Intel Mac Mini SLOOOOOOOW... [Archive]

austincolby

May 9, 2006, 02:04 AM

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 02:05 AM

What have you tried to remedy it?

Heb1228

May 9, 2006, 02:11 AM

I don't think that's normal, even for running Rosetta apps. Try checking Activity Monitor to see what your CPU usage is doing. You can see which apps are using processor resources and try to find the problem that way. Also in activity monitor, look under the memory tab and check to see how many page ins/outs you're getting.

austincolby

May 9, 2006, 02:21 AM

Thanks for the reply. I've actually not tried anything (drastic) yet, short of step one, keeping an eye on whats running... I was hoping to avoid making drastic moves in any direction before sniffing around to hear if my experience is endemic to a $600 Mac, or if it sounds like I have a problem...

I guess step one would be a clean reinstall... but I would rather avoid that, if it sounds like my slow core solo is just how its going to be, at least until word goes universal, for example...

I'm no expert, but it *feels* like there's a serious bottleneck of some sort- even though I'm not pushing it very hard, could it be that 10.4 with shared VRAM needs more than the 512 I've given it? I'm really only emailing and writing basic word docs...

New poster, LONG TIME reader- time for me to make a sig- I love apple :-)

___________________________________________________________
Currently running:
17" G4 1ghz PB, 17" G4 1ghz iMac, Dual 2.0 G5 Powermac w/ 23" Cinema (so sweet...), 20" 2Ghz Intel iMac (also so sweet...), Intel Solo Mac Mini w/ 512mb

And listening to:
2nd gen Ipod (Icelinked to car), 3rd gen Ipod (Living Room), Nano (Bike), waiting for true video Ipod...

QCassidy352

May 9, 2006, 02:27 AM

that's too slow. Rosetta with 512 RAM won't be pretty, but ten sec to change between word docs? That's not right.

definitely look at activity monitor and see if something is stealing all the resources.

mdavey

May 9, 2006, 02:29 AM

I'm no expert, but it *feels* like there's a serious bottleneck of some sort- even though I'm not pushing it very hard, could it be that 10.4 with shared VRAM needs more than the 512 I've given it?

Definately. I currently have 1.25GB and still run out of memory with several browser tabs open, open office and thunderbird running. I'd say that 1GB is a minimum for most users.

austincolby

May 9, 2006, 02:39 AM

That for a long-time mac user, I just took my first foray into Activity Monitor to check under the hood on this problem :-)

*edit* or, happy to say it- its a testament to the quality of mac products that, after years of screwing around in config.sys files and such, once I switched, I could be dumb because it "just works" *edit*

At any rate, I did notice that Safari was hogging like 140megs- and that was without any windows open! However, even closing that down, switching to my Word app still took about 8 seconds, as did switching between one of 3 open docs, saving them, etc... so it doesn't appear that Safari alone was my magic bullet...

No, looks like you are right- at the least I need more ram, even if only just running Word with a few docs open... but still, I am surprised at how slow its going...

Stupid newbie question- the only other memory hog I saw in Activity Monitor was a kernal program, pushing about 60 megs- is that normal? It sounds like a legit program to me...

Other stupid newbie question- page ins/out is at something like 3,000,000/1,000,000. Is that normal? Sounds kinda funny to me...

At any rate, with nothing running, Activity Monitor is telling me I only have
180 megs free- so its off to the memory store at a minimum.

Thanks for all the help and feedback everyone!!!

Heb1228

May 9, 2006, 02:49 AM

Stupid newbie question- the only other memory hog I saw in Activity Monitor was a kernal program, pushing about 60 megs- is that normal? It sounds like a legit program to me...

Other stupid newbie question- page ins/out is at something like 3,000,000/1,000,000. Is that normal? Sounds kinda funny to me...

At any rate, with nothing running, Activity Monitor is telling me I only have
180 megs free- so its off to the memory store at a minimum.
Well 60MB is not really a memory hog. Well, I guess when you only have less than 500MB available it may seem that way, but you can't really tell just from looking at the usage graph.

Your pageins/outs will be relative to your uptime, because it starts counting each time your computer starts. So that may be high or it may be low.

Also, you can't judge by how much "Free" memory you have, because sometimes apps, even when quit, will not release the memory until another program needs it. You can have almost 0 free memory and that is not necessarily an indicator of a problem.

Confusing enough?

The easiest way to judge your pageins/outs is to open up terminal and type in "top". About the 6th line down it will give you a realtime count of pageins/outs in parenthesis. If this number is constantly hovering around 40 or higher in normal usage, then you definitely need more RAM.

The other way to check is to restart your Mac, and then after an hour of normal use, then go and see how many pageins/outs activity monitor lists as the total. The you know how many times its using the swapfile each minute or each second.

gnasher729

May 9, 2006, 03:41 AM

Other stupid newbie question- page ins/out is at something like 3,000,000/1,000,000. Is that normal? Sounds kinda funny to me...

Here you have your culprit. Three million page ins means that your Macintosh has nowhere near enough memory for what it is asked to do. There are two possible cures:

1. The expensive one that doesn't really work: Some people in this situation buy a faster harddisk. If they get a really really fast harddisk, the three million page ins will happen twice as fast.

2. The cheap one that works really well: Add more RAM. The page ins will disappear.

One note: I have the impression that Safari + Flash can be a really bad combination, but only if I visit a certain webpage that uses Flash a lot for advertisements. Disable plugins somewhere in your Safari preferences; that _might_ fix the problem.

Another note: Activity Monitor shows "Real Memory" usage and "Virtual Memory" usage. "Virtual Memory" doesn't mean much at all.

Heb1228

May 9, 2006, 03:45 AM

Here you have your culprit. Three million page ins means that your Macintosh has nowhere near enough memory for what it is asked to do.
You can't always go by that though. I've got 1 million pageins, but thats spread over an 18 day uptime. But I think you're right in telling him he needs more RAM.

Buy a 1GB stick for that little guy and he'll do a lot better for ya.

Lollypop

May 9, 2006, 03:51 AM

I would restart the mac, only start word and activity monitor, see if word has better response, note the page ins/outs, the problem seems to be with word so I would isolate it and see if it really is word. If it still is slow and the pages climb fast more memory would be a possible solution. Also make sure you have the laters update of word, you dont want a older buggy version running on rosetta. What kind of documents are you opening? Some of my documents have huge pictures in them, even when I only run word and switch from one document to the next I see a noticible slowdown because word seems to move the document page out of memory to the HDD and back when I switch back to the document.

thequicksilver

May 9, 2006, 08:20 AM

I know some posters will pour scorn on my comment, but I have heard of experiences where new Macs have a "bad" install of the OS. As it sounds like your Mac is new, and that you're not taxing it overly, crack open your OS X installation DVD. Re-install OS X, and presuming that you have all your data backed up, wipe your drive in the process.

If you call Apple, it's quite possible that they'll ask you to do this anyway. If you have got a lemon, this will prove beyond reasonable doubt that this is the culprit. And if not, you've lost 30 or so minutes.

sonofmof

May 9, 2006, 09:03 AM

which would you guys recommend ?

a core solo with 1gb ram and a superdrive €799 or the stock core duo at €849.

I currently have an emac 1.25 with 1gb ram and the screen is beginning to give up.

I cannot stretch to the iMac and am generally satisfied with the eMac, although it has started beachballing more than normal just recently.

Everyone seems to say that the 512mb on the mini is not really sufficient but given the choice between more ram or the core duo, which way should i go ?

Thanks

livingfortoday

May 9, 2006, 09:14 AM

I just wanted to chime in with my two cents, as I have a Core Solo right now. I was really disappointed with its performance at first too, but that was until I got 1GB of RAM in it. I used to have the exact same problems you are - long wait time for apps to open, beachballs, etc. With 1GB, most of that is gone. Some non-native apps like Photoshop still take way too long to open, and are slow as heck, but overall, even Office is speedy now. Safari, Mail, etc open with a single bounce on the dock.

So, I would try a little more RAM, and if that doesn't make a big difference, I would return it as it is probably faulty at that point.

emptyCup

May 9, 2006, 09:22 AM

I currently have an emac 1.25 with 1gb ram and the screen is beginning to give up.

I cannot stretch to the iMac and am generally satisfied with the eMac, although it has started beachballing more than normal just recently.

Everyone seems to say that the 512mb on the mini is not really sufficient but given the choice between more ram or the core duo, which way should i go ?

Some will say go with the duo because you can always upgrade RAM later. But if that is beyond your budget, I would go with more memory

Remember, the mini has no monitor. Do you have one? If not, be sure to add this into your budget.

Best wishes

erikamsterdam

May 9, 2006, 09:25 AM

dr_lha

May 9, 2006, 10:30 AM

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 11:25 AM

1. You don't need more RAM. This is not the problem. I run far older and slower Macs than a Core Solo mini with less RAM than you've got, and I don't see performance problems like you are describing.

2. Please do not reinstall the OS. This is very unlikely to cure any problem that you've actually got.

Beyond rebooting, which is always advised in slow-down situations like you have described, I can't readily recommend any course of action beyond repairing permissions and running fsck in single-user mode, given what you've told us. I certainly won't recommend spending a bunch of money on RAM, or the needless disruption of reinstalling the OS.

Try these other things, and let us know the results.

baby duck monge

May 9, 2006, 11:32 AM

If there's anyone here who is regretting their Intel Mac Mini purchase but doesn't want to give up the form factor of the Mini, I would be willing to trade my G4 Mini.

1.42GHz
512MB RAM (works just fine for me, especially w/o needing emulation)
80GB HD
combo drive
APE/BT 2.0
original packaging

Would be interested in a Mini with similar specs. (no superdrive is needed, nor is BT, but I don't think I can do without APE). Can include a 17" Viewsonic LCD with a small scuff on one part of the screen (pics available). Please PM if you're interested because I most likely won't keep up with this thread.

jsw

May 9, 2006, 11:50 AM

Given the drain of Rosetta and especially with Office apps on Intel Macs, and given the 80MB you lose off the bat with the integrated graphics, and given the experience I've had with an iMac at 512MB before upgrading it, as well as with my core duo at 1GB, I can absolutely vouch for 512MB being insufficient on an Intel Mac running Office apps. You will swap a lot, you will see beach balls, you will see hiccups.

A bump to 1GB will make a huge difference. Older Macs don't see this problem because they aren't emulating, they don't have integrated graphics taking a chunk of the RAM, and they often have faster drives.

which would you guys recommend ?
Tough choice.

If you don't see a need for the extra processing power - handy for video encoding, etc. - and don't see the ability to upgrade RAM in the near future, I would definitely recommend the solo with more RAM. 512MB is simply insufficient on an Intel Mac running Office or similar apps via Rosetta. It should be enough RAM, but it isn't. It wasn't on my iMac, and it'd be even worse on a mini due to the slower drive (for swapping) and the 80MB VRAM hit.

If you see being able to buy a GB in the somewhat near future, get the duo, live with the 512MB for a bit, and enjoy the extra CPU.

Do not buy an Intel mini if you cannot expand to 1GB or more.

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 11:55 AM

whooleytoo

May 9, 2006, 12:11 PM

If I read this thread I wonder. Some word processing and browsing is nothing special, I can do that on my old G3 machine with 320Mb RAM easily. No 10 seconds waiting.
Guess I'm going to have to wait to replace that old iBook with a soon to be released Macbook. 1 GB RAM is a ridiculous amount for some easy tasks. You can do video editing on 1 GB RAM with a G4 processor. Amazing.

It's a combination of several factors.

Any OS is quite slow when disk thrashing (i.e. when memory fills up, and more and more data is being written to VM to make room for the data it's trying to read back into RAM), but OSX seems especially so.

OSX has as big a memory footprint as any other modern OS, if not more so.

The mini only has 512MB RAM, and less than that with the shared video memory. This not only reduces the available memory (causing further thrashing problems), but it uses valuable memory bandwidth as well, leaving less for main memory access and slowing the paging process even further.

I doubt the mini's hard drive is the fastest in the world either.

Add to this Rosetta requires a lot of memory, and you have a fairly extreme 'worst case scenario'.

whooleytoo

May 9, 2006, 12:13 PM

Oh, other than adding more RAM, I'd also recommend quitting and relaunching Safari at regular intervals. Works wonders for me.

erikamsterdam

May 9, 2006, 12:18 PM

milo

May 9, 2006, 12:25 PM

RAM!

I'd put at least a gig into any mac (or any pc for that matter). If you're running multiple apps, more ram will help, especially if some are under Rosetta.

You also have to realize that you bought a mac that's less than half as fast as any other intel mac. Ram should help, though.

which would you guys recommend ?

a core solo with 1gb ram and a superdrive €799 or the stock core duo at €849.

Tough call. I think it's worth springing for the duo AND a gig of ram.

1. You don't need more RAM. This is not the problem. I run far older and slower Macs than a Core Solo mini with less RAM than you've got, and I don't see performance problems like you are describing.

Older and slower macs aren't a valid comparison. The ram absolutely IS the problem. I have a mini and I've run it with 512 and with more, it makes a huge difference.

Even my G4s running Classic don't have this problem, and Classic is a major RAM and resource hog. Rosetta could hardly be any worse. When the Mac bogs down, I reboot. Problem solved.

More RAM is always better (assuming you don't get bad RAM, which is probably the commonest serious problem on the Mac), but I'm a big advocate for figuring out what is causing the actual issue before throwing money at it.

Certainly looks like Rosetta IS worse, also intel apps seem to use a little more ram even when they're native. In this case, we HAVE figured out what the actual issue is: ram. I've run this box with different ram configurations with no other differences and can confirm that the machine is much faster and more responsive with more ram. Many others online have confirmed this as well.

I run OS X 10.3 on that G3 iBook :-)
That's why I am so shocked that the Intel mini's are so slow.
But the point made earlier is also true: integrated graphics. Has always sucked in PC's, so why would it be good in Macs?

On the mini, the graphics don't suck, they just use some of the ram. But since they use 80 meg tops, you'd likely run out with a bunch of apps open even with a discrete graphics card. Once you beef up the ram, performance should be decent.

Eric5h5

May 9, 2006, 12:45 PM

1. You don't need more RAM. This is not the problem.

It sounds exactly like a RAM problem to me. It has all the symptoms.

I run far older and slower Macs than a Core Solo mini with less RAM than you've got, and I don't see performance problems like you are describing.

Because you're running native software. Rosetta uses a massive amount of RAM to store all the translated code. 2GB would not be uncalled for when running stuff with Rosetta. (It doesn't help that the crappy integrated video steals much-needed system RAM either.)

I can't readily recommend any course of action beyond repairing permissions

That will accomplish nothing. I vote for a moratorium on anyone recommending "repairing permissions" as an answer to anything except actual permissions problems, which are quite rare these days.

--Eric

MacSA

May 9, 2006, 01:09 PM

It sounds exactly like a RAM problem to me. It has all the symptoms.

Because you're running native software. Rosetta uses a massive amount of RAM to store all the translated code. 2GB would not be uncalled for when running stuff with Rosetta. (It doesn't help that the crappy integrated video steals much-needed system RAM either.)

That will accomplish nothing. I vote for a moratorium on anyone recommending "repairing permissions" as an answer to anything except actual permissions problems, which are quite rare these days.

--Eric

Hmm seems like people should just forget about the Mini and get an iMac. Adding all that RAM almost doubles it's price. And at least it's easy to add RAM to the iMac.. you practically have to destroy the Mini to upgrade it.

........or get a cheap refurbished G4 PPC Mini, that would have been cheaper than upgrading to 2GB lol.

jsw

May 9, 2006, 01:26 PM

Hmm seems like people should just forget about the Mini and get an iMac. Adding all that RAM almost doubles it's price.
While I absolutely agree that the iMac is easy to upgrade with more RAM (and the mini is torture), the iMac also needs 1GB to function well unless you limit yourself to UBs. Those who buy it for surfing, email, iLife, etc. will be fine w/512MB, but Rosetta, etc. push everyone else to 1GB or more. i say this having used an iMac w/512MB (for a day, until the RAM came in).

sonofmof

May 9, 2006, 01:28 PM

Thanks for the prompt replies guys,

I think I will get the core solo becuase the upgrade of ram in addition to the core duo is simply not affordable at the moment :-(

from what i have been reading it might be possible to upgrade the cpu in around a year of so with a cheap core duo or even a merom.

at this moment in time i have a 17" CRT from my old pc which i can use with the mini until finances can further stretch to a new LCD screen.

<I hate not having money but...love the house thats swallowing all my cash>

iBunny

May 9, 2006, 01:31 PM

I have to be blunt, but dont take it as disrespect.

512 MB of ram was good in 2001 and 2002. I dont know why anyone would concider running it today.

Also, a Core solo processor... not bad for sure, dont dont expect exact smoothness and speed. The More processors you have the better. Why not get a Core Duo?

Anyway, Also rosetta sucks. I dont care what anyone says. Sure, you can seemlessly run PPC apps... but its still slow. I have a Core Duo 2Ghz, 2GB of ram etc and its still slow.

So dont expect much.... You get what you pay for. You baught value, you will get value performance. Plain and simple.

miniConvert

May 9, 2006, 01:37 PM

The Core Solo isn't going to hack much under Rosetta. I have a Core Duo with 2GB RAM and it's about right... I can't imagine what using Word on a Solo with 512MB would be like!

Still, if it's being a bitch, moan at tech support and get it replaced. If it's still awful, buy more RAM.

sonofmof

May 9, 2006, 01:37 PM

I understand that the mini core solo is certainly not a power user spec machine but for my needs, web surfing, mail, minor office, itunes, iphoto and some small family websites in iweb i think it will be more than enough.

Please remember that my eMac has not seemed underpowered to me, its just that the display is begining to give up so i need to replace it.
It is a stock 1.25ghz combo but upgraded to 1gb ram.

Am i unreasonable to expect a small performance increase with the mini core solo and 1gb ram If i will get an increase does anyone know in real terms how much ?.

Thanks once again.

milo

May 9, 2006, 01:46 PM

Hmm seems like people should just forget about the Mini and get an iMac. Adding all that RAM almost doubles it's price. And at least it's easy to add RAM to the iMac.. you practically have to destroy the Mini to upgrade it.

........or get a cheap refurbished G4 PPC Mini, that would have been cheaper than upgrading to 2GB lol.

Nah. Even with 2 gigs of ram, a mini duo is still cheaper than a stock iMac (which needs a ram upgrade as well). ALL the intel macs need more ram. Period. And the G4 mini is only an option if you're ok with a machine that's dog slow (regardless of ram).

The mini is a good machine if you already have a decent monitor. It just needs ram, same as the other intel macs.

I understand that the mini core solo is certainly not a power user spec machine but for my needs, web surfing, mail, minor office, itunes, iphoto and some small family websites in iweb i think it will be more than enough.

Please remember that my eMac has not seemed underpowered to me, its just that the display is begining to give up so i need to replace it.
It is a stock 1.25ghz combo but upgraded to 1gb ram.

Am i unreasonable to expect a small performance increase with the mini core solo and 1gb ram If i will get an increase does anyone know in real terms how much ?.

If your apps are all universal, you'll see an increase but probably nothing that will blow you away.

miniConvert

May 9, 2006, 01:46 PM

Am i unreasonable to expect a small performance increase with the mini core solo and 1gb ram If i will get an increase does anyone know in real terms how much ?.

Thanks once again.
I'd imagine it'd seem snappier from the get-go, but applications running under Rosetta will be noticeably slower.

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 01:48 PM

I vote for a moratorium on anyone recommending "repairing permissions" as an answer to anything except actual permissions problems, which are quite rare these days.

Personally, I vote for a moratorium on recommending (1) more RAM and (2) OS reinstalls, as solutions to virtually every Mac issue.

The point of my suggestions is that they are (1) free, (2) easy, and (3) can cause no harm. And we don't know if this is an "actual" permissions problem, do we?

If these solutions don't work, then you can escalate. I also suggested rebooting, which as far as I can tell, hasn't been tried in this case. These are basic troubleshooting techniques. Skip them at your own risk.

livingfortoday

May 9, 2006, 01:53 PM

Personally, I vote for a moratorium on recommending (1) more RAM and (2) OS reinstalls, as solutions to virtually every Mac issue.

The point of my suggestions is that they are (1) free, (2) easy, and (3) can cause no harm. And we don't know if this is an "actual" permissions problem, do we?

If these solutions don't work, then you can escalate. I also suggested rebooting, which as far as I can tell, hasn't been tried in this case. These are basic troubleshooting techniques. Skip them at your own risk.

I agree, it's just common sense to try those things before you try to drastically mess with your system (more RAM, new install, etc). I do have to say though, from experience, that the Core Solo is terrible with the stock RAM. I had an Intel iMac for a little while, and it was fine at 512MB, but that was a 2.0Ghz Duo, and this is just a 1.5Ghz Solo. My Mini became very useable with the extra 512MB in it. I think a lot of it has to do with the shared graphics memory, and Rosetta most likely doesn't help either.

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 01:56 PM

512 MB of ram was good in 2001 and 2002. I dont know why anyone would concider running it today.

Because they do it without any problems, that's why. Because adding RAM is a frequent source of kernel panics is another. Because it's costly is a third reason.

I'm not opposed to adding RAM. If you can afford it, knock yourself out. (Just make sure you buy the good stuff, not cheapo generic.) I'm opposed to RAM upgrades being suggested as a universal solution to all performance issues, even before anything else is even considered.

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 02:04 PM

I agree, it's just common sense to try those things before you try to drastically mess with your system (more RAM, new install, etc). I do have to say though, from experience, that the Core Solo is terrible with the stock RAM. I had an Intel iMac for a little while, and it was fine at 512MB, but that was a 2.0Ghz Duo, and this is just a 1.5Ghz Solo. My Mini became very useable with the extra 512MB in it. I think a lot of it has to do with the shared graphics memory, and Rosetta most likely doesn't help either.

Common sense is all I'm preaching here. Always do the free and easy stuff first.

Another point about performance and RAM: No matter how much RAM you've got installed, over time you will still build up virtual memory swap files, which will gradually degrade the system's performance to the point where you see constant beach balls. The cure is rebooting. Having more RAM essentially means not having to reboot quite so often.

razorme

May 9, 2006, 02:18 PM

Common sense is all I'm preaching here. Always do the free and easy stuff first.

Another point about performance and RAM: No matter how much RAM you've got installed, over time you will still build up virtual memory swap files, which will gradually degrade the system's performance to the point where you see constant beach balls. The cure is rebooting. Having more RAM essentially means not having to reboot quite so often.

I have/had many Macs, and as long as you have enough RAM that the system only has to occasionally use virtual memory, I have never seen degradation over time. It may be happening ever so slightly, but my iMac Rev A with 1 GB has never had to be rebooted except for updates or power failures (and once because my USB was acting funny).

I have seen abysmal performance that gets worse and worse when you don't have enough RAM, but once you upgrade, the problem seems to go away, not just slow down - in my experience anyways!

ddrueckhammer

May 9, 2006, 02:19 PM

You probably do want to spend money to upgrade your RAM (at least 1 Gb) but I would recommend downloading Cocktail (or Onyx) and running the Pilot tab. It just repairs permissions, runs cron scripts, cleans the cache etc. If you know how to do all this by hand you can do it that way too but I like the convenience of setting one of these programs to go and coming back later.

My friends Mac Mini was unresponsive after a couple of weeks of use and I ran Cocktail on it and noticed an immediate speed increase. It turns out, that after purchasing the Mac my friend installed a bunch of programs and it seems that the maintanence wasn't being done. He doesn't turn off his Mac but he had it set for the computer and HDs to sleep. Does anyone know if this makes a difference? I run Cocktail every month or two so I never really noticed if the sleep setting make a difference on the Cron script running etc.

sonofmof

May 9, 2006, 02:30 PM

I think most of my apps are universal now, safari, mail, ilife 06, proteus with the only expection being office, which i only use occasionally.

I think i will be happy with the solo and 1gb, I just didn't want to have a slower machine than my eMac.

Thats all for the replies :-)

milo

May 9, 2006, 02:38 PM

Personally, I vote for a moratorium on recommending (1) more RAM and (2) OS reinstalls, as solutions to virtually every Mac issue.

As a blanket statement, I'd agree. But in this particular case, more ram is the right solution. Many people have used this machine with different ram configurations, and the fact that it performs much better with more than 512 is well established.

Personally, I vote for a moratorium on people making recommendations for machines they've never used.

Another point about performance and RAM: No matter how much RAM you've got installed, over time you will still build up virtual memory swap files, which will gradually degrade the system's performance to the point where you see constant beach balls. The cure is rebooting. Having more RAM essentially means not having to reboot quite so often.

In the case of these machines, if you're running multiple apps, you'll build up those swap files almost immediately. You'll see the degraded performance right away, so rebooting isn't really a fix.

Get the ram, it will fix your problem.

danny_w

May 9, 2006, 02:55 PM

Although RAM is always an issue, esp. with Rosetta, Safari is also a major issue in my experience (although a lot of posters here seem to love it). I have tried many times to switch to Safari, but it just bogs the system down so bad, in just exactly the same way that you are describing, that I always end up back at FireFox. Some websites will cause an immediate Safari slowdown (Expedia and CNN) while others will take longer. Try running your apps but without Safari and see if the problem improves. I run a PowerBook 1.5GHz with 1GB of RAM and have these Safari issues, so I can imagine that 512MB would be hard to deal with.

miniConvert

May 9, 2006, 03:01 PM

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 03:23 PM

I have/had many Macs, and as long as you have enough RAM that the system only has to occasionally use virtual memory, I have never seen degradation over time. It may be happening ever so slightly, but my iMac Rev A with 1 GB has never had to be rebooted except for updates or power failures (and once because my USB was acting funny).

I have seen abysmal performance that gets worse and worse when you don't have enough RAM, but once you upgrade, the problem seems to go away, not just slow down - in my experience anyways!

You might be surprised at how much virtual memory is being used. The only way to really know is to check the virtual memory swap files, which essentially double in size (!) each time a new one is required by the OS, and don't get deleted until you reboot. I run a G4 1.7 Cube with 1 gig or RAM, and don't find rebooting to be necessary very often unless I open large files in Photoshop under Classic. But then I really do need to reboot.

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 03:30 PM

As a blanket statement, I'd agree. But in this particular case, more ram is the right solution. Many people have used this machine with different ram configurations, and the fact that it performs much better with more than 512 is well established.

Personally, I vote for a moratorium on people making recommendations for machines they've never used.

General troubleshooting procedures don't change from model to model. Start with the free and the easy, then move onto the more costly and complex if necessary. As someone else said, this is basic common sense.

milo

May 9, 2006, 03:38 PM

General troubleshooting procedures don't change from model to model. Start with the free and the easy, then move onto the more costly and complex if necessary. As someone else said, this is basic common sense.

But things like ram needs DO change from model to model. I'm sure the G4 is just fine with 512. But the intel macs, specifically the mini, do see better performance with more ram than 512. It's an established fact, and many people have confirmed it.

I certainly don't disagree with starting with things like fsck and other basics. But it's simply ignorant on your part to make statements like "You don't need more RAM. This is not the problem." You're just flat-out wrong in this case, and you're doing a disservice by spreading misinformation about a machine you haven't even used.

whooleytoo

May 9, 2006, 04:13 PM

I run OS X 10.3 on that G3 iBook :-)
That's why I am so shocked that the Intel mini's are so slow.
But the point made earlier is also true: integrated graphics. Has always sucked in PC's, so why would it be good in Macs?

I run 10.4 on a B&W G3 too, and it's not bad for general use! It really, REALLY can't play games, and a lot of videos it can't play as it can't decode fast enough (and we're not talking about HD here!), but it's ok. And unlike my 2x2GHz G5 at work (with 512MB RAM), it doesn't stutter and stall for 5 seconds every time I try and switch apps.

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 04:27 PM

But things like ram needs DO change from model to model. I'm sure the G4 is just fine with 512. But the intel macs, specifically the mini, do see better performance with more ram than 512. It's an established fact, and many people have confirmed it.

I certainly don't disagree with starting with things like fsck and other basics. But it's simply ignorant on your part to make statements like "You don't need more RAM. This is not the problem." You're just flat-out wrong in this case, and you're doing a disservice by spreading misinformation about a machine you haven't even used.

Ignorant? Thank you so much.

Perhaps you ought to take another look at the initial post. Sure, all Macs will "see better performance" with more RAM. But this is not what we're talking about here. This user complains that it takes 15 seconds just to close a Safari window. This is not normal behavior for any Mac in any stock configuration, as I think everyone would agree. Try to find out what the problem is before throwing money at it, is my suggestion.

This should be noncontroversial advice, and not responded to with flames.

whooleytoo

May 9, 2006, 04:31 PM

Perhaps you ought to take another look at the initial post. Sure, all Macs will "see better performance" with more RAM. But this is not what we're talking about here. This user complains that it takes 15 seconds just to close a Safari window. This is not normal behavior for any Mac in any stock configuration, as I think everyone would agree. Try to find out what the problem is before throwing money at it, is my suggestion.

I see that all the time with Safari, on two G5s (dual 2GHz), both of which have 512MB RAM. ;)

I stick by my earlier advice, don't keep too many Safari tabs open, quit and relaunch it often, install more RAM.

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 04:41 PM

I see that all the time with Safari, on two G5s (dual 2GHz), both of which have 512MB RAM. ;)

I stick by my earlier advice, don't keep too many Safari tabs open, quit and relaunch it often, install more RAM.

Well, it must be clean living because I almost never see it, on much older and far slower Macs with less RAM. ;)

One is a G4/800 iMac with a whopping great 320 Mb or RAM, which my wife uses all day every day. She doesn't get the concept of quitting applications. I sneak over to her desk about once a week to reboot it.

milo

May 9, 2006, 04:48 PM

Ignorant? Thank you so much.

Perhaps you ought to take another look at the initial post. Sure, all Macs will "see better performance" with more RAM. But this is not what we're talking about here. This user complains that it takes 15 seconds just to close a Safari window. This is not normal behavior for any Mac in any stock configuration, as I think everyone would agree. Try to find out what the problem is before throwing money at it, is my suggestion.

Ignorant: lacking knowledge, information or awareness about something in particular. Certainly seems to fit here.

15 seconds to close a safari window is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. I saw the exact same thing on my mini with 512. Upping the ram and making no other changes made the performance perfectly speedy. I'm not talking about a subtle improvement, I'm talking about going from snail to snappy just from upping the ram. With 512, I had operations that took MINUTES that became instantaneous with more ram.

This IS normal behaviour of the mini in stock configuration. Many people online have confirmed this. We HAVE determined what the problem is, and "throwing money at it" IS the solution in this case.

Have you used a mini with both ram configurations and compared? Have you?

Well, it must be clean living because I almost never see it, on much older and far slower Macs with less RAM. ;)

One is a G4/800 iMac with a whopping great 320 Mb or RAM, which my wife uses all day every day. She doesn't get the concept of quitting applications. I sneak over to her desk about once a week to reboot it.

Are any of the machines you've never seen it on intel macs?

citi

May 9, 2006, 05:25 PM

this may have been asked before but I don't want to go through pages to try to help someone. Are you using widgets? Are they running all the time/in the background?

I noticed when I was running a lot of widgets on my pb 1.25 it slowed my mac to a crawl. After removing them it was speedy again and I have a gb of ram.

danny_w

May 9, 2006, 05:31 PM

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 06:03 PM

Are any of the machines you've never seen it on intel macs?

If you're trying to tell that any Intel Mac is slower than a four year old iMac G4, with half the RAM besides, then pardon me if I remain incredulous.

As for the rest, I've already made my point clearly. This issue should not be half as controversial as some make it out to be, and I'm not going to respond to flames.

milo

May 9, 2006, 06:34 PM

If you're trying to tell that any Intel Mac is slower than a four year old iMac G4, with half the RAM besides, then pardon me if I remain incredulous.

As for the rest, I've already made my point clearly. This issue should not be half as controversial as some make it out to be, and I'm not going to respond to flames.

If you exceed the ram on an intel mini, it will get slow as molasses. So yes, I am telling you that. For comparison, I have an easier time getting a mini with 512 to seriously lag than a beige G3/333.

By your refusal to answer the question, I can only assume you never have used an intel mini (or likely any other intel mac). Feel free to correct that assumption if it's wrong. Maybe your incredulity would go away if you actually had some experience with the machine and saw it firsthand.

Your post isn't controversial, it's just flat out wrong. And my response to it isn't a flame, just pointing out that it's incorrect. I just wish you'd get the facts instead of insisting on spreading misinformation.

macgeek2005

May 9, 2006, 06:49 PM

I picked up an extra core solo intel Mac Mini (512mb) for light emailing (mail) and basic word processing (microsoft word under Rosetta), and despite the minimal strain on the machine, it is:

-Slow
-Stuttering
-Extremely unresponsive
-Beachballing me to death

etc. Switching between word windows can tie the machine up for up to ten seconds at a time. Closing safari windows can take 15 seconds. Saving a doc and switching between programs? I can make a hot pocket during the delay...

Is this people's normal experience with the machine, or should I be looking for something else wrong here? I know its not a powermac, and some of the apps are running under Rosetta, but still... this thing is barely chuggin along...

Any ideas for me?

I haven't read the whole thread, so if what I say now is irrelevant, please excuse me.

I don't find it weird at all. The Mac Mini's are slow pieces of trash, and running a rosetta app on TOP of that??? *shudder*. It boggles the mind, or more like, the hard drive.

If you think it's too slow, pay an extra grand, for a computer that's an extra grand faster. That's the mac mini. It's cheap, and it's ****.

IJ Reilly

May 9, 2006, 06:51 PM

If you exceed the ram on an intel mini, it will get slow as molasses. So yes, I am telling you that. For comparison, I have an easier time getting a mini with 512 to seriously lag than a beige G3/333.

By your refusal to answer the question, I can only assume you never have used an intel mini (or likely any other intel mac). Feel free to correct that assumption if it's wrong. Maybe your incredulity would go away if you actually had some experience with the machine and saw it firsthand.

Your post isn't controversial, it's just flat out wrong. And my response to it isn't a flame, just pointing out that it's incorrect. I just wish you'd get the facts instead of insisting on spreading misinformation.

Who's facts, yours? We've also had a post commenting that a dual G5 can also be seen to lag. I don't doubt it. Any Mac will, if swap files are allowed to build up. The first thing to try is still the first thing to try. Start free and easy and escalate only if necessary, not the other way around. This is Mac maintenance 101 -- and the point of my advice. It remains the point, no matter how hard you try to turn it into something else.

milo

May 9, 2006, 07:21 PM

I don't find it weird at all. The Mac Mini's are slow pieces of trash, and running a rosetta app on TOP of that??? *shudder*. It boggles the mind, or more like, the hard drive.

Actually, with most apps the mini duo keeps up pretty well with machines that are three times the price. The only time it chokes is with the stock ram, and I suspect the MPB's will do the same if you run enough apps and use all the memory.

Who's facts, yours? We've also had a post commenting that a dual G5 can also be seen to lag. I don't doubt it. Any Mac will, if swap files are allowed to build up. The first thing to try is still the first thing to try. Start free and easy and escalate only if necessary, not the other way around. This is Mac maintenance 101 -- and the point of my advice. It remains the point, no matter how hard you try to turn it into something else.

Mine and many others online. I've seen the exact same results from others on macintouch's user reports among numerous other places (but I'm sure you're probably not going to believe me unless I provide links, right?). I have personal experience to back my claims up, as well as others with the same results. Are you calling me a liar? Are you saying that even though I have the same machine as the OP with the exact same symptoms, the solution that worked for me can't possibly apply to him? (especially when he tells us he's had literally a *million* pageouts!)

And doesn't the fact that a G5 with minimal ram can be made to choke fairly easily support the idea that it's probably RAM?

Do you have any experience with the intel mini? What's your basis for your "facts" about the intel mini? Use of different machines with a completely different chipset and build of the apps and OS? You have no facts whatsoever, just speculation on your part, which in this case turns out to be wrong.

As I've already said, I agree with the idea of trying the simple, harmless things first. But in this case, even if fsck ends up fixing something, it's not going to fix the larger problem, which is that on the mini, running multiple apps, particularly ones that are memory hogs like safari, memory runs out fast and the machine completely chokes. The fix for this is easy, get more ram.

If you had simply stuck with "try the basics first" I'd have no disagreement. I'm certainly NOT trying to turn your point into something else. But to insist that the problem has nothing to do with ram is just uninformed speculation on your part, and you're just spreading misinformation by continuing to make that claim.

I'm dying to hear how the OP finally solves his problem. Did basic software utilities make a difference? Or did it take more ram to speed things up?

We'll see.

Eric5h5

May 9, 2006, 07:50 PM

Another point about performance and RAM: No matter how much RAM you've got installed, over time you will still build up virtual memory swap files, which will gradually degrade the system's performance to the point where you see constant beach balls. The cure is rebooting. Having more RAM essentially means not having to reboot quite so often.

I'm sorry, but this is wrong. Unix (and hence OS X) does not work like that. I almost never reboot unless the power goes out, and my system does not see performance degradation, with 1.5GB of RAM (on a PPC machine, so no Rosetta). The only thing that could cause something like that is a memory leak. Rebooting would cure the problem temporarily, but you'd want to get rid of it by not running the buggy program that has the memory leak. It's certainly not a "feature" of OS X.

I agree that "add more RAM" is thrown around too much (not as often as the almost completely useless "repair permissions"...how many people actually even know what permissions are, and why they might need repair, and what the effects of faulty permissions actually are? It's not "running slow," that's for sure). However, when you have someone exactly describing the effects of running low on RAM, it certainly makes sense to recommend adding more.

--Eric

Krevnik

May 9, 2006, 09:04 PM

Other stupid newbie question- page ins/out is at something like 3,000,000/1,000,000. Is that normal? Sounds kinda funny to me...

Still, these numbers do seem high. If you turn off the machine when it isn't in use, then this is really bad to see.

mtoddy

May 9, 2006, 09:59 PM

let me say this...

three times i have purchased new macs (two g4 powerbooks and a macbook pro), every one having the base 512mb RAM. i had the exact symptoms you describe.

looking at the activity monitor revealed a constant lack of "free" memory, so i actually upgraded the RAM on all three to at least a gig each.

every time, that did the trick. i almost guarantee that's the problem if you've not done anything to corrupt the system. but even if you did corrupt your system somehow (or another problem existed), your 512 will still be a nightmare guaranteed.

take my word for it :)

livingfortoday

May 10, 2006, 02:49 AM

I don't know why, but all the bickering in this thread made me think of the Simpsons:

"You know what you two need? A little comic strip called Love Is.... It's about two naked eight-year-olds who are married."

milo

May 10, 2006, 11:41 AM

dr_lha

May 10, 2006, 11:50 AM

I haven't read the whole thread, so if what I say now is irrelevant, please excuse me.

I don't find it weird at all. The Mac Mini's are slow pieces of trash, and running a rosetta app on TOP of that??? *shudder*. It boggles the mind, or more like, the hard drive.

If you think it's too slow, pay an extra grand, for a computer that's an extra grand faster. That's the mac mini. It's cheap, and it's ****.
You're a moron. The mini rocks as a fast Mac. It just needs at least 1Gb RAM to really fly.

bigfib

May 10, 2006, 11:51 AM

This is a sad little thread.
On the one hand, we have someone with a problem - a slow mac mini.
On the other hand, we have two groups of people. Those of us who have intel macs and know the answer, and those who just want to argue pointlessly.
That would be harmless were it not confusing for the guy trying to get advice.
If you care to look at the original intel imac thread you will see that the answer to this question is very simple.
The intel macs need a lot of ram, and rosetta needs *loads*.
The poor guy who is having problems needs *at least* 1GB. I would advise 1 1/2 or 1
Every single person who has received an intel imac with 512 has had these problems (including myself).
And we're all as happy as Steve Jobs himself now we have added memory.
Those that find it hard to believe, don't. You're just showing your ignorance.
The guy with the problems, go get some ram, and be happy. You have a fabulous little computer with not enough ram.

IJ Reilly

May 10, 2006, 12:10 PM

thejadedmonkey

May 10, 2006, 12:12 PM

Honest question, please don't flame.

Why is my mac mini (g4) able to get away with 512 megs of RAM, while an intel mac mini needs over a gig?

Right now I have 6 programs open, but I routinely have 7 or 8 up, and the only time I experience a slow down is when Safari has 10 tabs open (but usually Safari'll crash on me too).

Assuming a UB is really universal, why does the intel one require so much more RAM? My college provides Office 2004 to me for free, and I assume will offer 2007 as well (or whatever the next office version is), which will be a UB. Everything else I use is a UB...does this mean that I will stil lneed to get a gig of ram when I buy my macbook, or will 1/2 a gig work for me on an intel machine, as it works for me on a G4 machine?

P.S. Is the apple logo that macrumor slightly different today, or is it just me?

dr_lha

May 10, 2006, 12:16 PM

Honest question, please don't flame.

Why is my mac mini (g4) able to get away with 512 megs of RAM, while an intel mac mini needs over a gig?

This is a good question, and one I have pondered myself. One answer is obviously tha Rosetta has a large overhead, but even without Rosetta running (i.e. 100% Universal apps) Intel Macs appear to need more memory than PPC ones. This may be due to the size of Intel binaries (Intel binaries seem to be on e whole slightly larger than their PPC equivalents) or perhaps due to the still-somewhat-beta nature of the new Intel Mac OS X.

That said, I see you are running Panther on your mini. I have a 12" PB with 512Mb and I found it became unusable when upgrading to Tiger. I upgraded it to 768Mb and suddenly it was very happy again, my conclusion being that Tiger is a bigger RAM hog than Panther.

thejadedmonkey

May 10, 2006, 12:23 PM

I still run Panther on my mini, I just can't justify the $100 for dashboard- the only feature I would use (and beta testing lightbox).

I understand what you mean with UB's taking up more space, thusly more ram...but wouldn't OS X only read the part of the UB that it needs to run, and let the other half just "sit" there on the HDD and not do anything except take up space? at least, that's how I would think it would opperate..

Maybe I'm just not getting why anyone who does basic tasks would need more than 512 megs of RAM since I'm still on Panther...

bigfib

May 10, 2006, 12:23 PM

Yep, the main difference is Rosetta, the other one is Tiger.
My intel Imac was fine until I ran any non universal app. From that point on it was like using a windows PC in need of a reformat.
And my old G3 was fine until I installed Tiger. Then I had to add memory there as well.

whooleytoo

May 10, 2006, 12:25 PM

citi

May 10, 2006, 12:28 PM

dr_lha

May 10, 2006, 12:29 PM

They are quite fast machines at processor-intensive tasks, slow at memory or graphics intensive tasks.
Show me the evidence that they're slow at memory intensive tasks. Memory throughput benchmarks for my mini show it to be up their with the G5s.

dr_lha

May 10, 2006, 12:33 PM

I understand what you mean with UB's taking up more space, thusly more ram...but wouldn't OS X only read the part of the UB that it needs to run, and let the other half just "sit" there on the HDD and not do anything except take up space? at least, that's how I would think it would opperate..
Its not that UB's take up more space (they do) its that the equivalent Intel binary size is larger for most programs that PPC code.

However this doesn't actually appear to be true now I've looked into it! I just checked out the Intel code vs PPC code in iTunes and the Intel code is actually slightly smaller! There goes that theory.

Anyway - I think the difference between Panther and Tiger is a big part of the reason 512Mb is no longer good enough.

milo

May 10, 2006, 12:38 PM

This thread reminds me of the threads that started and ran for days right after the Intel mini was released. The moment some people got ahold of the fact that they had shared vRAM, the argument was made that performance just had to stink on these systems. Then the benchmarks started coming out, and lo and behold, they didn't stink -- which lo and behold didn't stop some people from continuing to argue that performance just had to stink.

That's a funny comment, but I agree with it. But in this particular case, the people who have never used the machine are the ones insisting that it's fine with 512, while the people who actually have used the machines and experienced the performance firsthand know what the truth is: with 512 they bog down *very* easily, which is remedied by going to at least a gig.

The moral of the story? People end up looking foolish if they try and pretend to be an expert about technology that they've never used. Funny how some people can't seem to learn that.

This is a good question, and one I have pondered myself. One answer is obviously tha Rosetta has a large overhead, but even without Rosetta running (i.e. 100% Universal apps) Intel Macs appear to need more memory than PPC ones. This may be due to the size of Intel binaries (Intel binaries seem to be on e whole slightly larger than their PPC equivalents) or perhaps due to the still-somewhat-beta nature of the new Intel Mac OS X.

That said, I see you are running Panther on your mini. I have a 12" PB with 512Mb and I found it became unusable when upgrading to Tiger. I upgraded it to 768Mb and suddenly it was very happy again, my conclusion being that Tiger is a bigger RAM hog than Panther.

All true. Intel itself needs more, Rosetta needs more, Tiger needs more, and the graphics chip uses some as well.

I understand what you mean with UB's taking up more space, thusly more ram...but wouldn't OS X only read the part of the UB that it needs to run, and let the other half just "sit" there on the HDD and not do anything except take up space? at least, that's how I would think it would opperate..

I'm not sure what the reason is for it, but apps just use more memory running on intel. If you look in Activity Monitor and compare an intel mac with a PPC mac, the intel mac will have higher ram usage for each app.

Show me the evidence that they're slow at memory intensive tasks. Memory throughput benchmarks for my mini show it to be up their with the G5s.

I'm curious about this too. I've seen a bunch of benchmarks, and none have showed memory performance that was much different than any other intel mac.

dr_lha

May 10, 2006, 12:47 PM

I'm curious about this too. I've seen a bunch of benchmarks, and none have showed memory performance that was much different than any other intel mac.
I think he's basing this assumption that "shared" video RAM means crappy RAM performance. Even if this is true, the effect is minimal to say the least. The fact is that for speed my Core Solo mini gives my 1.8Ghz DP G5 a run for its money.

IJ Reilly

May 10, 2006, 01:10 PM

I'm sorry, but this is wrong. Unix (and hence OS X) does not work like that. I almost never reboot unless the power goes out, and my system does not see performance degradation, with 1.5GB of RAM (on a PPC machine, so no Rosetta). The only thing that could cause something like that is a memory leak. Rebooting would cure the problem temporarily, but you'd want to get rid of it by not running the buggy program that has the memory leak. It's certainly not a "feature" of OS X.

You can read up on vm file handling in OSX in any one of a dozen places. They are stored in private/var/vm, a normally invisible directory (to the Finder). Use TinkerTool to make the hidden directories visible. Look inside and you will see at least one 64 Mb file called "swapfile0". Add this directory to your sidebar and watch its behavior as you use the Mac for more RAM-intensive tasks. You'll see the swapfiles proliferate, and they won't go away until you reboot.

If you've got plenty of physical RAM, you may never notice degraded performance from all the disk flogging these files can cause (the argument in favor of adding RAM). If you don't have a lot of RAM, you will eventually notice the degraded performance. Rebooting will delete the swapfiles, and you'll be back to optimum performance for awhile at least (the argument in favor of at least rebooting the Mac before deciding that more RAM is an absolute necessity).

IJ Reilly

May 10, 2006, 01:18 PM

That's a funny comment, but I agree with it. But in this particular case, the people who have never used the machine are the ones insisting that it's fine with 512, while the people who actually have used the machines and experienced the performance firsthand know what the truth is: with 512 they bog down *very* easily, which is remedied by going to at least a gig.

The moral of the story? People end up looking foolish if they try and pretend to be an expert about technology that they've never used. Funny how some people can't seem to learn that.

You're misrepresenting my argument again, and it's getting pretty annoying. What I've been saying from the very start is that the original poster is complaining of serious performance issues which cannot be described as "normal" for this or any other Mac. Odd that simply suggesting that he reboot and see what that does, before telling him to spend more money, is seen as so controversial.

Watch that high horse -- you might fall off.

milo

May 10, 2006, 01:44 PM

You're misrepresenting my argument again, and it's getting pretty annoying. What I've been saying from the very start is that the original poster is complaining of serious performance issues which cannot be described as "normal" for this or any other Mac. Odd that simply suggesting that he reboot and see what that does, before telling him to spend more money, is seen as so controversial.

So as to avoid any accusations of misrepresntation, let me quote from your original post in this thread:

You don't need more RAM. This is not the problem.

I (and seemingly most of the other people posting in this thread) disagree.

He does need more ram. That is the problem. That's the part I disagree with. You haven't changed your position on that, have you? If you did, I missed it.

I've said multiple times, there's no harm in things like rebooting and basic software troubleshooting. I agree that these are simple and quick enough to be worth doing in most situations. So stop pretending that anyone has EVER said such a thing is controversial. That said, based on his description of the problem, the basic fixes are unlikely to solve the problem. (Under heavy use, the mini starts to bog almost immediately, you'd have to reboot before getting any work done) All symptoms point to ram. So do the basics...while you're on hold waiting to order more ram.

If you've never used a mini, how do you know that the performance he's seeing isn't normal? I've seen that behaviour on the mini. Others on this thread have confirmed seeing it. Others elsewhere on the net have confirmed it as well. Why are you in such denial? Do you think we're all lying? Do you think somehow the "exception" cases outnumber what you imagine to be the norm? What will it take for you to believe that other minis do the exact same thing? Does one of us have to take footage of the exact same performance as the OP describes and post it online?

What I really don't understand is, since you admit that performance will degrade when ram is exceeded and the system starts using swap files (which would be reduced by more ram), why are you so insistent that's not what's happening in this case?

Question for the austincolby, after a reboot, how quickly does performance degrade on your machine? In Activity Monitor, how quickly do the page counts go up? You mentioned page outs hitting a million. Is that after a month, a week, a day, an hour?

asencif

May 10, 2006, 02:14 PM

While this war continues, has the OP gotten more RAM or fixed the issue? Intel Macs do need more memory to perform well in comparison to the PPC Macs. This is probably due to Rosetta apps, but it is the case overall with all apps as was already said by another poster in this thread. The PPC Mini could function well with 512 Ram as I've used that with Safari and Word. My understanding was that the OP was having Safari beach ball for 10 sec after opening it up and using it for a few. Now is that the problem everyone is having with the Intel mini..Can't run more than two apps after rebooting? I know others have said wtih 512RAM they can't multitask much and start hanging up after a while of usage. So my question is for the Intel mini is it also supposed to hang up after just opening one app? Or Safari and then Word and that's it?

milo

May 10, 2006, 02:28 PM

While this war continues, has the OP gotten more RAM or fixed the issue?

I think this is what it will take to settle the whole thing.

IJ Reilly

May 10, 2006, 02:57 PM

I (and seemingly most of the other people posting in this thread) disagree.

He does need more ram. That is the problem. That's the part I disagree with. You haven't changed your position on that, have you? If you did, I missed it.

I didn't realize this was an election. Did I lose?

The absurdity of this debate is that our opinions are seemingly not very far apart. I thought I'd made my views clear already, but for the last time I hope: The kind of severe degradation in performance reported suggests the need for some basic diagnostics before deciding to throw any money at the problem. If what I've suggested is tried, and it simply fails to produce reasonable performance from this Mac, then I'll accept your argument that Apple has effectively released a defective product in its stock configuration, and that only installing more RAM can possibly help. Until then, I think it's reasonable to be skeptical about the absolute need to do so, especially given the bench tests for the Core Solo Mini, which indicate that it outperforms the G4 Mini in most tests.

IJ Reilly

May 10, 2006, 02:58 PM

I think this is what it will take to settle the whole thing.

Agreed. I think we might have scared him off. ;)

whooleytoo

May 10, 2006, 03:02 PM

Agreed. I think we might have scared him off. ;)

There was an OP?!? :confused:

(There I go again, me and my lack of memory.. :p )

whooleytoo

May 10, 2006, 03:05 PM

Show me the evidence that they're slow at memory intensive tasks. Memory throughput benchmarks for my mini show it to be up their with the G5s.

Honestly, I don't have benchmarks to back up that assertion, but that would be my expectation. What benchmarks show it to be similar in performance to the G5s? Are they from a test suite or real world (i.e. application) testing?

quidire

May 10, 2006, 03:08 PM

You can read up on vm file handling in OSX in any one of a dozen places. They are stored in private/var/vm, a normally invisible directory (to the Finder). Use TinkerTool to make the hidden directories visible. Look inside and you will see at least one 64 Mb file called "swapfile0". Add this directory to your sidebar and watch its behavior as you use the Mac for more RAM-intensive tasks. You'll see the swapfiles proliferate, and they won't go away until you reboot.

If you've got plenty of physical RAM, you may never notice degraded performance from all the disk flogging these files can cause (the argument in favor of adding RAM). If you don't have a lot of RAM, you will eventually notice the degraded performance. Rebooting will delete the swapfiles, and you'll be back to optimum performance for awhile at least (the argument in favor of at least rebooting the Mac before deciding that more RAM is an absolute necessity).

Okay, here you are really demonstrating your technological illiteracy.

These files don't "cause flogging". The files represent "software RAM"; the total size of addressable memory space is increased by the size of those files. When you've run large programs (or loaded large files) more of these swap files have been created. When you stopped using them, those files which were no longer necessary were left around (so that they wouldn't have to be created again) but aren't used until you exceed your available RAM again.

Understand - swap files cannot slow down your computer. The files existing don't "make" the OS swap out your active applications; only mathematical necessity will make the OS use your virtual memory for active processes. Deleting them is silly, they will just be created again unless you fix the root problem - insufficient RAM.

One last point: anyone who says that adding RAM won't increase speed simply doesn't understand the Unix memory management process. All unused RAM (save 20-30 MB) turns into disk cache. If you had 10 GB of RAM, 9 GB of it would be filled up with what portions of your harddrive your kernel thought would most likely get accessed next. As soon as you needed more RAM than the 1GB that was left over, however much extra was needed would cease to be disk cache and would be allocated to your applications.

Memory access is much much faster than hard drive access. Thus RAM will always speed up your computer, even after you stop needing active swap memory; you simply get much faster harddrive access beyond that point.

(There is another level of complexity; the Unix memory management algorithms will swap out memory contents that are not being used and "are unlikely to be used in the near future" and simultaneously disk cache some parts of the hard drive which are likely to be used shortly, and so swap files will always exist, as Mac OS X will optimise its memory handling no matter how much the results alarm the uneducated user who apparently has a panic attack at the sight of a swap file...)

quidire

May 10, 2006, 03:18 PM

Bare Feats compares the iMac Core Duo, the Mac mini Core duo, and the Mac mini G4 (http://www.barefeats.com/mincd.html)

Just booting up the mini and doing nothing else consumes 270MB, so two 256MB modules just doesn't cut it.

Indeed.

milo

May 10, 2006, 04:07 PM

The kind of severe degradation in performance reported suggests the need for some basic diagnostics before deciding to throw any money at the problem. If what I've suggested is tried, and it simply fails to produce reasonable performance from this Mac, then I'll accept your argument that Apple has effectively released a defective product in its stock configuration, and that only installing more RAM can possibly help. Until then, I think it's reasonable to be skeptical about the absolute need to do so, especially given the bench tests for the Core Solo Mini, which indicate that it outperforms the G4 Mini in most tests.

I absolutely feel that the stock configuration is just barely usable. It's OK if you're running few apps at a time, few documents or windows open. Or if you have low expectations and are willing to accept pokey performance. For some things like Front Row, performance is so slow with 512 that there were times when I was left staring at a black screen wondering if the machine had crashed (usually it would come back, sometimes after as long as 30 seconds). There are many reviews online that have said the exact same thing, that the machine is barely usable, unusable, unacceptable, lots of beach balls, etc with 512.

Benchmarks aren't an accurate reflection of this situation. They generally run one app and focus on one document at a time. This ram starvation is usually seen when multiple apps are open with multiple documents, and the user is switching back and forth, a situation rarely if ever duplicated by benchmarks. I'd love to see a benchmark that does such a thing, I'm sure it would show a major difference between intel macs with 512 and a gig or more.

dr_lha

May 10, 2006, 04:10 PM

Honestly, I don't have benchmarks to back up that assertion, but that would be my expectation.
Exactly. Your expectation is not a very good measure of performance, even worse than a benchmark!
What benchmarks show it to be similar in performance to the G5s? Are they from a test suite or real world (i.e. application) testing?
Here are the "geekbench" memory test results from my Core Solo mini and my 1.8Ghz DP G5 (both have 1Gb RAM):

Mini:
Memory Performance
Latency 317 (1 thread, 32.99 nanoseconds/load)
Read Sequential 252 (1 thread, 1.831 gigabytes/sec)
Write Sequential 206 (1 thread, 1.186 gigabytes/sec)
Stdlib Allocate 94 (1 thread, 73.9 kiloallocs/sec)
Stdlib Allocate 98 (4 threads, 77 kiloallocs/sec)
Stdlib Write 126 (1 thread, 1.992 gigabytes/sec)
Stdlib Copy 143 (1 thread, 1.07 gigabytes/sec)

G5:

Memory Performance
Latency 217 (1 thread, 48.1 nanoseconds/load)
Read Sequential 200 (1 thread, 1.457 gigabytes/sec)
Write Sequential 174 (1 thread, 1.001 gigabytes/sec)
Stdlib Allocate 99 (1 thread, 77.55 kiloallocs/sec)
Stdlib Allocate 108 (4 threads, 84.81 kiloallocs/sec)
Stdlib Write 118 (1 thread, 1.858 gigabytes/sec)
Stdlib Copy 102 (1 thread, 784 megabytes/sec)

As you can see, the results favor the mini in some, and the G5 in others, but in general they are very similar.

I know this isn't "application benchmarking", if you can find me an application benchmarking package then I'd be happy to run it. However I think this is a good representation.

IJ Reilly

May 10, 2006, 04:33 PM

Okay, here you are really demonstrating your technological illiteracy.

These files don't "cause flogging". The files represent "software RAM"; the total size of addressable memory space is increased by the size of those files. When you've run large programs (or loaded large files) more of these swap files have been created. When you stopped using them, those files which were no longer necessary were left around (so that they wouldn't have to be created again) but aren't used until you exceed your available RAM again.

Understand - swap files cannot slow down your computer. The files existing don't "make" the OS swap out your active applications; only mathematical necessity will make the OS use your virtual memory for active processes. Deleting them is silly, they will just be created again unless you fix the root problem - insufficient RAM.

One last point: anyone who says that adding RAM won't increase speed simply doesn't understand the Unix memory management process. All unused RAM (save 20-30 MB) turns into disk cache. If you had 10 GB of RAM, 9 GB of it would be filled up with what portions of your harddrive your kernel thought would most likely get accessed next. As soon as you needed more RAM than the 1GB that was left over, however much extra was needed would cease to be disk cache and would be allocated to your applications.

Memory access is much much faster than hard drive access. Thus RAM will always speed up your computer, even after you stop needing active swap memory; you simply get much faster harddrive access beyond that point.

(There is another level of complexity; the Unix memory management algorithms will swap out memory contents that are not being used and "are unlikely to be used in the near future" and simultaneously disk cache some parts of the hard drive which are likely to be used shortly, and so swap files will always exist, as Mac OS X will optimise its memory handling no matter how much the results alarm the uneducated user who apparently has a panic attack at the sight of a swap file...)

Nobody, as least not I, ever said that more RAM won't improve performance. Quite the opposite in fact. VM swapfiles absolutely do build up over time, the Mac will slow as they build, the swapfiles do get deleted when the Mac is rebooted, and the Mac will perform better after the reboot. An entire thread was just started on the performance benefits of occasional reboots. Since you're the technologically literate one here, perhaps you ought to explain the cause and effect, if the deletion of VM swapfiles isn't it.

danny_w

May 10, 2006, 04:35 PM

IJ Reilly

May 10, 2006, 04:36 PM

There was an OP?!? :confused:

(There I go again, me and my lack of memory.. :p )

I know, it was such a long time ago. The original poster has probably already died of old age.

erikamsterdam

May 10, 2006, 04:39 PM

posted way earlier in this loooong thread but see where I went wrong. I am still on Panther, and I remember now why. I noticed Tiger demands 256 Mb RAM on the box, and Panther 128.
So Tiger eats 128 extra, the video eats 80, the mini is already 200 Mb behind compared to a PPC with Panther. And then Rosetta is demanding too.
Explains everything.
BTW looks like Openoffice is getting close to Intel code for Mac. Might help those people cursing Micro$oft office on Intel Mac.

IJ Reilly

May 10, 2006, 05:02 PM

I absolutely feel that the stock configuration is just barely usable. It's OK if you're running few apps at a time, few documents or windows open. Or if you have low expectations and are willing to accept pokey performance. For some things like Front Row, performance is so slow with 512 that there were times when I was left staring at a black screen wondering if the machine had crashed (usually it would come back, sometimes after as long as 30 seconds). There are many reviews online that have said the exact same thing, that the machine is barely usable, unusable, unacceptable, lots of beach balls, etc with 512.

Benchmarks aren't an accurate reflection of this situation. They generally run one app and focus on one document at a time. This ram starvation is usually seen when multiple apps are open with multiple documents, and the user is switching back and forth, a situation rarely if ever duplicated by benchmarks. I'd love to see a benchmark that does such a thing, I'm sure it would show a major difference between intel macs with 512 and a gig or more.

Bench tests are always going to show improved performance on any given system with more RAM, so I don't think this an issue, or a matter of serious dispute.

I get how you feel about the Core Sole mini, but frankly I'm more interested in objective testing than feelings, and to date the objective tests (http://www.macintouch.com/specialreports/perfpack02/) indicate that it outperforms the G4 mini in just about every respect. It's a little difficult to gage people's performance expectations when they buy a computer, and even more difficult to know what they've done to create a performance issue, and/or attempted in an effort to remedy a perception of under-performance. Without at least this much information, it's a little like arguing about who's favorite color is better.

milo

May 10, 2006, 06:52 PM

I get how you feel about the Core Sole mini, but frankly I'm more interested in objective testing than feelings, and to date the objective tests (http://www.macintouch.com/specialreports/perfpack02/) indicate that it outperforms the G4 mini in just about every respect. It's a little difficult to gage people's performance expectations when they buy a computer, and even more difficult to know what they've done to create a performance issue, and/or attempted in an effort to remedy a perception of under-performance. Without at least this much information, it's a little like arguing about who's favorite color is better.

Taking ten seconds to change apps or documents, or fifteen to close a safari window is something objective that can be measured. When those times go down to near instantaneous when ram is increased, that IS objective and has nothing to do with opinions, perceptions, or feelings.

The tests you link to don't test the point at which the machine starts using swap files and the resulting slowdown. I explained this already, the results described in the OP are the result of multiple apps and docs open at once, and none of those tests simulate such a situation. I definitely think it's possible to come up with some sort of benchmark to test performance when ram is used up, but I haven't seen anyone actualy do it yet.

dr_lha

May 11, 2006, 10:56 AM

So Tiger eats 128 extra, the video eats 80Mb
The video doesn't eat 80Mb though, on my machine, running desktop apps at 1680x1050, the GFX card takes about 19Mb.

Kreamy

May 11, 2006, 11:04 AM

Even my G4s running Classic don't have this problem, and Classic is a major RAM and resource hog. Rosetta could hardly be any worse. When the Mac bogs down, I reboot. Problem solved.

More RAM is always better (assuming you don't get bad RAM, which is probably the commonest serious problem on the Mac), but I'm a big advocate for figuring out what is causing the actual issue before throwing money at it.

a) You just contradicted your previous post.

b) Running Rosetta is completely different to running Classic. Rosetta is an application that translates every single command from its native PPC format to one that is understood by the Intel x86 system - Classic ran on the same chips that are being used to run OS X.

to the original poster: If you want my advice (and this is what I do with photoshop) run that windows emulator application (the name evades me) and office for windows - it's much quicker and you have access to Access, visio and other Windows-only apps ;)

quidire

May 11, 2006, 11:12 AM

Nobody, as least not I, ever said that more RAM won't improve performance. Quite the opposite in fact. VM swapfiles absolutely do build up over time, the Mac will slow as they build, the swapfiles do get deleted when the Mac is rebooted, and the Mac will perform better after the reboot. An entire thread was just started on the performance benefits of occasional reboots. Since you're the technologically literate one here, perhaps you ought to explain the cause and effect, if the deletion of VM swapfiles isn't it.

A reboot can reset many things that may have peformance implications:
Memory Fragmentation - If you have 100 units of RAN, and all get allocated, and then units 20-30 and 60-70 get deallocated, if the next time memory is requested 15 units are sought, that program will have a fragmented memory space. I'm not sure if this is a problem in OS X; it is in many Unix variants (and in almost all other operating systems; XP certainly can suffer from it).
Memory leaks in programs - No program that is at all complex can reasonably be said to have no memory leaks; so many different libraries are tied in, that verifying all dynamic memory allocations and deallocations is impossible. Over time, programs' memory footprints will expand.
When the Mac first boots up, the disk cache is being used to accelerate UI-related resources, and perhaps some application binaries; later on the disk cache has to cover many more bases, resulting in some UI-related disk accesses hitting the actual hard drive
on a related note, process priority of applications like SystemUIServer may be reniced by other privileged applications during the period the computer is active, leaving it at a lower priority than other processes even after the privileged applications have exited.

Mind you, I really don't notice a difference; all three of my Macs need a minute or so to settle down once I log in (with various applications setting up and making initial network connections) and then seem to run at the same speed for days; I reboot rarely and notice no benefit when I do. With more memory used up, more applications running things might be slightly slower, but this fixes itself after I close those programs down.

I do tend to have a surfeit of memory, so perhaps memory leaks and fragmentation don't impact me as much as others...

EDIT: I am correct in assuming that no user applications were running at either point of the various comparisons? Otherwise clearly the comparison is just silly. A real comparison would have the computer boot up w/o any user applications executing, benchmark run, the computer rebooted, no applications launched have the computer left on w/o auto-sleep for a few days, and then benchmarked again. I imagine would would not find much difference

IJ Reilly

May 11, 2006, 11:36 AM

a) You just contradicted your previous post.

b) Running Rosetta is completely different to running Classic. Rosetta is an application that translates every single command from its native PPC format to one that is understood by the Intel x86 system - Classic ran on the same chips that are being used to run OS X.

What contradiction?

Of course Rosetta is "different," but that's not the point. The point is, I can really load up a Mac with half the RAM and about 20% of the horsepower of a Core Solo Mini, and it doesn't perform unacceptably as a rule. And if it does get laggy, a restart works wonders.

milo

May 11, 2006, 11:47 AM

What contradiction?

Of course Rosetta is "different," but that's not the point. The point is, I can really load up a Mac with half the RAM and about 20% of the horsepower of a Core Solo Mini, and it doesn't perform unacceptably as a rule. And if it does get laggy, a restart works wonders.

And that mac with half the ram is running a different processor, different build of the os, different builds of any native apps (which consistently use less ram on PPC than on intel), not running rosetta and not losing some of the ram to the graphics chip.

I'm not sure what makes you think ram use should be comparable between the two machines?

IJ Reilly

May 11, 2006, 11:53 AM

A reboot can reset many things that may have peformance implications:

I can grant you all of this, but note that apparently neither of us has the technical background required to explain precisely how OSX handles virtual memory swapfiles. I know only from my long experience, and from what I've read, that swapfiles proliferate, that they eat up drive space (itself, a potential performance issue), and that they tend to degrade system responsiveness over time. I also know that they are not dynamic, in the sense that they don't get deleted without a system reboot. This has been a frequent topic of discussion for years now. You could look it up.

IJ Reilly

May 11, 2006, 12:01 PM

And that mac with half the ram is running a different processor, different build of the os, different builds of any native apps (which consistently use less ram on PPC than on intel), not running rosetta and not losing some of the ram to the graphics chip.

I'm not sure what makes you think ram use should be comparable between the two machines?

Yes, a much, much slower machine with far less RAM running the same OS. These kinds of things get compared all the time, other variables be damned, and I think it's not unreasonable to expect that a machine with probably five times as much horsepower and twice the quantity of RAM would at least equal the performance of a four year old, far slower Mac under normal circumstances, and even a lot of abnormal ones.

But this horse is dead. It's beyond dead, it's drawing flies. I don't know what could be accomplished by continuing.

steelfist

May 11, 2006, 12:03 PM

milo

May 11, 2006, 12:20 PM

Yes, a much, much slower machine with far less RAM running the same OS. These kinds of things get compared all the time, other variables be damned, and I think it's not unreasonable to expect that a machine with probably five times as much horsepower and twice the quantity of RAM would at least equal the performance of a four year old, far slower Mac under normal circumstances, and even a lot of abnormal ones.

It's a machine that REQUIRES far less ram.

Horsepower and speed don't matter if the machine is starved for ram and is swapping data from the hard drive constantly. When you exceed the ram in a machine, it will slow to a crawl. This is true of any machine, even a G5 quad will do it if the things you have open exceed the ram.

The intel machines just require much more ram and as a result reach that ram saturation point far easier than any of the PPC machines do. Horsepower has nothing to do with the equation. A faster processor isn't going to speed up the transfer of swap data to and from a relatively slow hard drive.

I'm not sure why you're having such a tough time understanding this.

Maybe you shouldn't worry so much about what's "unreasonable to expect" and focus more on what IS. So you feel that requiring more than 512 megs of ram to run well isn't reasonable. That's your opinion. But it's not a reason for you to be in denial about the fact that more ram is needed.

There are macs from years ago that ran fine on FOUR megs of ram. Would you expect a new mac to be able to do that, just because newer processors are vastly more powerful?

milo

May 11, 2006, 12:23 PM

for me, ram will always help. however, the problem he is reporting shows not only hardware problem, (not enough ram) but also the software problem as well.

the problem is clearly severe enough to assume that the software is kinda messed up.

i would advise a archive and install.

I disagree. The problems described have been seen many times on intel minis with normal software installs. And those problems have completely gone away simply by expanding the ram. I know, it's hard for someone with only PPC experience to believe, but it is the case.

dr_lha

May 11, 2006, 02:18 PM

Yes, a much, much slower machine with far less RAM running the same OS. These kinds of things get compared all the time, other variables be damned...
"Other variables" like CPU architecture for example? The fact is that PPC code is very different from Intel code, so you're not really comparing like with like here at all.

iSee

May 11, 2006, 02:41 PM

gnasher729

May 11, 2006, 03:20 PM

From someone who was in exactly the same situation:

YOU NEED MORE RAM

Don't listen to people speculating about other solutions. Sorry, guys, but you don't know what you are talking about. I don't know exactly why intel macs require so much RAM, but they do (probably Rosetta). Word in particular has that big pause when switching to a document Window.

Get more RAM --> pauses go away

Remember that he posted two numbers from Activity Monitor: Three million pages swapped in, and one million pages swapped out. That is an absolute, one hundred percent indication of not enough RAM. Now people can discuss why the RAM is not enough as long as they like, but the fact won't go away: The Macintosh decided three million times that some data that should have been in RAM wasn't there because there wasn't enough RAM, so it had to be read from the harddisk, and one million times some data that was in RAM and had to be moved out to make space for other stuff was modified and needed to be written to the harddisk. Four million read and write operations will bring any computer to its knees, and more RAM will fix it.