2010 i7 experience - Graphic Designer

[ichorous]

Hey Everyone,

I joined this forum to post my experience with my new imac after owning it for about a week now.

I have a terabyte harddrive (non SSD)
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.93 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s

Sometimes my computer crawls and becomes borderline unresponsive.
I have 200GB of free space at the moment. Not sure if this matters on computer speed.

I run regularly:
Photoshop & Indesign CS5, iTunes (lots of music in playlists), Safari and illustator CS5 (rarely).

I did purchase 8GB of RAM to add, making it 12GB total. (from corsair) I hope this helps...

I do notice the black screen is not completely black in the corners..(depends on where I look though) Is there any way to resolve this?

Overall I am still pretty satisfied.

 

[DannyBres]

You should be more than pretty satified with a £1500+ machine! I not know enought to comment properly! But you may be able to return the computer and get a computer with a better screen!

And I assume the more Memory will make it more responsive as the processor or GFX should not be limiting the system in CS5!

 

[Deepshade]

No way should a machine with that spec 'crawl'

Having 30 gig spare should be plenty of free drive space.

Which apps and which situations cause the crawl.

On the screen front - where is your brightness level 0-100%?

 

[ichorous]

No way should a machine with that spec 'crawl'

Having 30 gig spare should be plenty of free drive space.

Which apps and which situations cause the crawl.

On the screen front - where is your brightness level 0-100%?

I pretty much notice the computer crawl when I am working on PSD files and INDD files while listening to itunes and keeping Gmail open. I look at the activity monitor when it is working slow and it says I have 2GB free..I hope the added RAM will make my workflow seamless.

My brightness is up to 100% so that may be causing the light in the corners?

Thanks for the responses!

 

[redshift1]

My old Power Pc G5 runs CS fine the new 17 should be faster

 

[Serif]

I'm surprised that you're experiencing speed problems with the setup you have. Just on the off chance, are you sure that the 2 x 4GB of additional Corsair memory are the correct spec. for your computer as the memory speed is higher than the previous model; should be something like:

DDR3 PC3-10600 • CL=9 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1333

Other than that, you could install iStat Menus and watch the CPU load and memory usage when you're seeing the problem, and from the CPU pull down menu see which individual program is causing the problem.

 

[Jason Beck]

Take it to the Apple Store if the bleed through is really bad. Also get your machine slowdown to be a duplicatable event. Meaning the ability to show the genius.

As a designer myself I am bugged even by the little pressure spot on my MB screen from buying it secondhand from a college girl who stacked books on it. I couldn't imagine dealing with bleed through or tinge problems.

Your machine should not be slowing down like that. I have PSCS4, Safari, Itunes and several finder windows, and EOS utility open when I am doing heavy work and my aging macbook handles it fine. Something is wrong, yours should be really fast.

 

[mlblacy]

100%.... Yikes...wear your shades, lol

I pretty much notice the computer crawl when I am working on PSD files and INDD files while listening to itunes and keeping Gmail open. I look at the activity monitor when it is working slow and it says I have 2GB free..I hope the added RAM will make my workflow seamless.

My brightness is up to 100% so that may be causing the light in the corners?

Thanks for the responses!

First off, have you installed the extra ram yet? If you have, and it is crawling... You might want to yank it to see if eliminates the issue. You might have installed incorrectly, or perhaps the specs don't match... Or it could be defective.

PSD files, and IND files can be somewhat intensive, although you should have more than enough horsepower, and it should not be slowing. I have an old 24" white iMac that I am replacing with a 27" i7 shortly, I usually have a TON of apps open by necessity. Even with the maxed 3 gb ram, I rarely have slowdowns... Unless I am in Aperture (but my image library is HUGE).

Open up Activity Monitor, to see what apps are open, and what they are doing. It will tell you if an app is "unresponsive", and you can sample the processes to see what exactly is going on, or not, lol. In trouble shooting you need to reduce the variables. Try working just in Pshop, then add in IND, then iTunes, etc. Also, are all your apps up to date?

Lastly, your screen is up all the way?? The iMac screens are really bright, my 24" is down all the way, and then calibrated with a Spyder2. The screen matches my press proofs perfectly. Some of the bleed through might just be because the brightness is set too high...
Good luck,
Michael

PS: missed the obvious.... Ram is not installed, and you are using the activity monitor. Add in the ram. If the slowdowns are giving the beach balls, the ram should help with that. Also, you may want to shut down and start up fresh, in case one of your apps has a memory leak...

 

[definitive]

that's a lot of space that's being used up. did you restore from a backup when you first got the computer? that can cause it to work incorrectly.

 

[mlblacy]

there is a good read here...

17 Reasons Why Your Mac Runs Slower Than it Should:
http://www.chriswrites.com/2009/04/17-reasons-why-your-mac-is-so-unbelievably-slow/

I noticed you are already at 80% capacity on your 1tb. As a designer, you can never have too much space... I would recommend adding an additional external drive (I have 5 on mine, and am adding another 4tb Western quad interface on my new machine). Not sure what is filling up the space, but you can move your iTunes library, your iPhoto/Aperture libraries as well, to an external. Pshop uses the drives free space as a scratch disk, and many apps will eat into the free space for virtual memory if needed. Usually after 75% capacity I will start moving stuff around to free up space on any of my drives.

Also, everyone knows pshop is a memory and task hog... but InD and Quark can be as well. Even if the doc is "only" 100mb in size, that is just for the framework for Quark/InD to keep it together. Add in all of the fonts, high-res artwork and the total "weight" of the file can really be 1-2gbs. I do a lot of publications, and as the file gets closer to completion it takes a lot longer to open, save, and close. Also, you might want to do a "save as" and have another version. It is good backup, and also eliminates some of the caching for the undos (which can start to slow you down). Also, check to see if you have some autosave feature running in the background.

Lastly, you didn't mention Time Machine, but if I am crunching away on a large file and Time Machine starts backing up... I usually manually cancel it. It can make the computer a bit unresponsive, and slower while it is running.
cheers,
michael

 

[cluthz]

Photoshop can make everything crawl..
I just rebooted my machine so everything should be "clean".

I opened PS (CS5) and a 1.6GB document, it took 1min and 46sec!
Checked activity monitor, no free ram, already lotsa page outs.
If I had more RAM, it would still be smooth

 

[mlblacy]

Photoshop can make everything crawl..
I just rebooted my machine so everything should be "clean".

I opened PS (CS5) and a 1.6GB document, it took 1min and 46sec!
Checked activity monitor, no free ram, already lotsa page outs.
If I had more RAM, it would still be smooth

Page outs are your key that insufficient ram is at play. Aperture too can hang to the point where you think it is hung (but it isn't). Checking your logs in Activity Monitor can, or monitoring it while you are working can help you track down the culprit...

Also, doing a shut down instead of a restart supposedly clears things up a little more effectively (I have heard conflicting opinions on this, but I am throwing it out there anyway...)

 

[Hopsdaballa04]

Hardware test

Hey I would make sure that all of the hardware is in top notch condition by performing a hardware test. Locate your applications disk that came with the computer and insert it into the cd drive, then restart the computer and hold down the d key. It should bring up the hardware test. Good luck..

 

[djrod]

Hey Everyone,

I joined this forum to post my experience with my new imac after owning it for about a week now.

I have a terabyte harddrive (non SSD)
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.93 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s

Sometimes my computer crawls and becomes borderline unresponsive.
I have 200GB of free space at the moment. Not sure if this matters on computer speed.

I run regularly:
Photoshop & Indesign CS5, iTunes (lots of music in playlists), Safari and illustator CS5 (rarely).

I did purchase 8GB of RAM to add, making it 12GB total. (from corsair) I hope this helps...

I do notice the black screen is not completely black in the corners..(depends on where I look though) Is there any way to resolve this?

Overall I am still pretty satisfied.

I bet your iMac gets slow when PS is open… CS5 as a 64 Bit application can "eat" more than 3GB of RAM, and CS5 consumes a looot of RAM, I have 8GB too, and PS CS5 eats them all