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A small collection of performance hints
Authored by: bluehz on Apr 07, '03 11:59:14AM
I know this is going to sound crazy - but I have been astonished with the results. Have been discussing this in a thread in the forums recently.

I run OS X on a G4/400 and it has consistently maxxed out the CPU at %100 and load avgs. over 3 many times. For months I have been posting about "what's the deal!" and most everyone gave the stock answers - but nothing ever seemed to calm the CPU usage down. Most times - If I did a fresh restart - the system was great for a day or so then it would become bogged down. The whole time I would constantly see CPU usage in the %90-100 range - even when idle. This is crazy - especially since I have 1.2G of RAM installed!

Anyway - just for the heck of it I decided to try a theming pkg this weekend and try and relieve some of the stress of Aqua rendering. I have NEVER been a fan of themes and eye candy in general - but there is some evidence and documentation at xlr8.com that removing some of the Aqua interface (e.g. theming) can relieve some CPU stress. In the past I have tried themes before and in most case - yes - they did relieve some stress on the CPU, but they were so half-baked that many of the interface items were squirrely, ill-rendered, and in general amateur. And yes - like any one out there that has used one of these theming apps before - I have been bitten by the "theme bug" that renders your system unbootable - until you fix the problem.

So needless to say - I was a bit scared of trying theming again.... but hey.... I like to live on the edge. So I downloaded the latest Duality 4 (theming app) and found a nice theme (not flashy, more platinum like - but with X flair) and tried it out. I have to say I have been running solid for three days now and I am nothing if not flabbergasted at the results I am seeing. Using MenuMeters (while not scientific or probably even accurate) I can keep a fairly good eye on CPU usage. As I said before - it normally hovered in the 90-100% range. After switching themes - my system CPU usage ranges from about 2-3% to 10% and my user usage ranges from 10-20% to 40-50% on average now. That?s a remarkable difference if you ask me. I have not even seen the 100% mark since installing the theme. Right now I have 12 major apps open including biggies like Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10, Acrobat, and others. I am typing this in Safari - and previously any typing in a browser would spike the CPU something fierce - I am currently watching fluctuation between 20-30% right now with all that open and typing in Safari.

Now while I don't want to become a proponent of theming - I can not refute the results I am seeing right now. I personally believe that theming has progressed passed the amateur phase and at least with the theme I am using "Rhapsodized" - all the GUI elements are complete, and perfectly rendered. Be wary though - there are still many flawed and amateur, uncooked themes still floating around.

If you have a desire to try this out get the following:

AquaFix
http://gordon.sourcecod.com/sites/aquafix.php
I recommend the manual install pkg - this will allow you to fix your system in single-boot mode should you have any problems.

Duality 4
http://conundrumsoft.com/
This is theme changing app.

Rhapsodized
http://homepage.mac.com/max_08/themes/rhapsodized.htm
This is the particular theme I am having such great luck with.

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A small collection of performance hints
Authored by: trevor on Apr 07, '03 12:33:09PM

Most times - If I did a fresh restart - the system was great for a day or so then it would become bogged down. The whole time I would constantly see CPU usage in the %90-100 range - even when idle.

It sounds like you have an HP printer driver installed on your machine. Remove it and your excessive usage should go away.

Trevor



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A small collection of performance hints
Authored by: Bioinformatics on Apr 07, '03 05:48:35PM

You can get this effect if Classic crashes out on you - or at least I do...

What happens with me is like this: I open an ancient copy of Word under Classic (can't justify the ridiculous price of the OS X version). I work for a bit then eventually hide Word and go off working on other stuff with OS X apps, leaving Word and Classic lurking in the background. Eventually, hidden in the background, Word does a nasty (what's new?) and ties up Classic. (Its a pain: here is an app which is being left to itself, yet it manages to crash out... and it happens with disgusting regularity)

If you look at 'top' in Terminal at this point, you'll see TruBluEnv (Classic) taking up basically all the CPU that is available after other apps have been given their chance to execute. So if the other apps are taking a little shy of 20% (incl. top itself), TruBluEnv wil show a little over 80%. Basically Classic has gone ape-shit.

Use option-command-escape to bring up Force Quit and kill off Word and Classic. Look at top again and things ought to be more sane...



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A small collection of performance hints
Authored by: bluehz on Apr 09, '03 10:36:03AM

Nope - no HP printers or drivers installed.



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A small collection of performance hints
Authored by: rickg17 on Apr 07, '03 04:55:01PM

The amount of RAM you have will not materially affect your CPU usage. CPU usage should be in the single or low double digits if the system is idling with no open apps. To fix this, open the Terminal and type "top -u" (no quotes of course). This orders the results in decreasing CPU %. Watch this for awhile and see 1) what the split between system CPU usage and user CPU usage is and 2) what things are at the top (no pun intended) of the list when CPU is spiked. I'm betting you have one thing that is behaving badly. Rememeber that top itself sucks up andf 10% of CPU so use it sparingly...



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A small collection of performance hints
Authored by: ptwithy on Apr 11, '03 07:53:23AM

You can make top suck less by adding '-s 10' to mean poll every 10 seconds instead of the default 2. Also, hitting space while in top will cause it to update immediately.

If you don't go for the Terminal, Process Viewer is a GUI front-end on top.

This is handy for finding Carbon apps that are still polling in their idle loop, and hence wasting CPU cycles. Quit them when you are not using them.



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