Is the beach ball always bad news, even if its only for a second?

I'm completely new to Macs and OSX, and from what I read that Beachball is bad news. I'm getting it every time for no longer than a second when loading Unigine's Heaven, does anybody else get that on their 2012 iMac?

I'm not really sure if that is a problem at all, but from what I read this means an application is unresponsive, does anybody have suggestions?

bobright said:

Do you have a base model without Fusion?

I'd imagine it might pop up doing CPU intense stuff.

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no, Fusion / i5 / 680MX. It's only for a second during the load screen and still benches 39 FPS. It also appears when loading Diablo 3 in OSX, for a second.

Update: I checked Activity monitor, nothing there. I mean, my system isn't really slowing down, but since I'm new to OSX I was wondering whether that thing showing up at all is reason to worry?

I also ran Black Magic Disc, I get over 300 write and over 400 read.

slffl said:

No it's not bad news. It means that the CPU or HDD is being used to capacity. Get Menu Meters or a similar program so you can see how much of your CPU and HDD is being accessed.

Solve it by getting as much RAM as possible and Fusion or SSD drive.

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Thanks, I have Fusion and 16 GB Ram are on the way

sjinsjca said:

Also be sure your Fusion VM isn't using all the cores in your CPU. As in, if you have a dual core CPU, you can expect the occasional beach ball if you run a VM configured as having a two core CPU.

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Thanks for your reply, but I'm not sure if I follow. The 2012 i5 (3470) is a quad core, but what is the Fusion VM? Virtual Manager?

Update: by Fusion I was referring to the Fusion Drive (SSD+1TB) in the new iMacs, I googled Fusion VM and there must've been a misunderstanding