Is my Mac Pro a bit lazy? Processing % drops for now reason

[big_malk]

I have a quad 2.66Ghz Mac Pro with 4GB (currently 533MB free, 957MB inactive, 664MB/1GB swap) and I have a few apps open (Mail, Safari, iTunes, Adium, Azureus, Speed Download) but none of these are very processor intensive. I also have Folding@Home client running in the background, usually I have about 25% idle processor time (I would have expected less personally) but from time to time this changes to 90%+ for a few seconds at a time for no reason.

Usually, if I look at iStat Pro, the idle time stays at ~20-40%, and four Folding@Home cores are doing most of the work, but sometime they'll work hard for a few seconds, then work very slowly and the idle time is ^90% for a few seconds, then back to working hard for a few seconds etc...

I thought this might have been a Folding@Home issue, but I tried exporting a video in Quicktime when I noticed this happening, and it happens to Quicktime too (although idle time usually doesn't pass 50%).

I know this isn't exactly a terrible problem, but I'm just curious, if it can work steadily sometimes, why with the same apps running does this happen other times?

Sorry if I haven't explained this very well, it had to be written in a bit of a hurry.

 

[motulist]

Turn off folding@home for a few days and see if the problem goes away.

 

[thevibesman]

To confuse things even more, I have a friend who is running 10.4.11 on a G4 powerbook and he is having a problem like that with World of Warcraft.

What OS are you running?

 

[big_malk]

Im running 10.5.1. Thanks for the advice motulist, but it hasn't made any difference

 

[macgruder]

The lazy Mac is a well known issue. The interesting thing is that it is dependent on region. For example, I live in Japan and my computer does bugger all on the Emperor's Birthday, and I have to switch over to my old Mac that I bought in the UK.

The real bugger was when I lived in Scotland. During Hogmanay, and for 3 or 4 days, the pitch of the Finder beeps actually went an octave down. According to Apple documentation #10471 removing all bottles of whisky from the house is the workaround.

 

[big_malk]

The lazy Mac is a well known issue. The interesting thing is that it is dependent on region. For example, I live in Japan and my computer does bugger all on the Emperor's Birthday, and I have to switch over to my old Mac that I bought in the UK.

The real bugger was when I lived in Scotland. During Hogmanay, and for 3 or 4 days, the pitch of the Finder beeps actually went an octave down. According to Apple documentation #10471 removing all bottles of whisky from the house is the workaround.

Aah now you mention it... I did buy it with a student discount...
Having regular and unwarranted breaks, doing a half-assed job at anything its asked to do, never doing the dishes... sounds like a student all right