How can one app (SABNZBD) have so much power over my machine?

[djrobsd]

I use SABNZBD to download my newsgroup files. When they are finished downloading, it does something called repair, then unpacks the files. I've ran that program on my 5 year old PC with no issues. It's open source software that has been out for years, and very stable on most platforms.

However, on my new 2011 MBP 15" with the i7 processor, it's seems to grind my computer to a halt at times, especially when it's tryng to repair a file, but even now just running in the background downloading, my typing lags every few seconds or so. I don't understand why one program would have so much power to grind my machine to a halt when I have so much available memory, and processing power. In fact even when the computer was almost completely unresponsive, I fired up Activity Monitor and my CPU was at like 90% idle... So it makes ZERO sense to me if I have 2 gigs of RAM free and an idle CPU that one program could grind my computer to a halt...

Very frustrating!! I rebooted the machine, and it was fine until I fired SABNZBD back up and then poof.. Again, causing issues...

 

[willfurnell]

I use SABNZBD to download my newsgroup files. When they are finished downloading, it does something called repair, then unpacks the files. I've ran that program on my 5 year old PC with no issues. It's open source software that has been out for years, and very stable on most platforms.

However, on my new 2011 MBP 15" with the i7 processor, it's seems to grind my computer to a halt at times, especially when it's tryng to repair a file, but even now just running in the background downloading, my typing lags every few seconds or so. I don't understand why one program would have so much power to grind my machine to a halt when I have so much available memory, and processing power. In fact even when the computer was almost completely unresponsive, I fired up Activity Monitor and my CPU was at like 90% idle... So it makes ZERO sense to me if I have 2 gigs of RAM free and an idle CPU that one program could grind my computer to a halt...

Very frustrating!! I rebooted the machine, and it was fine until I fired SABNZBD back up and then poof.. Again, causing issues...

My best bet is that is a universal binary. Its made to work on Intel and PowerPC processors. See if you can find a Intel only alternative. You do not need the PPC compatibility, and this is probably slowing the machine down.

 

[djrobsd]

My best bet is that is a universal binary. Its made to work on Intel and PowerPC processors. See if you can find a Intel only alternative. You do not need the PPC compatibility, and this is probably slowing the machine down.

It's definitely a universal binary... Not quite sure why it would perform so poorly though given that many other apps are (such as chrome - which I frequently have 10 tabs open with no problem). Unfortunately they do not offer an Intel Only one yet.

 

[djrobsd]

So I talked to the folks in SABNZBD support chat room, and they suggested that my disk IO might be maxed out. So, i checked everything out and sure enough it was. They told me a temporary fix is to turn on a setting that pauses downloads while performing post-processing tasks.... That does help things out a little...

But, the best fix... I bought an SSD... And now, not only do I have zero performance issues when using SAB, it also performs post processing like 5 times faster... PHEW!