Poor Performace after CPU intensive process

[projectman]

2011 Macbook Pro (10.6.7)
2.2 Ghz Intel Core i1
4 gb 1333mhz DDR3
Radeon HD 6750M 1 gig
500 gig HD at 7200 rpm

After running a CPU/ram intensive process on my computer such as photo editing large files in Photoshop my computer, having many programs open at the same time or leaving my computer on for a long time my computer slows down dramatically. What I mean be slows down dramatically, is after I exit the process (ex. Photoshop) it will take 30 secs to a minute to close and everything is at a very slow lag (curser turns into spinning globe). After the program is exited, my computer continues to be extremely slow for 5-10 mins and is sluggish until I restart the computer again.

Am I experiencing some type of bottleneck in my harddrive? Do I not have enough ram? What is the problem

This new computer was supposed to be lighting fast but performs barley better than my 5 year old Macbook pro.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Charlie

 

[2hvy4grvty]

Try closing PS without doing any editting to gauge how fast it closes in general.

And monitor temps. Could be throttling, but I HIGHLY doubt that.

 

[projectman]

Photoshop closes in a second if I have not done any editing and its after a fresh reboot and I dont experience any poor performance afterwards.

 

[2hvy4grvty]

Monitor RAM usage and temps.

 

[Young Spade]

I think that the problem is with the RAM. I have a baseline 2011 MBP and I experience the same thing when running a ton of programs at one time and then opening a virtual machine or something.

Everything runs fine while the VM is on and I'm watching HD video or editing photos, surfing the net, or whatever, but whenever I close the VM, the RAM starts to get recycled back into the machine and it hangs for a few seconds or so, depending on what I'm doing.

I think that when you're editing, the machine is using up as much RAM as it can and, when you close it, it's taking the time to allocate that back into the system to use with other programs.

In short, buy 8 gigs of RAM online from somewhere (around 50 bucks) and the problem should be resolved; I'm going to pick some up later next month after I get settled in at college as well.