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PowerMac Pro Ram

M

Magone10

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 26, 2012
6
0
Wales, UK
Hi All
Just got here via Google, so a newbie!
I'm running a late 2009 PowerMac Pro 8 core. I recently upped the ram from 8gb to 32gb (max) and am running Lion. The machine seems to running even slower than before. I use it mainly for photography. All the data is kept on an external hard Drive and only the Op sys on the internal. My son who runs a similar system had the same problem and was told by a Mac Tech to reduce the ram this he did and now his machine is running faster. My Tech guy said shouldn't work like that. Should be fine on 32 gb. But my photoshop is keeping me waiting like it never did before. Any suggestions please.
Im using Crucial ram.

Many thanks in advance

Magone10
 
Magone10 said:
Hi All
Just got here via Google, so a newbie!
I'm running a late 2009 PowerMac Pro 8 core. I recently upped the ram from 8gb to 32gb (max) and am running Lion. The machine seems to running even slower than before. I use it mainly for photography. All the data is kept on an external hard Drive and only the Op sys on the internal. My son who runs a similar system had the same problem and was told by a Mac Tech to reduce the ram this he did and now his machine is running faster. My Tech guy said shouldn't work like that. Should be fine on 32 gb. But my photoshop is keeping me waiting like it never did before. Any suggestions please.
Im using Crucial ram.

Many thanks in advance

Magone10
Click to expand...

Have you tried turning it off & on again??

:D
 
OK, "all the data" kept on an external drive, the system kept on internal... what kind of external drive is that on? If it's a USB 2 drive, yes, USB 2 is slow as s***. System on internal? What's your internal drive?
 
Magone10 said:
Hi All
Just got here via Google, so a newbie!
I'm running a late 2009 PowerMac Pro 8 core. I recently upped the ram from 8gb to 32gb (max) and am running Lion. The machine seems to running even slower than before. I use it mainly for photography. All the data is kept on an external hard Drive and only the Op sys on the internal. My son who runs a similar system had the same problem and was told by a Mac Tech to reduce the ram this he did and now his machine is running faster. My Tech guy said shouldn't work like that. Should be fine on 32 gb. But my photoshop is keeping me waiting like it never did before. Any suggestions please.
Im using Crucial ram.

Many thanks in advance

Magone10
Click to expand...
Uhmmm. No offense, but you might get better help posting in the Intel Mac forums. You claim you have a PowerMac Pro. There is no such thing. There are PowerMac G5s and there are Mac Pros.

Apple stopped making PowerMac G5s in 2006. They were replaced with Mac Pros. The difference is the chip. Mac Pros are Intel Macs and use Intel chips, whereas PowerMac G5s don't. It's also impossible for a PowerPC Mac to run Lion. The latest a PowerPC Mac can use is OSX 10.5.8 Leopard.

You state that your Mac is a late 2009 model. That's three years after the Intel transition. You have a Mac Pro. There never was and cannot be a combination of the two. It's kind of like saying you have a Chevy Mustang.

So, again, no offense, but you are in the wrong forum as this forum deals with Macs made before 2007.
 
Last edited:
Sounds like a slow scratch disk more than anything else. Move you scratch disk to one the internal SATA ports or depending on how old the disk is you might look at replacing it.

I like eSATA>FireWire>everything else. you con pick up a cheap eSATA card if required.

You should probably have a mod move this.
 
Go to the Terminal and post the results of the ps command... that might give some information.
 
needfx said:
Have you tried turning it off & on again??

:D
Click to expand...

err...On and Off?....now where will i find that on and off key?.....:p

----------
eyoungren said:
Uhmmm. No offense, but you might get better help posting in the Intel Mac forums. You claim you have a PowerMac Pro. There is no such thing. There are PowerMac G5s and there are Mac Pros.

Apple stopped making PowerMac G5s in 2006. They were replaced with Mac Pros. The difference is the chip. Mac Pros are Intel Macs and use Intel chips, whereas PowerMac G5s don't. It's also impossible for a PowerPC Mac to run Lion. The latest a PowerPC Mac can use is OSX 10.5.8 Leopard.

You state that your Mac is a late 2009 model. That's three years after the Intel transition. You have a Mac Pro. There never was and cannot be a combination of the two. It's kind of like saying you have a Chevy Mustang.

So, again, no offense, but you are in the wrong forum as this forum deals with Macs made before 2007.
Click to expand...

Excuse my ignorance Eric. It is a Mac Pro with iIntel as you say. I upgraded from a G5 three years ago.

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Magone10 said:
err...On and Off?....now where will i find that on and off key?.....:p

----------



Excuse my ignorance Eric. It is a Mac Pro with iIntel as you say. I upgraded from a G5 three years ago.
Click to expand...

Also, I didn't realise there was a specific Intel forum

----------
Michael Anthony said:
OK, "all the data" kept on an external drive, the system kept on internal... what kind of external drive is that on? If it's a USB 2 drive, yes, USB 2 is slow as s***. System on internal? What's your internal drive?
Click to expand...

Thanks Michael,
Unfortunately I gave you bad info. The external drive USB 2 is actually acting as Time Machine. The data drive is a SATA internal (not Raid). If my memory serves me it is a 7200 Western Digital. And I am using a large % of it for the Scratch disk.
Regards
Mark

----------
Ariii said:
Go to the Terminal and post the results of the ps command... that might give some information.
Click to expand...

I'm in unchartered territory here, but if I did it correctly as you suggested, below is the result!


PID TTY TIME CMD
1103 ttys000 0:00.01 -bash
Mark-Goodwins-Mac-Pro:~ Magone10$ :confused:
 
GermanyChris said:
Sounds like a slow scratch disk more than anything else. Move you scratch disk to one the internal SATA ports or depending on how old the disk is you might look at replacing it.

I like eSATA>FireWire>everything else. you con pick up a cheap eSATA card if required.

You should probably have a mod move this.
Click to expand...

Hi Friedrich
Thanks for the response. As you will see above I have mentioned that I gave the wrong info. The data is on an internal SATA Western Digital Drive 7200 or there about. It is only about 2 years old max.
 
Info from the OP is a little fragmented, but let me take some guesses and offer some clarifications. First, 32GB memory is great, and will speed up your apps if the memory is the cause of contention -- that is, you had insufficient memory before. Most Xeon processors are triple-ported. Among other things, this means that optimal memory performance occurs when memory is installed in three's of the same type. If you have something different (like memory sticks in all eight slots) the memory performance will degrade to accomodate. Overall, a 5-10% memory performance hit, and maybe 3-5% overall throughput hit. In my experience, hardly enough to notice. So reducing the amount of memory can improve the performance, but not by much. But if your system/application can actually use the memory you took out, the performance hit is overwhelmingly bad --it will go to virtual memory. So really, putting as much memory in your system is a good thing, especially for things like Photoshop which can use it.
I think you said that you had a USB disk for scratch, and it is nearly full. Both of these could be the cause of your poor performance. USB is a slow I/O channel, and a full disk can slow write times. Also, your boot disk may be getting on in years. It could be failing, and that could also be the cause of slow performance.
Another poster mentioned using ps in the terminal. Another tack is to use the activity monitor, which can highlight any processing pigging up the joint.
 
kohlson said:
Info from the OP is a little fragmented, but let me take some guesses and offer some clarifications. First, 32GB memory is great, and will speed up your apps if the memory is the cause of contention -- that is, you had insufficient memory before. Most Xeon processors are triple-ported. Among other things, this means that optimal memory performance occurs when memory is installed in three's of the same type. If you have something different (like memory sticks in all eight slots) the memory performance will degrade to accomodate. Overall, a 5-10% memory performance hit, and maybe 3-5% overall throughput hit. In my experience, hardly enough to notice. So reducing the amount of memory can improve the performance, but not by much. But if your system/application can actually use the memory you took out, the performance hit is overwhelmingly bad --it will go to virtual memory. So really, putting as much memory in your system is a good thing, especially for things like Photoshop which can use it.
I think you said that you had a USB disk for scratch, and it is nearly full. Both of these could be the cause of your poor performance. USB is a slow I/O channel, and a full disk can slow write times. Also, your boot disk may be getting on in years. It could be failing, and that could also be the cause of slow performance.
Another poster mentioned using ps in the terminal. Another tack is to use the activity monitor, which can highlight any processing pigging up the joint.
Click to expand...

Many thanks for your time kohlson. Not being a technically adept person, I am not sure that I fully understand your reply. However, and please forgive my lack of knowledge here. Originally I had eight sticks of 1gb memory installed. I removed all these and installed 8 sticks of 4gb memory. It did appear to improve the speed initially but nothing significant. Also, since upgrading to Lion the time waiting for stuff to happen has certainly increased more than I would expect.
Secondly, the scratch disk is an internal SATA (the USB HD is for Time Machine, I gave the wrong information originally) and is 1TB, and has more than enough space left.
Thirdly, the system dusk is the original and is now 3 years old and is 640GB.

Forgive me but I didn't understand the bit about the memory "triple ports"? I have two banks of memory slots, and I was told to only put equal memory in sets of two, which as you can see from earlier I have done, all slot full of 5GB.

Trust this makes sense, and one again, thanks for your help.

Mark
 
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