Dconf editor window and hard disk activity

Question

Hello,
For quite some time for me, moving the dconf-editor window causes significant hard drive activity. I don't know why, but moving the window makes the hard drive work hard, and cpu load goes up sharply. Does this happen for anyone else? The hard drive continues working for a fair bit after stopping movement of the window. No other window does such a thing...

Answer 1

4GB files on a 32-bit kernel and you run into what I call a bottleneck.
More RAM helps; and using dual RAID0's also allows for more I/O.
2GB left over falls into the anemia category.
The system drive from other experiments, tests, and benchmarks, does a lot more than just sit there and feed up applications.
And just as a fast SSD or 10K drive, or setting those up in RAID0, offers 240-500MB/sec, your memory bandwidth also plays a role.
When working with 2GB files in CS2 and later, arrays for every volume + whatever RAM you can throw at it helps.
Some operations are still single-thread and hold everything up, when you export or save or write to disk RAID makes up for some of that. A file is written out as temp file, old file is renamed, and when done deleted, while the directory and index are updated. And Spotlight rather than wait for things to be done, CAN get in the way while you work.
I don't know the full gist, but back in G3/G4, SCSI arrays made a big enough difference that I splurged on the full setup (two dual channel controllers driving 15K and 10K drives). And without? it was a real tortoise.
If you think 2GB is 'enough' to run OS X alone, let alone Safari, iTunes, Pages or office apps, let alone any pro apps or ones that need some RAM... CS4+ should have an 8GB system.
And the RAM needs of a Mac Pro have just never been as low or comparable to your desktop or laptop system.
But stay with 4GB if you don't mind.