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Fed up with my Mac Pro!
- Thread starter macguy93
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Thanks for everyone support on this!
Sorry i was not very clear with what the issue truly was.. Essentially i will get a lot of beachballing. i will also get programs that will automatically quit on me in the middle of its use and get the "no responding error" I did leave out what my SSD was, it is in fact a Vertex 3. The reason i bought it was because i saw it on sale for $60 at tiger direct and grabbed it not putting into consideration that it may have not been the best SSD out there. I migrated all of my information from my iMac onto the HDD that shipped with the computer. I thought by have an SSD as my OS and Boot drive would eliminate any issue i would be having on the HDD. -That is what i was told when i brought my computer into apple. I know this is still a broad topic, but coming from a dual core imac i thought that this 12-core would be lightening fast with no lag or beachballing
Thanks,
Mike
Sorry i was not very clear with what the issue truly was.. Essentially i will get a lot of beachballing. i will also get programs that will automatically quit on me in the middle of its use and get the "no responding error" I did leave out what my SSD was, it is in fact a Vertex 3. The reason i bought it was because i saw it on sale for $60 at tiger direct and grabbed it not putting into consideration that it may have not been the best SSD out there. I migrated all of my information from my iMac onto the HDD that shipped with the computer. I thought by have an SSD as my OS and Boot drive would eliminate any issue i would be having on the HDD. -That is what i was told when i brought my computer into apple. I know this is still a broad topic, but coming from a dual core imac i thought that this 12-core would be lightening fast with no lag or beachballing
Thanks,
Mike
Ok was not as bad as I thought, but I don't know what else you have on the Boot drive. The reason is the sleepimage file may be causing a problem, this is the area that you Mac will store the contents of the RAM when it goes to sleep. The sleepimage can be as large as the amount of RAM that you have. As you have a lot of RAM this could be using up a lot of your free disk space on your bootdrive. A lack of space on the SSD may be causing some of the beachball problems you are seeing, and having more RAM can make this problem worse. You can disable the sleepimage file.
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TRIM + Sandforce SF-2281 (Vertex 3, OWC 6G, Intel 520, etc) = Lots of beachballing and pausing and crashes. Turn it off. Have you done that yet?
Also depending on what you are doing you bought very slowly clocked CPU's. Some general tasks will be slower than your iMac. Some tasks will be way faster. Just the way it is. Might also want to do a fresh install if you migrated everything from your iMac when you first set it up. Just cherry pick your user directory and freshen everything else.
Also depending on what you are doing you bought very slowly clocked CPU's. Some general tasks will be slower than your iMac. Some tasks will be way faster. Just the way it is. Might also want to do a fresh install if you migrated everything from your iMac when you first set it up. Just cherry pick your user directory and freshen everything else.
I just checked to see if i had trim support enabled and strangely is was some how turned off.. i had trim support enabled for the longest time. somehow it managed to turn off. I dont know how long it has been off for to really determine if that was my issue or not.
What is the sleepimage? however, i do only have 18GB left, when i did have 30GB left for the longest time somehow the memory kept decreasing on me..
i mainly use this computer for video editing and visual effects work. I figured render times would be much faster on this unit than the 6-core at 3.33ghz. However, in the software some tasks tend to lag a bit, but that is due to not have a great graphics cards i would assume
What is the sleepimage? however, i do only have 18GB left, when i did have 30GB left for the longest time somehow the memory kept decreasing on me..
i mainly use this computer for video editing and visual effects work. I figured render times would be much faster on this unit than the 6-core at 3.33ghz. However, in the software some tasks tend to lag a bit, but that is due to not have a great graphics cards i would assume
^^^ So has it been stable at all recently or still fritzing out? Could be a flakey SSD. OCZ has those, y'know.
If it still wont behave I'd image another storage device and test it. Even on HDD it will be slow but you can gauge if the SSD was the problem.
If it still wont behave I'd image another storage device and test it. Even on HDD it will be slow but you can gauge if the SSD was the problem.
Article explains it here, however someone said that Mac Pro's don't have hibernate enabled by default, so you should not have a sleepimage file.
This. Somehow such issues quite frequently appear on forums in companion of OCZ brand... Personally I'd get rid of Vertex and buy Samsung 830 - good, fast, reliable and reasonably priced.
I think starting with a clean install of the OS and all your data after full disk backup is probably a good idea to identify your problems. But you should not mistake CPU core count with its frequency. Your CPUs are only rated at 2.4GHz, they are not very fast when processing single-thread tasks even with turbo boost (max 2.67GHZ). 12 cores are great for rendering 3D/animation projects that could take advantage of multi-threads, but almost meaningless when dealing with daily routine such as web surfing or word processing. Your dual-core iMac may have higher CPU frequency and could probably process single-thread tasks faster than the MP, therefore part of the disappointment.
As for mixing 8GB and 2GB modules, as long as both are ECC unbuffered they could be mixed together. Currently only their 16GB modules are registered and can't be mixed with unbuffered modules as OWC clearly mentioned on their website.
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My advice:
Ditch the 2GB sticks of Apple RAM, and just use the 32GB of OWC RAM(16GB for each processor).
Ditch the OCZ SSD and get a Samsung 840 PRO 256GB or larger SSD.
Upgrade the SSD to the latest firmware, and do a fresh install of Mountain Lion from Internet Recovery. Install the OS and all programs onto the SSD and use your additional drives for storage. Don't enable TRIM.
Ditch the 2GB sticks of Apple RAM, and just use the 32GB of OWC RAM(16GB for each processor).
Ditch the OCZ SSD and get a Samsung 840 PRO 256GB or larger SSD.
Upgrade the SSD to the latest firmware, and do a fresh install of Mountain Lion from Internet Recovery. Install the OS and all programs onto the SSD and use your additional drives for storage. Don't enable TRIM.
I keep kicking myself everyday for sending back the 6 core 3.33ghz i originally bought, then i decided i would buy the 12 core since it wasn't too much more in price when it was the refurb model. But i still will consider buying higher clocked CPU's in the future. But until then i need to live with 2.4ghz i guess
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Thanks for your suggestion, i might just do that and call it a day
although since i do a lot of work with after effects, i did do some side by side comparison between render speeds and the 12-core destroyed the hex
Take out ALL the components you added yourself (aka not factory). SSD, new RAM, etc.
Then reinstall the OS. Make sure that you open up Disk Utility, erase/wipe the entire hard disk (not just a single partition) and then install the OS.
Don't run Migration Assistant, it sometimes can slow down performance even after it finishes migrating.
Go through initial setup and see if anything is amiss. Then slowing add back your RAM one stick at a time. Turn off Mac Pro, add one (1) stick of RAM, turn on, use and see if it anything is different. Repeat with the rest of your RAM.
Then install the SSD, reinstall the OS (be sure to open Disk Utility and erase/wipe your SSD AND hard disk before installing the OS) and then see if anything is different.
You want to isolate the problem, first whether if it's your upgrades (SSD, RAM) or the actual machine itself. If the factory configuration (no SSD or extra RAM) is still presenting the same symptoms, you have a defective machine. Take it to Apple and they will fix it for you. If after adding the SSD or RAM, you find something is really slow or wrong, then send that component back to the place you bought it from for a replacement. And don't do TRIM during this entire process.
Then reinstall the OS. Make sure that you open up Disk Utility, erase/wipe the entire hard disk (not just a single partition) and then install the OS.
Don't run Migration Assistant, it sometimes can slow down performance even after it finishes migrating.
Go through initial setup and see if anything is amiss. Then slowing add back your RAM one stick at a time. Turn off Mac Pro, add one (1) stick of RAM, turn on, use and see if it anything is different. Repeat with the rest of your RAM.
Then install the SSD, reinstall the OS (be sure to open Disk Utility and erase/wipe your SSD AND hard disk before installing the OS) and then see if anything is different.
You want to isolate the problem, first whether if it's your upgrades (SSD, RAM) or the actual machine itself. If the factory configuration (no SSD or extra RAM) is still presenting the same symptoms, you have a defective machine. Take it to Apple and they will fix it for you. If after adding the SSD or RAM, you find something is really slow or wrong, then send that component back to the place you bought it from for a replacement. And don't do TRIM during this entire process.
Yeah, it depends on the program and the number of cores it can utilize. For the type of work you do, the twelve core machine might be best. For what I use it for, I'd rather have the faster, single hexa-core machine. I almost purchased a 3.33Ghz Pro, but decided to get by with a quad-core i7 mini until the next Mac Pro revision is released.
Thanks everyone for your input. First i will take the computer to apple and have them look at it, then i will clean the computer up and start from scratch. I will invest in a much better SSD, probably samsung or Intel. I will let you guys know how everything turns out. If i still feel the computer is running slow, than maybe its just my clock speed, i might just have to invest in dual Intel Xeon X5680, i found them on ebay for $950 each a little pricey at the moment
I think the point is, the OP is mixing memory between the Apple and the OWC RAM. The OP hasn't narrowed it down to the Apple or the OWC memory so removing one or the other should give the OP a pretty good idea of what is causing the issue. My guess is that at least one of the OWC RAM is bad and removing the Apple RAM will show whether s/he is still getting panics. Yes the two sets should be able to live in Harmony, but to ignore that one or the other might be bad is terrible troubleshooting. This is the same reason why I always state to power up the computer with it's stock configuration before doing any mods just to make sure the computer at stock is running okay. Believe it or not, even Apple can put together a lemon....