Dashboard performance!?

[swwack91]

Just curious... does having a lot of widgets and frequently using dashboard hinder performance?

Coming from a single core P4 PC i'm used to the mindset that every little tiny thing that's running was sucking life from my bigger apps....

any insight would be nice


thanks

 

[grapes911]

Every widget open will require RAM. If you are using most of your RAM, then open widgets can hinder performance. Assuming you have a decent amount of RAM and don't leave every single app open at once, then a couple widgets won't make a noticeable difference.

 

[tyr2]

Theoretically widgets should stop running any tasks when you close the dashboard and most do. They remain in RAM until you reboot your machine.

If you open 'Activity Monitor' (in Utilities) you can see the widgets you're using. They have the widget icon and all say 'DashboardClient' as part of the name. You can see the RAM they're using in the 'Real Memory' column, don't worry about the 'Virtual Memory' column.

They should all say '0.00' in the %CPU column when dashboard is not open. If not then they're violating the guidelines, whether this is a problem for you depends on what it is and what it does obviously.

 

[diehldun]

Dismal performance on my PB, I can tell when it's "on" even after upgrading to 1.5 GB.

That's why I don't use Dashboard anymore, not even for my Chia-pet widget!

 

[grapes911]

They remain in RAM until you reboot your machine.

The RAM will be freed if you close the widget as well.

Dismal performance on my PB, I can tell when it's "on" even after upgrading to 1.5 GB.

That's why I don't use Dashboard anymore, not even for my Chia-pet widget!

Sounds like something is wrong with your PowerBook. I have 1.5GB of RAM in my PowerBook as well and I run 4 widgets all the time with no performance hit.

 

[Eric5h5]

There is no performance difference on my G5 after opening Dashboard (normally with about 8 widgets). If they aren't active, they take no CPU time.

--Eric

 

[OldCorpse]

I run 16 widgets and feel no penalty at all (iBook in sig) with 1.5GB memory. At this point my limitation is screen size - I just can't have more open widgets. The limitation is certainly not RAM or CPU usage. Most of the time I have both Safari and Firefox open plus a gaggle of other apps that always run from startup (stuff like Overflow, PopChar, iSnip etc.), and whatever apps I'm working on at the time (not to mention, I usually have Azureus running). No performance hit at all. Love 'em widgets!

 

[epochblue]

Like was said above, more widgets running = less performance.

I use a widget called StopDashboard to kill dashboard after I'm done with it so it only takes up resources while I'm using it. Once I'm done getting the info from Dashboard I want, I click "Stop Dashboard" and it goes away.

The only downside is that you have to wait for all the widgets to load each time you bring up Dashboard. Since I only use Dashboard for weather, it's not really a big deal for me.

At any rate - StopDashboard, I think, gives you the best of both worlds.

Here's a link: http://www.natal.be/index.php/2005/10/stopdashboard-widget/

 

[grapes911]

I use a widget called StopDashboard to kill dashboard after I'm done with it so it only takes up resources while I'm using it. Once I'm done getting the info from Dashboard I want, I click "Stop Dashboard" and it goes away.

The only downside is that you have to wait for all the widgets to load each time you bring up Dashboard. Since I only use Dashboard for weather, it's not really a big deal for me.

Being that you only use 1 widget, is it really worth stopping it? It can't use that much RAM.