High load averages, low CPU usage

HI,
I recently upgraded to Lion and I am noticing high load averages ~0.7 for my system. The CPU is, however ~95% idle. I am not running any intensive apps. I first thought it is an I/O issue, but I have almost 500 MB free memory, and there is no disk activity. The system is perfectly fine, with all the eye candy/animations running smoothly. Is this a bug?
Thanks for any help.

Same problem here
Did a clean install of Lion, moved everything manually. System was clean and running fast. Then, for some reason started to slow down after a few months. My last system (macbook snow leopard) was running fine for 3 years.
I noticed HIGH load averages (over 2.5!) while CPU is ideling (only 'round 30% for user and system). System is slow and CPU gets hot, resulting in loud fan noise.
Googled a lot, did standard maintenance tasks, tried to pinpoint cause - nothing so far. Will update when I find out more. Maybe someone else has a clue or Apple releases a fix. Fingers crossed.

Similar Messages

Very high "load average" in top

Hi,
our OES11SP1 two-server-cluster (fully patched) shows a very high "load
average" (>50, up to 110) in top in some circumstances. There are no
problems in normal operation, but administrator actions like shutdown or
cluster migrate might trigger the problem.
For example when I enter 'halt', then there is the following line in
/var/log/messages:
Sep 12 20:27:18 srv1 shutdown[14675]: shutting down for system halt
more than 20 minutes later:
Sep 12 20:51:19 srv1 init: Switching to runlevel: 0
Within thes 20 minutes nothing happens, but "average load" goes up to at
least 50, with ndsd at top. Access to storage related tools and commands is
not possible, for example 'nss /pool' hangs without any output.
This happens on nearly every shutdown, but from time to time it doesn't. The
same will sometimes be triggered by a cluster migrate.
This only happens with our OES11SP1 cluster, it does not happen with OES11
and OES2SP3; the only other difference I'm aware of: Novell CIFS is only
running on the OES11SP1 cluster.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Mirko

Sorry for the delay, it seems it's a bad habit of me to ask questions
immediately before holidays...
Yes, these servers have replicas, all of them... Cache size is set to 195328
KB, which is about twice the DIB size. IIRC this was a recommendation I read
somewhere at Novell. But I'll check that information again.
Thanks,
Mirko
kjhurni wrote:
>
> Mirko Guldner;2283539 Wrote:
>> top shows ndsd on top - but it's there in normal operation too, so I
>> don't
>> know if this means something.. (?) And it's not always the CPU which is
>> at
>> 100% - I have an example screenshot with: load average 50.20, 51.61,
>> 41.0
>> 3.2%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 77.0%id 18%wa 0.0%hi 0.3%si 0.0%st. But this is
>> only
>> an example - this differs.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mirko
>>
>> kjhurni wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > Mirko Guldner;2283448 Wrote:
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> our OES11SP1 two-server-cluster (fully patched) shows a very high
>> "load
>> >> average" (>50, up to 110) in top in some circumstances. There are no
>> >> problems in normal operation, but administrator actions like
>> shutdown
>> >> or
>> >> cluster migrate might trigger the problem.
>> >>
>> >> For example when I enter 'halt', then there is the following line in
>> >> /var/log/messages:
>> >>
>> >> Sep 12 20:27:18 srv1 shutdown[14675]: shutting down for system halt
>> >>
>> >> more than 20 minutes later:
>> >>
>> >> Sep 12 20:51:19 srv1 init: Switching to runlevel: 0
>> >>
>> >> Within thes 20 minutes nothing happens, but "average load" goes up
>> to
>> >> at
>> >> least 50, with ndsd at top. Access to storage related tools and
>> commands
>> >> is
>> >> not possible, for example 'nss /pool' hangs without any output.
>> >>
>> >> This happens on nearly every shutdown, but from time to time it
>> doesn't.
>> >> The
>> >> same will sometimes be triggered by a cluster migrate.
>> >>
>> >> This only happens with our OES11SP1 cluster, it does not happen with
>> >> OES11
>> >> and OES2SP3; the only other difference I'm aware of: Novell CIFS is
>> >> only
>> >> running on the OES11SP1 cluster.
>> >>
>> >> Any ideas?
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >> Mirko
>> >
>> > Which process(es) does top show as being the culprit?
>> >
>> > In the past (on OES2 SP3) we had issues with CIFS causing ncp to
>> cause
>> > high utilization, but that was fixed a while ago.
>> >
>> > --Kevin
>> >
>> >
>
> I have seen ncp issues cause high ndsd utilization, but we've not yet
> upgraded our cluster or DS servers to OES11 yet (waiting for new
> hardware to go in place first).
>
> Out of curiosity, are the servers with high utilization also replica
> servers? For some reason, during one of our upgrades on a replica
> server (we have a server that contains all R/W copies of everything),
> the cache size got set down really low and that caused all sorts of
> issues.
>
> Maybe one of my collegues will wander by and offer additional insight,
> as this may be eDir related and/or NCP related. Not sure if triggering
> a core manually would help (but you'd have to send that to Novell and
> open an SR to get it read).
>
> IF you suspect CIFS, do you have the ability to temporarily shut off
> CIFS for like a few days to see if that's the culprit?
>
>

[Solved] Excessive high load average

My laptop seems to have an very excessive high load average. My system gets very slow even when I'm running openbox with a browser, terminal and music player. That is enough to make applications freeze for a few seconds. I've seen the load average goes higher 5.00. Right now I just logged in openbox using lxdm, open a browser and a terminal and my load average is 23:11:21 up 12 min, 2 users, load average: 1.15, 0.92, 0.58.
$ top
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1367 root 20 0 48140 2392 1832 R 100 0.1 7:39.51 lxdm-binary
1411 jesse 20 0 402m 9800 7176 S 1 0.2 0:03.10 indicator-multi
1370 root 20 0 110m 14m 6388 S 0 0.4 0:03.50 X
1479 jesse 20 0 263m 13m 10m S 0 0.3 0:00.99 terminal
1 root 20 0 4180 692 592 S 0 0.0 0:00.61 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
8 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/1:0
As yon can see the process 1367 is using 100% of the cpu. I have no idea why this is happening. Also my laptop isn't old. It has intel i5 processor with 4gm ram.
Anybody has an idea of what is happening?
EDIT: I just checked my load average again
[jesse@myarch ~]$ uptime
23:23:46 up 24 min, 3 users, load average: 4.42, 2.19, 1.25
That is an absurd value, isn't is? Ah, and my system is up to date, if anyone asks.
Last edited by sollidsnake (2012-02-17 12:35:34)

well it looks like back in december there were some bugs reported with libglib2.0-0 2.31.2 that where causing this issue you can try updating to make sure you have the most current version.
pacman -S glib2

One of 4 node RAC always have higher load averages and higher than others

Hello,
We have a 4 node rac, 9208 on linux 4. When viewing top, we noticed the same one node always have a higher load average than the other 3 nodes. Is this normal. Loan balance is working fine but this one node always have higher load average. This is the node where we do the rac installation. Thank you.

I do not remember what is the default for clb_goal (client load balancing) for 9i but 10g is LONG.
check it
select clb_goal from dba_services where name = <service name>
you may have to change from LONG to SHORT OR SHORT to LONG depending your connection types.
dbms_service.MODIFY_SERVICE(‘<service>’,clb_goal=> dbms_service.CLB_GOAL_LONG);
Read the following article.
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/oracle/article.php/3659411/Oracle-RAC-Administration---Part-15-Connection-Load-Balancing-and-FAN.htm

Top- Large run queue & High load averages

From which section of top we can find Large run queue & High load averages ?

Can you be a little bit more specific about what OS your running on? Top is not consistent on all versions of Linux...
This link may help
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/advanced-linux-commands/part2.html

Prstat displays PROCESS/NLWP with /0 , but high USR and SYS cpu usage

I'm running prstat on Sol 10u4 sparc and see from time to time one of more processes with high user and kernel cpu usage, The process name is just displayed as " /0". What is this ?
see sample snapshot below:
PID USERNAME USR SYS TRP TFL DFL LCK SLP LAT VCX ICX SCL SIG PROCESS/NLWP
18738 root 18 42 3.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 36 0.5 123 247 15K 0 sort/1
18728 root 10 30 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 59 0 361 16K 0 /0
18737 root 6.8 15 2.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 75 0.2 82 82 5K 0 awk/1
18731 root 5.2 12 1.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 80 1.5 68 0 5K 0 /0
18730 root 4.8 10 1.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 82 1.4 58 58 4K 0 /0
18736 root 4.4 10 1.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 84 0.1 63 0 4K 0 grep/1
18732 root 3.0 11 2.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 84 0 45 3K 0 head/1
18735 root 4.3 9.2 1.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 85 0.1 57 57 3K 0 grep/1
18729 root 4.3 8.7 1.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 84 1.3 103 51 3K 0 /0
18734 root 3.7 8.9 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 86 0.5 52 52 3K 0 grep/1

The slash number format is used to show the number of threads (light weight processes or LWP in Solaris parlance) in a given process (see the header says "PROCESS/NLWP"). I'd guess this is a race condition where prstat finds a process exists and has consumed some CPU, but when it goes to query the data on the process it's already exited so there's no process name and zero threads associated with it. For this to be true and to see this except more than every once in a blue-moon you'd have to have a system that was having processes forked at an amazing rate.
I'd also say this is a bug, but one that you might have a hard time getting an traction on.

High Temps low CPU usage.

I bought a  HP ENVY TouchSmart 15-j063cl Notebook PC (ENERGY STAR) last November and have been experiencing high temps and loud fans at very little CPU usage or strain. When I am streaming video often times I will hear the fan speed up every once and awhile and the TZ00 will be at about 60 degrees Celsius. I recently tested the system by playing Arma 3 on minimum graphics with shadows disabled and within a minute of playtime the fan was blaring and the TZ00 was at just under 80 degrees Celsius. I did this test with the laptop elevated on a metal stand leaving the main exhaust completely clear and the majority of the bottom also clear. During the test the CPU usage was at about 20% maxing at 30% and I was getting about 35 FPS.
(While I was typing this TZ00 was above 50 degrees celsuis)-10minutes after closing arma
What's the problem guys?
System Specs
Spoiler (Highlight to read)
System    Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard Model HP ENVY TS 15 Notebook PC Total amount of system memory 12.0 GB RAM System type 64-bit operating system Number of processor cores 4 Storage    Total size of hard disk(s) 931 GB Disk partition (C 807 GB Free (905 GB Total) Disk partition (D 3 GB Free (26 GB Total) Graphics    Display adapter type Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 Total available graphics memory 1792 MB       Dedicated graphics memory 0 MB       Dedicated system memory 0 MB       Shared system memory 1792 MB Display adapter driver version 9.18.10.3071 Primary monitor resolution 1920x1080 DirectX version DirectX 11 or better Network    Network Adapter Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller Network Adapter Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network) Network Adapter Broadcom BCM4352HMB 802.11ac 2x2 Wi-Fi Adapter Network Adapter Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter Notes    The gaming graphics score is based on the primary graphics adapter. If this system has linked or multiple graphics adapters, some software applications may see additional performance benefits.
System    Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard Model HP ENVY TS 15 Notebook PC Total amount of system memory 12.0 GB RAM System type 64-bit operating system Number of processor cores 4 Storage    Total size of hard disk(s) 931 GB Disk partition (C 807 GB Free (905 GB Total) Disk partition (D 3 GB Free (26 GB Total) Graphics    Display adapter type Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 Total available graphics memory 1792 MB       Dedicated graphics memory 0 MB       Dedicated system memory 0 MB       Shared system memory 1792 MB Display adapter driver version 9.18.10.3071 Primary monitor resolution 1920x1080 DirectX version DirectX 11 or better Network    Network Adapter Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller Network Adapter Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network) Network Adapter Broadcom BCM4352HMB 802.11ac 2x2 Wi-Fi Adapter Network Adapter Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter Notes    The gaming graphics score is based on the primary graphics adapter. If this system has linked or multiple graphics adapters, some software applications may see additional performance benefits.
Ended the test to prevent damage.
Here is the HWmonitor information saved about two minutes after the test.
Spoiler (Highlight to read)
N/A Exceeds 50,000 Character rule
N/A Exceeds 50,000 Character rule

I might sound weird but sometimes CPU runs hot in a loop. If you check in Task manager, it peaks at 3.2 GHz and won't come down. This situation is because of bios problems and HP won't confirm this problems as it is their way. I solved by reducing the processor maximum power to 80% in power options. From then, CPU wont peak itself as there is a limit and won't stay in the loop. Hot air coming from left vent is solved.
But if the chasi is becoming hot while air from vents is less hot than metal chasi, then I think its CPU fan problem. I prefer you to clean the vents by disassembling the laptop though nearest HP service or local service guy. Just clean the CPU fan and coolant pipes running around the CPU and GPU. Im not an HP expert but I found these are the issues for over-heating. Remember 60 degree is considered normal temp for i7-4700 processor. But, if you feel its hotter then check it once. Don't hesitate.

Beachballing and extreme GUI latency with low CPU usage

I generally only have two applications open. iTunes 11 playing MP3s of about 128kbps, and latest Google Chrome with up to 4-5 tabs. Usually I have gmail open, Facebook, and maybe 1-2 sites such as YouTube or Slashdot. I don't have any servers running.
The CPU load is usually 90% idle. The system load hovers around 1.5 for some reason. Though at times it jumps up to 3.5 even though CPU remains at 90% idle. I read a ton of Facebook pages. After about 30-40 page loads, Chrome stops letting me scroll. I can still click in the address bar, so I know the whole system isn't frozen. I can change tasks via ALT-TAB, however, when I do that, it takes 10 seconds for it to switch to Terminal. When Termianl is finally shown, it jumps to 90% CPU for a few seconds, and updates 5 times in a row, quickly, like a stuttering video, and then it is normal. If I activate Expose by moving the mouse to the bottom left corner, it shows the Dock right away, but then it just sits there frozen for 15 seconds, and then it shows the windows and whatnot. If I switch to the Finder and click on an icon, it doesn't do anything. I then click on another icon. Nothing. I then try to draw a bounding square on the empty desktop. Nothing. Then after about 30 seconds of being frozen, the system does EVERYTHING I did in a quick hurry. It selects the first icon, the second, draws a square, selects another icon.. etc. It seems to be queueing all my actions but not responding to them immediately. If I try to delete a file, the beachball shows up, and then after about 30 seconds it shows a progress bar, even for a tiny little text file, the progress bar takes 5 seconds, and then it removes it from the desktop. If I press Mac-T to open a new tab in Chrome, I get a beachball and it takes up to a full minute before the new tab shows up!
While all of this is happening I've been monitoring my system with top, the CPU keeps at 90% idle! And the load is usually below 2.0! I have a Core 2 Duo 2.1 gHz MacBook 13" with 2GB of RAM, and there's about 25 GB free on the main disk. There is also an external firewire drive connected. Every 5 minutes the Mac OS wakes up the drive from sleep even though I'm not using it, and while the drive is starting up the whole system freezes for 5-10 seconds again!!
What the **** kinda joke of an operating system is this?!?!!? I thought Macs were multitasking and everything! I'm seriously concerned.... I"ve never had these problems in Windows, and never had these problems in Linux. ***?!!!?! I can't use more than 5 tabs in Chrome either. It's way too slow. And most videos on YouTube I can't watch unless I lower to 340p or 240p, otherwise they freeze and stuff. Even though I have enough bandwdith.. The system can't handle the video. It's so frustrating. Oh and one more thing. While scrolling through pages on Facebook, iTunes pauses at random points as if it can't handle the scrolling.... ***??!?!?!
Please help me!!!

Hello? Does anyone from Adobe know why this is happening?
I understand why frames would be dropped if you set high
quality and your CPU can't encode in real time however the 30% cpu
usage I am getting while encoding isn't indicating to me I have a
cpu issue.
Also as a note when I change the quality settings at no point
can I get my CPU to actually get busy enough where I think frames
should be dropping.
Another side question. Is FME mult-threaded? We all know dual
cores are popular now. Also when I say 30% if its a single threaded
app, that would mean 100% = 2 cores, 50% = 1 core, so 30% of of
that 100% would be all on one core if its a single threaded
application.
This would mean perhaps the utilization is higher than
expected and frames are dropping perhaps.
Any insight would be great.
Thanks and take care.

[SOLVED] High load average in X at idle

Hello Archers,
Recently my laptop has been showing abnormally high 1-minute load averages (~0.20-0.80 on a dual-core machine) at idle whenever I have X running. This figure has always settled down to 0.00 after a while, and indeed it does when I exit to the console. What's puzzling is that top reports a less-extreme 2-3% CPU usage number, with X taking 1% at most (still high, though, considering I'm running a very lightweight DWM setup). To be sure, this does heat up the CPU noticeably. I don't think I've changed anything on my system except for routine updating, and I've made sure my .xinitrc script isn't the culprit.
Any ideas on why this is?
EDIT: Marked as [SOLVED].
Last edited by ktkhuong (2010-08-27 00:28:45)

Kernel .35.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=103346
Last edited by karol (2010-08-26 10:33:35)

Higher than usual softirqd CPU usage

I have a machine running 2 network interfaces, both are under constant network traffic of 1 megabit/s, I wonder if that is the reason for the high (?) softirqd/0 and softirqd/1 CPU usage, I've heard from a few bug reports I found on the net that the kernel parameter nohz=off has an effect on this behavior (I haven't tried it yet, but I will the next time the system is rebooted), here is (hopefully all) relevant information about the machine:
Linux version 3.11.1 (bittim@myhost) (gcc version 4.8.1 (GCC) ) #1 SMP Thu Sep 26 11:37:39 PDT 2013
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 1
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 5
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 6
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIB (ICH10) LPC Interface Controller
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SATA AHCI Controller
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller
02:00.0 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB368 IDE controller
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. ViRGE/DX or /GX (rev 01)
04:01.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz
stepping : 11
microcode : 0xb6
cpu MHz : 600.000
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fdiv_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 1802.73
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz
stepping : 11
microcode : 0xb6
cpu MHz : 600.000
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fdiv_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 1802.73
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
CPU0 CPU1
0: 42 0 IO-APIC-edge timer
1: 8055 7947 IO-APIC-edge i8042
8: 47 47 IO-APIC-edge rtc0
9: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi acpi
12: 612459 613624 IO-APIC-edge i8042
16: 103397 103191 IO-APIC-fasteoi pata_jmicron
19: 161695503 161617716 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth0
43: 0 0 PCI-MSI-edge ahci
44: 143492558 143569495 PCI-MSI-edge eth1
NMI: 0 0 Non-maskable interrupts
LOC: 122965975 131573885 Local timer interrupts
SPU: 0 0 Spurious interrupts
PMI: 0 0 Performance monitoring interrupts
IWI: 5258407 12983437 IRQ work interrupts
RTR: 0 0 APIC ICR read retries
RES: 12000931 2291095 Rescheduling interrupts
CAL: 1981649 47260 Function call interrupts
TLB: 3114 6271 TLB shootdowns
TRM: 0 0 Thermal event interrupts
THR: 0 0 Threshold APIC interrupts
MCE: 0 0 Machine check exceptions
MCP: 3723 3723 Machine check polls
ERR: 0
MIS: 0
UID PID PPID C SZ RSS PSR STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 3 2 0 0 0 0 Sep29 ? 00:40:22 [ksoftirqd/0]
root 11 2 0 0 0 1 Sep29 ? 01:33:51 [ksoftirqd/1]
10:27:10 up 12 days, 22:13, 5 users, load average: 0.04, 0.10, 0.08
you could say it is normal because they used only 2 hours of CPU time per 12 days of continuous 1 megabit/s load on both cards, but here is what is strange: this system is an upgrade of a server machine with dual pentium 3 katmai at 500 mhz (using chipset L440GX+), and on that machine those kernel threads have never used ANY CPU AT ALL ! (and yes, it was under the same network load) but that machine was using a couple of Intel network cards, could the network cards be the reason ?
thanks for your help
Last edited by manoa (2013-10-12 07:43:28)

flash to latest bios 4.6:
http://www.msi.com/support/mb/Z97_PC_Mate.html#down-bios
then retest
do >>Clear CMOS Guide<< with power cord removed after the update

New iMac i7 sluggish with Call of Duty 4 - low CPU usage

Hi All,
I'm a recent convert from PC to Mac.
I'm running a new iMac i7 (2.8Ghz, 8Gb, 1TB, ATI HD4850, OS X 10.6.5 ) with not much software on it.
Call of Duty 4 modern warfare runs really great and very smooth.
However, when I pause the game and go to the desktop (to check my gmail for example) - then the computer runs very very slow (like everything is moving in slow motion) - if I click to open a new tab on Chrome or Firefox then there is a delay of about 2 seconds until the tab opens, if I move the mouse cursor from side to side over the dock - then the Dock magnification is happening in slow motion etc.
I have checked the CPU usage and it's only at 36% - which I think is not much.
The memory usage is:
Free 859 MB
Wired: 585 MB
Active: 1.34 GB
Inactive: 5.24GB
Used: 7.15GB
VM Size 159.05 GB
Page ins: 4.61GB
PAge outs: 772kb
Swap used: 5.3 MB
So why is the computer so slow?
Should it grind to a halt when running a game in the background?
This doesn't happen on my PC normally.
Would highly appreciate your thought/comments/suggestions.
Message was edited by: DutchGamer

I think the reason is you don't have enough RAM for the about of apps you are running. Your system shows 859 MB free which really isn't that much if you are gaming. If you upgrade to 12 GB I believe the system will be fine. If you don't want to upgrade then when gaming I'd close everything else, especially web browsers as all of them continually use more and more RAM. Personally I use Safari (but I also have Chrome, Firefox and Opera on my system) and find that closing it from time to time saves RAM. What is occurring is a system running low on RAM resorts to RAM swapping and also uses HD space to swap so when it's going through these processes what you see are slow downs.
Roger

Yosemite Upgrade/Clean Install Extreme slowdown/Low CPU usage

Hey so i upgraded to Yosemite on my mid 2011 (or 2010 according toApple account) imac. Ive experienced extreme slow down, after trying many things i did a clean install and its still acting the same. I've noticed that my CPU usage is usually low and it only goes up when the computer decides it wants to run normally for a minute. For example I'll be playing a game (elder scrolls online) get 20 to 40 % usage, but for some reason, that usage will drop out of nowhere, and make the game lag.
It takes anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes to open most applications, even a finder window or system prefences... ive ran repairs, disk permissions, tweaked settings like reduce transparency, im just at a loss. Mavericks worked fine and i dont have a time machine. Ive heard replacing the Dock.app with a mavericks dock.app could work but no one has that file online
Please help, let me know what you need from me. Apple on the phone said "its the luck of the draw!"

I'd like to note i tried a fresh boot camp install , and the window side of things is also sluggish.
EtreCheck version: 2.1.8 (121)
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Download EtreCheck from http://etresoft.com/etrecheck
Click the [Click for support] links for help with non-Apple products.
Click the [Click for details] links for more information about that line.
Hardware Information: ℹ️
    iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010) (Technical Specifications)
    iMac - model: iMac11,3
    1 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 4-core
    6 GB RAM Upgradeable
        BANK 0/DIMM0
            2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok
        BANK 1/DIMM0
            2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok
        BANK 0/DIMM1
            Empty
        BANK 1/DIMM1
            2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok
    Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported
    Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Video Information: ℹ️
    ATI Radeon HD 5750 - VRAM: 1024 MB
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        BOOTCAMP (disk0s4) /Volumes/BOOTCAMP : 251.00 GB (192.09 GB free)
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    Anywhere
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Top Processes by CPU: ℹ️
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    Mar 22, 2015, 12:01:02 AM    /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/LCore_2015-03-22-000102_[redacted].hang
    Mar 21, 2015, 10:42:20 PM    /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Appriority_2015-03-21-224220_[redacted].cpu_res ource.diag [Click for details]
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    Mar 21, 2015, 02:48:48 PM    /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/setup_2015-03-21-144848_[redacted].hang

Low CPU usage but dropping frames

Hey gang,
I am really liking the FME application. However I am having
some performance issues. I understand setting some advanced video
encoding settings can impact frame rate. This being said, I am
setting 20 FPS with great quality lower frame rate setting
selected, or also the good setting.
I understand that if the CPU is being taxed that it will
trade quality for frame rate. However I am only seeing a 30% CPU
usage in most cases it goes between 15%-30% and it starts dropping
frames like mad in high motion scenes, although the CPU is only
utilizing 30%.
The CPU is set to dedicated. I even went into Task Manager
and set FME to high priority and it still won't fix this issue. For
some reason FME does not want to utilize my CPU's capabilities.
I am running the following:
Windows Vista
Athlon 4000+ X2 Dual Core
3 GB RAM
ATI TV WONDER PRO Capture Card
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hello? Does anyone from Adobe know why this is happening?
I understand why frames would be dropped if you set high
quality and your CPU can't encode in real time however the 30% cpu
usage I am getting while encoding isn't indicating to me I have a
cpu issue.
Also as a note when I change the quality settings at no point
can I get my CPU to actually get busy enough where I think frames
should be dropping.
Another side question. Is FME mult-threaded? We all know dual
cores are popular now. Also when I say 30% if its a single threaded
app, that would mean 100% = 2 cores, 50% = 1 core, so 30% of of
that 100% would be all on one core if its a single threaded
application.
This would mean perhaps the utilization is higher than
expected and frames are dropping perhaps.
Any insight would be great.
Thanks and take care.

High load average

Hi all,
System: SunOS 5.10 Generic_127127-11 sun4u sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise
load: 4:08pm up 78 day(s), 6:57, 2 users, load average: 1.10, 1.14, 1.14
ps -ef | more
root 3 0 0 Oct 29 ? 1185:48 fsflush
Is it normal that fsflush eats that much of time?
Users told me, that it took several minutes to open files. What could be the issue?
If you need more information (vmstat, iostat) let me know.
Thanks in advance.
Cheers,
Axel

asgrunix wrote:
Hi all,
System: SunOS 5.10 Generic_127127-11 sun4u sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise
load: 4:08pm up 78 day(s), 6:57, 2 users, load average: 1.10, 1.14, 1.14
ps -ef | more
root 3 0 0 Oct 29 ? 1185:48 fsflush
Is it normal that fsflush eats that much of time? Doesn't seem unreasonable. A few hours of CPU time in 2 1/2 months? I wouldn't be looking there for your performance issues.
Users told me, that it took several minutes to open files. What could be the issue?Slow storage? Failing storage? Heavy load on the machine at the time? Any of those things.
Darren

Low cpu usage when exporting

Is it normal to have only 4-12% of cpu usage when exporting video out of ae? I´m exporting it from render queue.
My computer is 2x dual 3,0 ghz prosessor, 8 gb ram, nvidia 8600 gt in xp professional x64
thanks

As Jonas suggested, CPU utilization may be somewhat low because the bottleneck isn't the processing of the data but moving (reading and writing) it.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily what's going on for you, but it's worth pointing out that the CPU is often not the bottleneck.
If disk I/O is what's slowing you down, one way that you can speed things up is to use three disks for your work: one to run the program from, one to store input assets, and one to write output files to.
There are a lot of tips for improving performance in the
"Improve performance" section of After Effects CS3 Help on the Web.

High load averages, low CPU usage

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