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iMac CPU usage high not from flash video

J

JAWWC

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 1, 2008
144
0
I just want to make sure this is still the same problem everyone else is having with the CPU. Without safari open my system CPU usage spikes to 50% and stays there till I reboot after about 20 mins use.
Sorry to make a thread about it but everyone else seems to be complaining about flash video and mine isn't.

Cheers
 
I replied about this problem on another thread, but yeah, I am also having this problem. CPU seems to spike up to 80's with relatively simple apps like Dreamweaver or Adobe Bridge. Also watching locally stored 1080p videos is a choppy and very random experience... Then I reboot, everything is fine for another while and boom here we go again, slugfest with my brand new iMac :(

I hope that together we can find a solution.
 
Have you both looked at Activity Monitor (Show All Process and sort by CPU) and seen what process might hog up the CPU?

Have you repaired permissions?


DrNelly said:
I replied about this problem on another thread, but yeah, I am also having this problem. CPU seems to spike up to 80's with relatively simple apps like Dreamweaver or Adobe Bridge. Also watching locally stored 1080p videos is a choppy and very random experience... Then I reboot, everything is fine for another while and boom here we go again, slugfest with my brand new iMac :(

I hope that together we can find a solution.
Click to expand...


What Mac do you have and what Mac OS X do you run?


Also MRoogle might give you already exisiting topics about this issue.
 
I should update my signature..

I use a brand new base iMac 27, yes I have repaired permissions, I have reset PRAM and I have reinstalled the latest version of flash player.

Obviously I'm running SL 10.6.1 with very few apps installed and not using time machine backup or anything like that.

Simply and plainly annoying issue to have on a 1700$ machine.
 
DrNelly said:
I should update my signature..

I use a brand new base iMac 27, yes I have repaired permissions, I have reset PRAM and I have reinstalled the latest version of flash player.

Obviously I'm running SL 10.6.1 with very few apps installed and not using time machine backup or anything like that.

Simply and plainly annoying issue to have on a 1700$ machine.
Click to expand...

What software is giving you this high CPU usage? Adobe Dreamweaver and Bridge? Are they compatible with Snow Leopard?
 
spinnerlys said:
What software is giving you this high CPU usage? Adobe Dreamweaver and Bridge? Are they compatible with Snow Leopard?
Click to expand...

I'm using Creative Suite 4 from Adobe with all the productivity applications. Unfortunately these are not the only pieces of software giving the CPU a tough time...

I discovered that only one core gets really high while the other remains normal. It seems as if it was throttling one of the cores up and leave the other core alone. It might be SL internal resource system putting processes on one core and the user stuff on the other, but I don't know how SL does that.

Also flash plug-in remains using between 20-30% of one core even when the safari window that contained it is closed. I kept other Safari windows open with no flash content whatsoever.

I wish this was only a Safari problem.
 
DrNelly said:
I'm using Creative Suite 4 from Adobe with all the productivity applications. Unfortunately these are not the only pieces of software giving the CPU a tough time...

I discovered that only one core gets really high while the other remains normal. It seems as if it was throttling one of the cores up and leave the other core alone. It might be SL internal resource system putting processes on one core and the user stuff on the other, but I don't know how SL does that.

Also flash plug-in remains using between 20-30% of one core even when the safari window that contained it is closed. I kept other Safari windows open with no flash content whatsoever.

I wish this was only a Safari problem.
Click to expand...
This is the same for me. One CPU core will get pegged and spike between 50%-80% even when the machine is idle. I will report later what system processes they are.
 
CS4 isn't the problem under Snow Leopard. Using Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver and there seems to be no problems in terms of increased CPU usage.
 
iLog.Genius said:
CS4 isn't the problem under Snow Leopard. Using Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver and there seems to be no problems in terms of increased CPU usage.
Click to expand...

I know that, I use my SL MBP connected to the 23 cinema display 12 hours a day. :)

The problem is when I try to do the same thing with my sparkling new 27 iMac

;)
 
I am having these same problems:( One core doing all the work after the unit has been on for a few hours.
 
spinnerlys said:
Have you both looked at Activity Monitor (Show All Process and sort by CPU) and seen what process might hog up the CPU?

Have you repaired permissions?





What Mac do you have and what Mac OS X do you run?


Also MRoogle might give you already exisiting topics about this issue.
Click to expand...

Some processes cannot be stopped! I have tried everything! No dice.
 
Bad News

I'm afraid this may be a deeper problem - with the OS. SL uses GCD to allocate and distribute tasks to the various cores. Since the problem appears with many applications, and it focuses on one core being overused and the other underutilized, the common denominator in all these is the GCD. That's bad news. It means a fundamental problem with how GCD is implemented. This is no simple bug fix. This is a re-write of a fundamental part of the OS. There may be no cure until 10.7.
 
I found something really interesting that may or may not have anything to do with these nasty performance issues..

Tonight, when safari was starting to crawl, and other applications were beach balling for simple tasks as opening an css file, I turned off airport and turned it on again, suddenly safari was smooth again, no more stupid CPU usage, no ridiculous utilization of resources, everything ran like butter again.

CPU usage actually went down from 65 to 1.5!!!! I repeat this happened immediately after I turned off airport and turned it on again. No restart or log out needed.

Could all this madness be caused by airport drivers messing with resources utilization management, maybe wrong core thread assignment?

Please someone else check this out and tell me I'm not starting to see things.

Needless to say i'm on my new iMac 27.
 
DrNelly said:
I found something really interesting that may or may not have anything to do with these nasty performance issues..

Tonight, when safari was starting to crawl, and other applications were beach balling for simple tasks as opening an css file, I turned off airport and turned it on again, suddenly safari was smooth again, no more stupid CPU usage, no ridiculous utilization of resources, everything ran like butter again.

CPU usage actually went down from 65 to 1.5!!!! I repeat this happened immediately after I turned off airport and turned it on again. No restart or log out needed.

Could all this madness be caused by airport drivers messing with resources utilization management, maybe wrong core thread assignment?

Please someone else check this out and tell me I'm not starting to see things.

Needless to say i'm on my new iMac 27.
Click to expand...

That's what many people are claiming: Airport is at fault. On the other hand, there are folks who tested the Airport thing, and that does nothing to solve their slowing and sluggishness problems. See the thread.
 
DrNelly said:
I found something really interesting that may or may not have anything to do with these nasty performance issues..

Tonight, when safari was starting to crawl, and other applications were beach balling for simple tasks as opening an css file, I turned off airport and turned it on again, suddenly safari was smooth again, no more stupid CPU usage, no ridiculous utilization of resources, everything ran like butter again.

CPU usage actually went down from 65 to 1.5!!!! I repeat this happened immediately after I turned off airport and turned it on again. No restart or log out needed.

Could all this madness be caused by airport drivers messing with resources utilization management, maybe wrong core thread assignment?

Please someone else check this out and tell me I'm not starting to see things.

Needless to say i'm on my new iMac 27.
Click to expand...
Confirmed! Scrolling through webpages was smooth right off I turned off Airport. CPU usage was also down to 4-5%.

What the hell is going on....
 
just goes to show how useless wireless is, get ethernet :D

in all seriousness, there must be a serious bug with the wireless cards/coding of them. maybe it is a firmware issue.
 
I have last generation 24in iMac... I recently started having slowdowns, but it started occurring after I installed Rosetta for a program that requested it (visualhub). Since then I get random slowdowns and some Quicktime playback is very choppy.

I haven't reformatted yet, but I do know if I do I will not install Rosetta because I think it was the root of my problems.

Just throwing out my experience, maybe it correlates with some of these issues popping up.

Good luck guys!
 
A simple fix for Safari CPU usage problem

Go into safari preferences and switch off the "Fraudulent sites" alert function in the Security tab.

That fixed the problem for me immediately.
 
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