Getting more blood out of the rock

[eyoungren]

Wanted to share some apps I have acquired over the last 11 years to squeeze every last thing I could from PowerPC.

You may not realize that there are terminal commands that allow you to prioritize apps in OS X. These are the commands Nice and Renice and they can allow you to control where your CPU resources go.

Like anything you can go overboard here and I mentioned apps, not terminal commands. But the apps leverage Nice and Renice.

The first one was Renicer, which has since been renamed (I discovered today) to Appriority

Then there is App Tamer.

Now, the thing about these apps is that they need to remain running. If you quit them, all the assignments they make for your apps goes away.

App Tamer is nice though because it allows you to autostop apps when you aren't actually inside the app. It reduces their CPU draw to zero.

But both apps allow you to increase or decrease priority to running processes - including system processes. And that is where the danger comes in. Be careful which system processes you mess with.

 

[bobesch]

Thanks - Great stuff to try out!

And I had to smile ...
Appriority ("Made in Alaska"): "The benefits of this are improved performance in the application you currently have active, less battery power used while mobile, and less heat produced by your computer."

Thinking of Alaska, my little 12"G4-SteamBook and my A1260 would be first choice to keep me warm, if I'd ever go north...
(o.k. - steaming books naturally aren't welcome everywhere ... )

 

[timidpimpin]

Apps like this have been around for years. Not sure how perform now, but they used to be awful.

 

[1042686]

Gunna kick appriority's tires for a bit. Erik, do you experience any sort of lag between apps being in a suspended state vs active?

On a side note, everytime I think of Alaska, I can't help but hear the theme music to Northern Exposure.

 

[eyoungren]

Gunna kick appriority's tires for a bit. Erik, do you experience any sort of lag between apps being in a suspended state vs active?

On a side note, everytime I think of Alaska, I can't help but hear the theme music to Northern Exposure.

To be honest, I'm using App Tamer. But, yeah when I was using Renicer (Appriority) it was a little slow going from app to app. App Tamer seems to handle that slightly better.

It's just one of those evaluate your choice before you act sort of thing. It's best to make moderate changes incrementally until you know how things react.

 

[1042686]

To be honest, I'm using App Tamer. But, yeah when I was using Renicer (Appriority) it was a little slow going from app to app. App Tamer seems to handle that slightly better.

It's just one of those evaluate your choice before you act sort of thing. It's best to make moderate changes incrementally until you know how things react.

I am not in the position at the moment to really put either through their paces. Next opportunity I get to load some of my ppc boxes down with some cpu intensive activities, I'll play with them a bit more. Thanks for the links.

 

[eyoungren]

Here's another one to try: CPU Accelerator.

http://alphaomega.software.free.fr/cpuspeedaccelerator/CPU Speed Accelerator.html

It's all automatic, no fine settings.

 

[AdamBuker]

I wonder how well this would work with video editing and transcoding applications. For example, I might leave my PBG4 crunching a batch list of videos on mpeg streamclip while I do other non-computer tasks, then I might want to come back and write in Evernote or browse with TFF without impacting the transcoding too much. Same deal with FCP 6 and rendering.

 

[timidpimpin]

The best way to get the most power out of your CPU for any given application is to close other apps. IMHO the OS has all the tech the CPU needs to get the most out of things.

With all due respect to those who use these utilities... they're more of a false need utility to make money than anything. Meaning they do something that no one actually needs. Like smoke without fire.

 

[1042686]

Oh man I got a great idea. Im going to run all three at the same time and see what happens. I bet it'll be like all kinds of awesomeness but like x3.

DUDE. Why did I not think of this before.

Thanks Erik!

 

[eyoungren]

Oh man I got a great idea. Im going to run all three at the same time and see what happens. I bet it'll be like all kinds of awesomeness but like x3.

DUDE. Why did I not think of this before.

Thanks Erik!

LOL! Sure.

I imagine you'll see incremental improvements of 0.00001% or less.

This thread is titled "more blood". Not how to get an entire blood donation center out of a rock.

 

[timidpimpin]

Honest question... is this thread a joke?

 

[AphoticD]

I wonder how well this would work with video editing and transcoding applications. For example, I might leave my PBG4 crunching a batch list of videos on mpeg streamclip while I do other non-computer tasks, then I might want to come back and write in Evernote or browse with TFF without impacting the transcoding too much. Same deal with FCP 6 and rendering.

It’s unlikely that added software will make a G4 move faster. The CPU priority tools can certainly squeeze that little bit more at the cost of background task updates, but the key to speeding up a G4 is expecting less from it and reducing your software demands/features.

For a speedier OS X experience, install Tiger (or even Panther) in place of Leopard. Max out the RAM, install an SSD, Optimize what you can in Onyx, dump the AudioIPC kext, run in 16-bit colour (thousands), disable things you aren’t using (WiFi, Bluetooth, etc), use a Solid colour desktop picture, etc

For absolute speed, forget about OS X and install OS 9 (Unsupported) or MorphOS.

 

[1042686]

No way dudes. I’m getting mad performance. It’s like turning my g4 into a g5.

 

[timidpimpin]

No way dudes. I’m getting mad performance. It’s like turning my g4 into a g5.

Why not like a 100 core G5? You should wear goggles so you don't get bugs in your eyes. You just need to enable the secret 100 core option.

 

[eyoungren]

Honest question... is this thread a joke?

It's not a joke. And I didn't create it in jest.

I have actually used these apps and I have seen some slight improvement, particularly in the foreground app.

But, I also wasn't saying that by using these apps you can expect remarkably increased performance. At best, it's a marginal help. At worst it can actually make things much slower and glitchier.

Your previous statements are valid. I'm just putting these out there because it might be useful to someone. And it might not.

But as all of it is volatile it's not going to do any serious harm.

 

[1042686]

I look at this through the lense of tech Dad. A.) I am ultimately responsible for the functionality of my family’s tech devices B.) I have youngsters who leave an endless array of apps open across all devices. C.) They’re using old tech, so any bad performance is a complaint filed in my mailbox with requests for newer devices ultimately costing me more money & time - both VERY finite resources.

In this light, it behooves me to utilize a “set it one time & forget it” management tool that will automatically ration cpu usage forwhat I perceive as optimal performance on the babes devices, maintaining an acceptable user experience thus maximizing MY monetary & time currencies.

Just a thought as to how such an app could have end user value. I mean ultimately it does or there would be little reason to build it and even less to attempt to host & sell a version of it.