Version 47.0.2509.0 canary (64-bit). This one focus on reduce power and resources consumption. Works very well on my cMP.

 

[IowaLynn]

SSD blade or standard SSDs (plus PCIe) a must, I have read of Chrome (+ Google Drive) using 8GB RAM nd being resource hog.

6676 FBDIMMs for $23 or less in 2x2GB sets.

 

[stringzz]

Thanks for the suggestions. I recently changed from AT&T Uverse to Time Warner Cable and bought a C6300 router. I had the issue before and after change in ISP, so not sure if it is ISP related.

I like the idea of the cheap ram, might explore that.

I ran Tech Tool Pro 8 and there was a failure of the sensor test. It says CPU-A Core has .07 voltage where the CPU-B Core is 1.13 voltage. See attachment.

Is this in indicator of CPU failing or is this motherboard related? And could this be the issue?

Xeon CPU's are pretty cheap on eBay, would any 2.8 quad core Xeon work?

 

[stringzz]

oh, and the Safari extension I have running is 1password, I disabled it.

This behavior happens on super-fast websites like Amazon. I never have an issue with streaming though on amazon prime. It's just the occasional typing in the text box where it will hang.

 

[filmak]

Perhaps the PSU?