System Monitor Values

[raythompsontn]

I do not understand the system monitor values.

Lightroom has been running, importing images and creating smart previews, for about 5 minutes yet the CPU time is shown as 21+ minutes. The percentage of CPU is shown as 775%.

Why the strange numbers? What exactly do the value represent?

 

[jdb8167]

You have an 8-core system. You are using nearly 100% of all 8 cores. If you were using 100%, then you would see 800 under % CPU. Same for CPU time, multiply 8 by wall clock time to get the maximum CPU time, adjust down accordingly.

 

[raythompsontn]

You have an 8-core system.

Thanks. Interesting method to report CPU percentage usage by adding up the individual CPUs rather than taking the CPU as a whole as is done in the bottom graph.

 

[chabig]

The top of the bottom graph is 800%. 😉

 

[raythompsontn]

The top of the bottom graph is 800%.

The numbers add up to 100%. There are no numbers on the graph so the graph could be anything.

 

[jdb8167]

Thanks. Interesting method to report CPU percentage usage by adding up the individual CPUs rather than taking the CPU as a whole as is done in the bottom graph.

Unfortunately the numbers are also pretty misleading as they count an efficiency core the same as a performance core. Not exactly the best way to show relative CPU usage. I expect Apple to fix this at some point down the line.

 

[Moreplease]

Unfortunately the numbers are also pretty misleading as they count an efficiency core the same as a performance core. Not exactly the best way to show relative CPU usage. I expect Apple to fix this at some point down the line.

Yeah. It was never elegant and has become pure nonsense with Apple Silicon.

 

[leifp]

It is the exact opposite of nonsense, and knowing how multi-threaded an application is has its uses. Particularly if you are earning money with your computer and want to know how much to spend on an upgrade… and where that money is best placed.

That’s how I know, for example, that even the CPU setup in the base M silicon is likely up to the task of anything I regularly throw at it, other than ripping video. My RAM use is above 16GB and below 32GB. So far, so base! M3 with 24GB RAM coming up! The GPU regularly exceeds 50% and occasionally tops out… on my M1Max. Ugh…