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My 2.66 MBP feels slow

yoak

yoak

macrumors 68000
Original poster
I feel my MBP beachballs alot. I have 4gb RAM and have replaced the HD with a WD Caviar Blue 640GB. ( I did a clean install)
It just don´t feel that snappy, is this due to the 4GB RAM or the HD?

I often run 5-6 programs at once, sometimes Final Cut.
But it´s mostly in the day to day use it feels slow.

I can´t afford a SSD in this thing as I work with HD video a lot and I need space on my hard drive.

I was thinking of maybe getting a Momentus XT, but worry about battery life as I have the 3,5 hour version of MBP
 
check your ram usage.
overall beach balling can often be traced back to not having enough ram. - what you want to be looking for is swap.
 
Reelknead1 said:
If you are swapping its going to be off the HDD, which will slow your computer down greatly.
Click to expand...
I agree, it's the HDD that has the most to do with the "snappy" feeling.

I had the i7 2.66Ghz 15" MBP (with a 7200RPM drive) and with certain programs (esp. Aperture) it would beachball a lot.

I've since switched to an Air with a a measly 2.13GHz processor (but with a SSD) and I never see a beachball in Aperture.
 
OP, I have the same set up as you, 2.66ghz 13" w/ WD 640GB blue, and I agree that it seems quite slow. I really think the HDD is the culprite here. I'm planning on upgrading to an SSD, but if that is outside of your budget I have heard good things about those new Seagate hybrid drives.
 
I think a SSD will certainly reduce beachballing when opening apps, but if they are already open, a ssd wont have that great an effect.
 
I had the same drive in my MBP and it didn't play nice. There's an issue with the power management and so it keeps sleeping. Every time you need it, it has to spin up again, hence the beach ball while this happens.

I tried a hack on the power management which fixed this problem, but it means the drive is always spinning at full. Plus, the SMART status of the drive would get worse every month, with or without the hack.

After 9 months I knew it would soon fail so replaced it with a Samsung 640GB, and it was flawless! Now I have a 1TB Samsung and again, flawless.

I would either get a new drive, or use the hack I used, but be prepared for the fact that this drive isn't really going to last long term.
 
Ditto on that drive. Extremely slow performance in my 2010 unibody. Swapped it out for a Seagate Momentus and everything works perfectly.
 
rockstarjoe said:
OP, I have the same set up as you, 2.66ghz 13" w/ WD 640GB blue...
Click to expand...

No you don't. His MBP has an expresscard slot. Does yours? I didn't think so... Since his MBP has an expresscard slot, it means that his MBP is older. Older MBP's have older Intel Core 2 Series chipsets. Older Intel Core 2 Series chipsets are slightly slower than today's Intel Core 2 Series chipsets, and obviously a lot slower than today's Core i series of chipsets. So, your MBP is slightly faster than the OP's MBP...
 
AlphaDogg said:
No you don't. His MBP has an expresscard slot. Does yours? I didn't think so... Since his MBP has an expresscard slot, it means that his MBP is older. Older MBP's have older Intel Core 2 Series chipsets. Older Intel Core 2 Series chipsets are slightly slower than today's Intel Core 2 Series chipsets, and obviously a lot slower than today's Core i series of chipsets. So, your MBP is slightly faster than the OP's MBP...
Click to expand...

If you're talking about integrated GPU then yes he's is faster, in terms of everything else...i really doubt that. Same FSB, same SATA II, same memory speed etc. They have the EXACT same chipset (Nvidia MCP79). The P-series CPU is only better in terms drawing slightly less power (10W less) and is even inferior to the T-series processor in the OP's laptop in that it has a half it's L2 cache.

Ainze said:
I had the same drive in my MBP and it didn't play nice. There's an issue with the power management and so it keeps sleeping. Every time you need it, it has to spin up again, hence the beach ball while this happens.

I tried a hack on the power management which fixed this problem, but it means the drive is always spinning at full. Plus, the SMART status of the drive would get worse every month, with or without the hack.

After 9 months I knew it would soon fail so replaced it with a Samsung 640GB, and it was flawless! Now I have a 1TB Samsung and again, flawless.

I would either get a new drive, or use the hack I used, but be prepared for the fact that this drive isn't really going to last long term.
Click to expand...

kaioshade said:
Ditto on that drive. Extremely slow performance in my 2010 unibody. Swapped it out for a Seagate Momentus and everything works perfectly.
Click to expand...

rockstarjoe said:
OP, I have the same set up as you, 2.66ghz 13" w/ WD 640GB blue, and I agree that it seems quite slow. I really think the HDD is the culprite here. I'm planning on upgrading to an SSD, but if that is outside of your budget I have heard good things about those new Seagate hybrid drives.
Click to expand...

Well then OP...the problem seems to lie with the drive you're using
 
Last edited:
Surprised no one has posted this yet...

Can I see a screen shot of activity monitor please (preferably during normal usage)?
 
Thanks for the replies.
I run the hack on my WD, I forgot to mention that.
I had the feeling it was the culprit. I came across a post of how to put s ssd in the expresscard slot and run osx off from there. It's tempting, but I use it quite regularly to offload footage from my camera.

What Samsung are you using?

I'm on my iPhone right now so I can't post a screenshot
 
yoak said:
I feel my MBP beachballs alot. I have 4gb RAM and have replaced the HD with a WD Caviar Blue 640GB. ( I did a clean install)
It just don´t feel that snappy, is this due to the 4GB RAM or the HD?

I often run 5-6 programs at once, sometimes Final Cut.
But it´s mostly in the day to day use it feels slow.

I can´t afford a SSD in this thing as I work with HD video a lot and I need space on my hard drive.

I was thinking of maybe getting a Momentus XT, but worry about battery life as I have the 3,5 hour version of MBP
Click to expand...

Same situation, man. I have the 2.4 ghz, 4GB (Added 2+2GB myself) MacBook Pro too and it's dead slow. I'm contemplating on switching to a Dell XPS 15" now after the huge spec difference between that laptop and my current laptop. :|
 
Check memory usage in the activity monitor to see if you have enough memory free. I upgraded mine to 8 Gb memory since I always leave a lot of applications running.
Also, it's possible you drive has an issue that keeps it powering up and spinning down on a regular basis. Read this thread and listen to the noises your MBP makes to find out more.
 
Just put an SSD in my i7 MBP. Problem solved here.

The machine can now keep up with me.

120GB Vertex 2, newegg has them for 189 AR.
 
My problem is that 120 or 250gb just won't do for my use. I need lots of storage. So ssd is just too expensive at the moment

Edit: I see now that you have 2 hard drives. I need my DVD drive as well. I could do with out I suppose, but I prefer to have one
 
teleromeo said:
Check memory usage in the activity monitor to see if you have enough memory free. I upgraded mine to 8 Gb memory since I always leave a lot of applications running.
Also, it's possible you drive has an issue that keeps it powering up and spinning down on a regular basis. Read this thread and listen to the noises your MBP makes to find out more.
Click to expand...

I run the hack that prevents this, it keeps the drive always spinning, so I guess it's far from ideal
 
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