Hi Guys,
This is my machine.
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I am not a computer wiz but I am confident I have a powerful processor? I am having issues running programs like After Effects, FCPX, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and they run slow, lag lots and render with slow speeds and I was told I need to upgrade my graphics card but I am not sure how to go about it.
Can my iMac be upgraded internally or is it past the threshold when macs stopped being upgradable? Can I get an external Graphics card? Is this even my problem? Any advice would be great.
Thanks
Shane
Your processor is a good one, but it's from 2013. Your slowdowns could be a result of your processor, your graphics card, or more. You can get a sense of what's going wrong by using Activity Monitor.
Open Activity Monitor and go to the CPU tab, if it's not already open. Double-click on the "CPU load" graph to create a pop-up that will stay on top of your windows. You probably only need to see one graph but you can expand the window downward to see all of your cores (including virtual cores) for full processor activity. I would also go to Window > GPU History, which will create another window that shows your GPU activity. Move these windows wherever you like. Now go about your tasks that slow down. Is your CPU seemingly maxing out? Is your GPU maxing out?
If slowdowns are occurring and it seems like neither processor nor GPU are being heavily utilized, there are three other possibilities:
1. Check your memory (RAM) usage. With 32 GB of RAM, running FCPX, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. with a normal project alone shouldn't cause a problem. Running them all together and/or with a bunch of other programs running could cause problems. This can be checked through Activity Monitor; look at the Memory Pressure graph (sorry, no way to make a pop-out window for this one). As long as it's in the green, you should be fine... but if it's a really tall bar then we might have more to look at.
2. Check your disk activity (again in Activity Monitor, set the graph to IO instead of Data if it's not already set). Does it seem like there's a lot of activity? This could be a problem particularly if your computer uses a standard hard drive, rather than a SSD (as the post above alludes to). If you're using a SSD it can still be an issue, but it's less likely. I'd be surprised if this was the sole issue slowing you down; usually it comes into play if RAM is also being utilized beyond its limit and the computer needs to write RAM contents to your disk.
3. If all of your hardware seems to be doing just fine, the final possibility is software causing problems. While there are ways to monitor what's going on with the Console and looking at processes, that is a bit beyond me. The easiest thing to do would be a wipe and reinstall of the operating system and your programs. I'd say this is less likely if you've recently wiped and done a clean install.
As for what you can do about things: newer iMacs do allow things like external graphics cards, but your 2013 system is unfortunately out of luck. There's no way to upgrade the graphics card, and while I think there are some ways to do a swap of the processor, it's probably not worth your time. Check everything over, and if it's a software issue, wipe and start fresh to see if it fixes it. Otherwise, it may be time to consider upgrading your computer.
