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App to make Mac use full throttle

yusukeaoki

yusukeaoki

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Mar 22, 2011
2,550
6
Tokyo, Japan
Hi guys.

Does anyone know an application that can force my MBP to use full throttle on certain apps?

For example, Im using iMovie right now to burn a DVD and it says it takes about 6hours and 30min to encode.
Im guessing this is because my MBP is not using its full potential power to this application. According to iStat, all its using is 20% of CPU and 200MB of RAM.

So, the question is, is there a certain app or a way to make Mac use more power against certain apps? I can leave my MBP awake all night but 6 hours and only 1 DVD? I have like 20 more to go...

Thanks in advance!
 
iLog.Genius said:
For the most part, you can't force an application to use more (or all) of the CPU and more RAM - it's how the application itself is written.
Click to expand...

Hmm thats a bit disappointment...
Right now, my iMovie is encoding for another 5hrs and the fan is running crazy. I just want to get it over with :/
 
simsaladimbamba said:
If the fan is running like crazy, then it is because the CPU is hotter than it normally is, which means, the CPU gets used more than it normally does.
Open Activity Monitor and select All Processes and then sort by CPU to show you the process(es) heating up your Mac.
Click to expand...

Its the iMovie. But I just want to get it over with haha
I dont want to sleep next to a fan shooting Mac that is really loud.
 
The CPU % only tell part of the story. IMovie apparently can only use one core, essentially leaving 75% of your CPUs capabilities unused. What iStat pro shows is the load across all threads. Since iMovie is only able to run one thread, it caps at 12.5% of the number that iStat pro shows. The remaining 7.5% are some other stuff most likely.

The good news is that the sandy bridge CPUs have what is called a turbo boost technology, such that single core applications are sped up. That's as much as you can do.
 
If the app is working hard, the mac will up-clock until the temperature gets too hot for turbo mode to continue.

The behaviour you want is built in.

If an app is not using 100% cpu whilst performing a task it is because it is either IO bound or it is not written to use multiple cores properly.
 
thundersteele said:
The CPU % only tell part of the story. IMovie apparently can only use one core, essentially leaving 75% of your CPUs capabilities unused. What iStat pro shows is the load across all threads. Since iMovie is only able to run one thread, it caps at 12.5% of the number that iStat pro shows. The remaining 7.5% are some other stuff most likely.

The good news is that the sandy bridge CPUs have what is called a turbo boost technology, such that single core applications are sped up. That's as much as you can do.
Click to expand...

Yeah I checked Activity monitor and it tells me only 10~15% is running.
Other 75 is on idle. As you said, only single core running currently.

To be honest, this is a huge disappointment for me :(
I would especially want Mac to use multicore on something that takes a lot of time like encoding in this case.
6hrs for 1 DVD is just insane.
 
But that is iMovie's fault, not the Mac's.
Maybe look at a different option to make video DVDs, which can actually use multiple cores? Compressor perhaps?
 
Add CPUs. The OS gives the applications all the available resources they demand, but if the application is not written to take advantage of multi-cores (like iMovie I presume) you can't just force it. It's a wrong idea showing very limited understanding of how a computer works.
 
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