iTunes very slow on PowerMac G5?

[Doc69]

I have a dual 2.0GHz PowerMac G5 with 4.5GB RAM running different installations of Tiger and Leopard. I have my main iTunes library on that computer and working with iTunes has gotten progressively slower over the last couple of years of iTunes updates.

Playing songs work fine but editing is painfully slow. To "Get info" on a file can take anywhere from 2 to 5 seconds before the window appears. And when dragging a new song into iTunes, it takes a few seconds before iTunes is ready to accept the next one.

My music library has 60000 songs in Apple Lossless and is located on a separate 2TB internal RAID 0 volume.

Is there anyone else with a similar configuration who does not have this problem? Any other ideas?

 

[California]

More ram. Hope you have a back up for your raid, too.

 

[Doc69]

More ram. Hope you have a back up for your raid, too.

Yeah, I have two backups

It's probably not a RAM issue though. Activity monitor says I have 3.8GB of 4.5GB Free. And everything is working well, including heavy software like Logic Pro and Aperture. However, just doing a simple "Get Info" in iTunes gets the CPU activity up to 75% briefly.

My guess is that iTunes have been slowly modified over the years to work optimally with Intel CPUs, which now makes PowerPC CPUs work very inefficiently. But it's just a guess. I'm interested to learn if other users are experiencing he same issues or not.

 

[Doc69]

Will an SSD help?

I forgot to mention that I have embedded cover artwork in all my files (mostly Apple Lossless). I think that plays big part of why things are so slow.

Does anyone know if putting in an SSD could speed things up? At least the library files are kept on the main drive. Or would an SSD be a waste of money? I put an X25-M in my MacBook Pro and noticed considerably faster booting and app loading but not much else.

Thanks.

 

[ungraphic]

Well, you can thank Apple for making iTunes bloated crap. Check how much CPU usage and ram its using. With your massive library, its not much of a surprise, but having itunes incorporate a ton of crap (music store, ipod, iphone, iTV support, videos, wireless speakers, etc. etc) it doesnt help either.

I'd suggest wiping out the itunes folder from your music folder and reimporting your tracks, kind of like a reset. Just make sure to pull out your actual files before deleting it, most people have that stupid 'copy files' function selected in the preferences when importing tracks.

 

[rickvanr]

I remember iTunes starting to lag a bit on my old Dual 2.7. When I maxed out the RAM it felt like a whole new computer. With how cheap DDR400 is you might as well MAX it out.

With your storage needs, and SSD won't help from what I understand, as you're accessing files on the RAID, it doesn't matter how quick your start up disk is, the media on the HDDs will still be limited by the HDDs.

A dual 2.0 was a fine computer in it's day, but it's being left behind. I got a Mac Pro myself, and the problem went away.

 

[splitpea]

I have a dual 2.0, but my library is much smaller (under 10K). Usually when I first launch itunes it's quite responsive, but after about 48 hours it bogs down and I have to relaunch to avoid having to wait 30 seconds for it to respond to the play/pause button. This has only been an issue since the latest major version, though.