High CPU load averages

[lukeyyyyy]

Hi Guys,

So i've just downloaded iStat to keep an eye on my late 2013 MBP 13", first thing I noticed were that the load values were rather high. The CPU is a dual core i5, 2.4ghz which identifies as four cores due to hyper threading. so a load beyond 4.0 would mean the cpu is overloaded.

Here's three scenarios demonstrating different workloads and the respective load values;

Scenario 1 - Completely Idle

Load Values are between 1.7 - 2

Scenario 2 - Atom IDE, few tabs on chrome, mail app and a few finders

Load Values are between 2.3 - 2.7

Scenario 3 - Atom IDE, IntelliJ, 8-10 java services running, scala project recompiling every 2-3 minutes few tabs on chrome, mail app and a few finders

Load Values are between 6.1 - 8.5

What are you thoughts? Am I just pushing my cpu too hard?

 

[robvas]

If you're talking about the Unix load value, that's not what that means.

You can't "push the CPU too hard".

 

[lukeyyyyy]

Sorry, So what does the unix load values mean?

From my understanding there are 3 values, 1,5 and 15min averages. The load is based on how much "load" the cpu is under, the values are relative to the number of cores and what I meant by pushing my cpu too hard was basically my expectation of the load to be lower than what it was given the tasks my cpu was performing. Did i miss something?

 

[robvas]

It's really how many processes are 'waiting'

Depending on what your machine is doing, having a higher number might not be that bad. For a laptop I'd worry more about CPU usage and energy consumption instead of a load value. For scenario 3 you might want a faster machine, maybe a quad core

 

[lukeyyyyy]

Yeah, I remember reading a good article which compared it to lanes of traffic.

I completely agree on the quad core suggestion for scenario 3. Once vm's start coming into the picture it slows to a halt. Which is completely acceptable for a baseline MBP from 2013. I'm waiting for either coffee lake or cannonlake chipsets, the u series i5's and i7's are quad core which should make for a significant upgrade.

 

[leman]

What CPU utilization does the activity monitor report?

 

[jerryk]

Proof IntelliJ is a pig. I try to avoid running it. Prefer to use Visual Studio Code.