Mac Pro Upgrade Advise

[rmal]

My Mac Pro is needing some help. At times, it runs painfully slow and I can't be sure where the problem is. Just as an example, if I have several things going on at once like now - streaming audio from an on-line radio station and performing a sync to my iphone and running a search on google - it runs very slow with 20-second delays. It also bogs down if I am in Entourage, then open a document in Word and am searching simultaneously - I get the dreaded rotating pin wheel. I thought it might have been download speed, but my macbook, running right next to it is speedy fast. In fact, my early Aluminum macBook is far faster all around - including running multiple applications. On the Mac Pro, I can really only run one program at a time which doesn't seem right. I've disabled Timemachine thinking the hourly backups are slowing me down - no effect - still terribly slow. I'm running two monitors - here's the spec on the pro...I have recently run Onyx and everything checks out fine.

Thanks!!

Hardware Overview:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 5 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
SMC Version (system): 1.7f10
Serial Number (system): G86430P9UPZ
Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-0017F2039598


Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 249.72 GB (249,715,376,128 bytes)
Available: 108.3 GB (108,298,911,744 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /


NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT:
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0393
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3008
Displays:
Cinema:
Resolution: 1680 x 1050
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
AL2016W:
Resolution: 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported

 

[Transporteur]

You can upgrade your processors, however, this is not necessarily a cheap option.

Upgrading RAM is a cheap option which you could always do. 5GB is a little on the low side these days.

However, considering that your MacBook runs the same tasks just fine, I don't think that the mentioned hardware components (CPU and RAM) are the limiting factors here.

I rather think that disk IO is what slows your system down. The old 250GB drives aren't really fast, especially not when filled more than 50%.

The best option you have (and relatively cheap as well) is to get a SSD drive for your OS and applications. Leave the 250GB for data.
A Vertex2 will really boost your system. The 120GB models are extremely cheap these days and amongst others the best SSD's you can buy these days.
Pop one of them in there and make a clean install of OS X. Seems as if your system is a little corrupted, so a clean install prevents your from moving the old "crap" onto the "new" system.

 

[rmal]

thanks for the advise - will I have to re-install all my programs? Or can they live on the old 250 gig? Some programs are simple to re-install and some can take a while - and one (adobe Cs3) - I can't find the cd's so the migration assistant won't work....and I really don't want to upgrade right now.

thanks again.

 

[Transporteur]

If you get a SSD drive, then no, it won't really be advisable to keep your applications on the old mechanical drive.

Does CS3 require the installation CD's to get migrated to another drive? Seems odd...

 

[rmal]

yeah - CS3 requires the original cd's. I have spent over an hour on the phone with adobe. I am the registered owner, I have a certificate of ownership for the CS3, Adobe acknolodges that I am the legal owner, but becuse they are now 2 versions removed - CS5 - they say they do not have any CS3 disks to sell me as replacements. Had I contacted them before the release of CS5 (early summer) I could have purchased replacement disks for $28 - but now - nothing - only option is to upgrade which I will never do if I can help it due to their complete disregard for paying, legal customers! (rant - sorry).

Can I re-load all other applications on the new drive and leave the CS3 on the old drive? Or might it not work?

Sorry for the long wind responce...thanks!

 

[nanofrog]

Clone the existing OS disk to the SSD, then set it as the boot location (Carbon Copy Cloner would be an application to look into to do this). Restart, and it will boot off of the SSD (assumes no other hardware changes, particularly when drivers are concerned).

 

[toxic]

you can use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your current hard drive to another one. you should move your data (home folder) somewhere else if you choose to buy an SSD that doesn't fit everything.

also, you don't really need an SSD to boost IO performance. it will help the most, but it also costs the most. just using a newer 7200RPM hard drive for your OS and applications, and using hard drives that are much larger than you actually need, should provide a boost.

you can check if you need more RAM by typing "top" into Terminal. look for "VM:" on the left, at the end of the line it will have "some number(another number) pageouts". if (another number) is nonzero, you need more RAM.