Black Macbook 2,1 Running slow, and choppy

[mcintyreml]

I've got a 2007 model black macbook and have recently noticed that it's struggling quite a bit to run my day to day programs.

HD video playback from the hard drive will sometimes be choppy, even when I run VLC alone, and YouTube videos stutter every 10 seconds or so (I originally thought this was an issue with chrome and flash, but haven't been able to fix it through any of those routes).

These problems are always more noticeable when there are other programs running but are always present none-the-less.

At first I thought I was lacking RAM, but I've upgraded from 2 to 4GB without any noticeable difference.

Lately it's gotten even worse, with iTunes starting to stutter occasionally, especially when Time Machine is backing up.

Is my macbook just in need of a replacement, or is there something simple I'm missing?

 

[DaKKs]

Well, it is an ageing machine. But that doesn't sound normal. I have a 1.1 and mine work fine for pretty much anything i throw at it.

Try cleaning it out with a can of compressed air. The heatsink might be full of crap that makes the cpu overheat and throttle down.

Also, my stock 60gb hard drive had a similar issue. Bit of a stuttering, one second freezes. Once I replaced it, everything ran fine.

 

[charlieegan3]

cleaning it out might be a good idea, what are the temps like?

 

[mcintyreml]

cleaning it out might be a good idea, what are the temps like?

It's been on and running for a couple hours now, the HD temp is 39 degrees, CPU is 66, heatsinks A and B are both 60.

 

[DaKKs]

It's been on and running for a couple hours now, the HD temp is 39 degrees, CPU is 66, heatsinks A and B are both 60.

That's not all that bad actually. I'm at 48-52 Celsius with firefox, dreamweaver and xamp running. But mine is undervolted to 1.0500v.

I'd say that you might need to look into a new hard drive and a clean install of your OS (Snow Leo?).

EDIT: Although, my CoreDuo natively runs hotter than your Core2. Clean it out regardless, it can only get better.

 

[charlieegan3]

It's been on and running for a couple hours now, the HD temp is 39 degrees, CPU is 66, heatsinks A and B are both 60.

Yeah i guess that's not too bad, give it a clean out all the same though.

 

[mcintyreml]

Yeah I'll give it a good dusting and then go from there. Thanks a lot!

 

[kaydot]

Yeah I'll give it a good dusting and then go from there. Thanks a lot!

My Macbook 2,1 has the same issues, and I attribute it to age. It can't handle 1080p without stuttering (720p stutters less, 480 is great), and Youtube HD has the same problem. Mind you, the screen only has a resolution of 1280x800, so 1080p is overkill. When I can find 720p or SD versions of stuff, I go for those.

It is a 5-6 year old machine and back then streaming HD, or downloading HD wasn't really an option. Youtube only added HD streaming in 2009, and the first mainstream blu-ray/HD-DVDs were starting to hit around 2006/2007 with the PS3/XBox 360 so downloading them wasn't all that common either.