powermac G5 performace issues

J

jhogeterp

Registered
hello,

I am starting to have some serious performance issues with my powermac G5. It is the 1.6 GHz version with 768 mb ram. I am often running Macromedia Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Mail.app, Firfox, ichat and safari. These programs are basically constantly running with the intermittent mix of preview, photoshop, indesign, font explorer x and textwrangler.

I have had this machine for over a year now and didn't have any problems running and switching apps at all until about a month ago. I would copy and paste something or just have fireworks save something and then switch to firefox and the computer would sit there and think for probably five seconds. now, this isn't a big deal until you are doing this constantly and you rely on the quickness.

I downloaded menu MenuMeters to see what was going on under the hood and discovered that it isn't the processor but the reading and writing to the hard drive. In almost every click of a window and copy and paste, or save, the machine goes crazy with reading and writing.

I have tried everything from applejack and onyx. I don't know what else to do. maybe more ram? A backup and clean install?

Anyone have any suggestions? thanks!
 
some info that might also be useful:

--I am often saving between two partitions
--I ran into a problem with font explorer x after a power outtage about two months ago where the GUI didn't recognize info in a partition. (i did retrieve it).
--this g5 also acts as a fileserver that is accessed by two other macs (the partition that does not contain the OS).

thanks
 
jhogeterp said:
--this g5 also acts as a fileserver that is accessed by two other macs (the partition that does not contain the OS).
Click to expand...
So when you see the increase in disk activity, are the other machines accessing the G5 at the same time? If so, then you've discovered where your disk activity is coming from.

Also, if you notice disk activity specifically when switching between applications, then it's probable that your computer is "swapping" memory out to disk. I see you've only got 768MB of RAM, which is not really enough for the kind of work you explained you're doing (Macromedia Suite with PhotoShop, etc.). Those are pretty memory-hungry programs, and I would recommend a minimum of 1GB of RAM in your scenario -- preferrably 1.5GB or more.
 
I don't really think that the disk activity is caused by the connecting computers. the problems I am describing happen only when I do something (like switching apps or copying and pasting anything).

I agree that 768mb ram isn't really enough, but I do think that it is odd that the computer used to run extrememly fast doing the same thing I am now. Is it possible that one of the sticks went bad? Does that happen? Another odd thing is that when monitoring used and free ram I always seem to have around 250mb free. Always.

I think I will just buy new ram (can never hurt) and see if that fixes it. Thanks!
 
I found the culprit. It was Quicksilver. I have no idea why, but I noticed Quicksilver peaking and then not responding in activity viewer, so I quit quicksilver, made sure it didn't start up automatically and the restarted. No problems at all anymore. Anyone else have this?
 
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