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Is it possible I am pushing my MBP to the limit

technicolor

technicolor

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Dec 21, 2005
1,651
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I didnt think I was but it seems to be having major performance issues.

I have a Rev A:)( ) MBP 15inch 2.0 CD with 2 gigs of ram

Its slow and staggering and freezing and pausing. It has me beyond the brink of frustration at this point.


This is what I am doing..

Im running Photoshop CS3 working on a 700mb file
Running Illustrator CS3 working on the same file back and forth between opening it with PS and Ai.

I have a tv show going in VLC in the corner.

Firefox is open as well as adium.


My computer freezes and beach balls to death. Typing in adium is slow the letters show up in the box one at a time with seconds delay. VLC pauses and freezes and I get the message that my computer may be to slow. There is even a delay in adjusting the volume.


Ive rebooted a thousand times.

Also checked activity monitor and its only using 1.5 of the ram and the processor doesnt seem to be taxed.

Any thoughts?
 
technicolor said:
408056/466931

Is that high? If so how do I reset it?
Click to expand...

Those numbers are pretty high if you have recently rebooted. They indicate you've encountered situations where physical memory was depleted and OS X was using space on the hard drive to compensate. The only solution is to buy more RAM to meet the needs of your software.

FYI, the Page in/out counts get reset every time you reboot. When you see the out statistic start to grow at a rapid rate, it means your software is demanding more memory than your installed RAM can provide.
 
Alloye said:
Those numbers are pretty high if you have recently rebooted. They indicate you've encountered situations where physical memory was depleted and OS X was using space on the hard drive to compensate. The only solution is to buy more RAM to meet the needs of your software.

FYI, the Page in/out counts get reset every time you reboot. When you see the out statistic start to grow at a rapid rate, it means your software is demanding more memory than your installed RAM can provide.
Click to expand...
Wow!
Thanks for the help.

That is crazy. Yes those numbers are from a reboot not even a hour ago. My computer is maxed out of ram.
 
technicolor said:
Wow!
Thanks for the help.

That is crazy. Yes those numbers are from a reboot not even a hour ago. My computer is maxed out of ram.
Click to expand...

You're welcome.

BTW, you did say you were working on a 700MB file in two rather memory-hungry applications at the same time. That alone is more than enough to saturate 2GB of RAM.
 
Alloye said:
You're welcome.

BTW, you did say you were working on a 700MB file in two rather memory-hungry applications at the same time. That alone is more than enough to saturate 2GB of RAM.
Click to expand...
I work in Ps, when I am done I send the file to AI and hide PS.

I guess I wasnt aware of how intense they were. I thought my MBP could handle it along with the net, vlc, and messenger.
 
technicolor said:
I thought my MBP could handle it along with the net, vlc, and messenger.
Click to expand...

It's not so much that your MBP can't handle it. Any computer would be in that situation with the workload you describe. One thing that is a factor for laptops is that when the OS starts paging, it is usually quite noticeable. Laptop hard drives are generally slower than their desktop counterparts.
 
hmmmmmm.... that is a bit to the limit, however as you can see in my sig I have the same computer you do but with only 1.5 ram and while I have had a slow down while running multiple programs in the CS3 suite and a movie in VLC or a DVD and messenger and all that I have had a little slowdown depending on how big or how many files, but NEVER anything as annoying or bad as what you are describing. It seems that maybe you have a bad stick of ram or something that is reading it but not utilizing it to it's full potential. I am not sure ofcourse, just a possibility? It just seems like you shouldnt be etting that bad of a slow down as I haven't with similar work loads. :confused:
 
I constantly use adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge (all CS3) at the same time. In photoshop I work with 60 to 100 MB files and usually have 2 or 3 files open at the same time. For the most part it works great but sometimes I have noticed that PS freezes with a spinning beach-ball that last for a minute. This is very annoying and happens randomly after attempting to perform very simple tasks.

I upgraded my ram from the original 1Gb to 2GB and it gave me a nice boost in performance. But after a few weeks the new found performance seems to have faded away.... well maybe I just got used to the 2GB of ram and dont notice it anymore. I now find myself wanting to upgrade my MBP to 3GB.

Anyone have the same issues with photoshop CS3?
 
I can't speak for the CD MBP's, but my CD iMac's are considerably slower than my C2D models.

If you cut down on the background tasks you're running (ie anything other than CS3) then your experience may improve. Also, ensure you have plenty of HDD space free - it'll slow down even more if there aren't large chunks of free space available for your page file and work files.

Otherwise, depending on whether you think your workload is likely to get more intense or not, you might want to consider the new SR MBP's. They're really quite incredible in terms of performance, and you'd have all that added room for RAM. Could be a nice upgrade!
 
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