Slow performance, which to upgrade first?

[HumidSting]

So I have a 5,1 that I've put some work into it, but it's a little slow in day to day tasks. Opening Safari is sometimes slow, YouTube videos take a couple of seconds before they load. This is in comparison to my rMBP 2014 15" with an i7 which loads everything pretty speedily. Both are on Mojave, and the cMP is running off an SSD.

Specs are:

• 2x X5650
• 12GB DDR3 RAM
• R9 280x with EFI BIOS

The only reason I ask is that the GPU is starting to artifact, so it's time for replacement, but the artifacting goes away temporarily if I reboot the computer, so it's tolerable right now.

Thanks for the input!

 

[AidenShaw]

Is TRIM enabled on the SSD? (enabled and forced through disk utility)

 

[h9826790]

A partially failed GPU can slow down lots of things. Safari / Youtube etc all use VRAM.

 

[HumidSting]

Is TRIM enabled on the SSD? (enabled and forced through disk utility)

I'm 99% sure, I'll have to check when I get home from work.

A partially failed GPU can slow down lots of things. Safari / Youtube etc all use VRAM.

Oh, that would make a lot of sense actually. Now that I think about it, it's only in Safari or Chrome if I'm trying to watch YouTube TV.

 

[AlexMaximus]

So I have a 5,1 that I've put some work into it, but it's a little slow in day to day tasks. Opening Safari is sometimes slow, YouTube videos take a couple of seconds before they load. This is in comparison to my rMBP 2014 15" with an i7 which loads everything pretty speedily. Both are on Mojave, and the cMP is running off an SSD.

Specs are:

• 2x X5650
• 12GB DDR3 RAM
• R9 280x with EFI BIOS

The only reason I ask is that the GPU is starting to artifact, so it's time for replacement, but the artifacting goes away temporarily if I reboot the computer, so it's tolerable right now.

Thanks for the input!

There are so many wonderful things you can do to enhance your 5.1. Very often the way how you install the MacOS can make a huge difference. (Migration Assistant, Clone, New Upgrade or Full Installer)
I just finished my 2019 Mojave / NVMe / VEGA64 / Pixlas mod cable action. High Sierra on a regular SATA SSD is super slow at the moment, but the new Mojave on a fast PCIe SSD inside the I/O Crest card is super fast. It depends, hard to say. I would do a fresh install before you tweak other components.

 

[HumidSting]

A partially failed GPU can slow down lots of things. Safari / Youtube etc all use VRAM.

Would a failing GPU also make resizing windows occasionally studdery?

Is TRIM enabled on the SSD? (enabled and forced through disk utility)

TRIM wasn't on, so I went ahead and turned it on after a fresh install. It didn't change much.

 

[AidenShaw]

TRIM wasn't on, so I went ahead and turned it on after a fresh install. It didn't change much.

Just turning on TRIM on a used disk won't immediately help - the disk is untrimmed.

Run "fsck -fy" from the disk utility to force a TRIM of free space. (See https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/suddenly-slow-ahci-write-speeds.2157959/#post-26863062 )