Lousy Performance of Mac Pro X1900 XT in Leopard

Being the paranoid person I am, I installed Leopard to an external FW 800 drive to test it. Immediately, the window drawing in Leopard did not seem as snappy to me as it did in Tiger. Then, I pulled up iTunes, to check what version of iTunes comes with Leopard 10.5.0... I was stunned, not by the version of iTunes, but at the graphics lameness I witnessed.
If you launch iTunes then choose iTunes | About iTunes you will see that when the credits scroll by, they scroll by all choppy and herky-jerky. Yes folks, that's right, Apple's fastest and most top of the line machine -- a Mac Pro with an X1900 XT -- is not sufficiently swift enough to properly display the credits for iTunes.
Yes, I tried 10.5.1, same difference.
Needless to say, I'm sticking with Tiger until Apple fixes the X1900 XT driver(s) in Leopard.
Can anyone else with a Mac Pro and X1900 XT please go to iTunes | About iTunes and commiserate?

Just for info; Leopard is not a full 64 bit operating system. In fact, there is only 1 Apple GUI app that is compiled for x86_64 and that is Xcode, and even that runs in 32 bit mode by default, unless you uncheck the "Run in 32 bit mode" box when you do a Get Info on it.
There are many 64 bit frameworks and libraries, but the rest of the operating system applications are all 32 bit.
You can see that for yourself by running:
file /path to applications/* | grep x86_64
In a terminal.
Hyperion:~ will$ file /Applications/Utilities//Contents/MacOS/ | grep x86_64
/Applications/Utilities/OSXPM.app/Contents/MacOS/OSXPM: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
Hyperion:~ will$
I have 2 x86_64 apps, but only because I recompiled them to see if they worked.
There are a handful of x86_64 apps in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, but thats about it. Oh, Apache is 64 bit by the way.

Similar Messages

How is the performance of Mac Pro if i use it as host for windows and linux virtual machines.

How is the performance of Mac Pro if i use it as host for windows and linux virtual machines.
I am planning to buy a high performance PC to run my Windows and Linux servers as vitrual machines for my testing purposes.
Initially i planned to build my own computer with recommended configurations but considering space constaints and cooling factors i think Mac Pro can be a choice. But need some inputs if Mac pro (Intel Xeon E5, 12 GB RAM) is good for running virtual Machines.

You could even run Windows natively and still run your VM servers.
I have seen reports and such on MacRumors and elsewhere - run Windows natively as well as VMs (can also do testing and run Mavericks in a VM under Mavericks)
The fast internal PCIe-SSD, plus 6 or 8 cores, and 32-64GB RAM. Of course for $5,000 for 8-core, some Thunderbolt storage and 32GB/64GB RAM you can buy some serious hardware.

Mac Pro + X1900 XT crashing after boot (Leopard) - please read...

I have a Mac Pro quad 3GHz w/ ATI X1900 XT videocard. It's one of the first models released.
For the past 4-5 months I've noticed a few pixels on in random places - looks like stuck pixels on an LCD, but they're not as they move around from time to time and sometimes aren't there at all. It progressed to horizontal lines across the screen in places - following window boundaries, etc.
A few weeks ago I de-dusted the X1900 (there was much), applied latest Mac Pro firmware update and applied that recent X1900 XT firmware update. All in the same hour. The dots went nearly totally away, but the lines did not.
In the past 4-5 days, my Mac Pro basically freezes up within five minutes of boot. Can be running different apps. UT2K4 or just activating Expose or doing nothing. Right now it's still up amazingly after 30 mins.
I've got some screenshots and I found some crash log entries that correspond. Please have a look:
http://www.blakespot.com/macproleopardcrash/
I also took a 10 min HD video of the crashing I will put on a DVD and take to the Genius Bar to show the problem, if I need to send in hardware to Apple for repair.
I would love to think it's the X1900 and it overheated or something and became damaged so that would be all I need to send in. Note that NONE of these problems were at all present in the first 6 months of life or so. And yes, the crashing is post-Leopard install.
Very troubling. Is anyone else having issues like this? Any input appreciated.
Thanks much.
blakespot

I have had nothing but trouble with ATI cards on all of my macs, I really wish Apple would drop the ATI card altogether and replace it with an nvidia 8800gtx,
its the only thing still stopping me from buying a mac pro,
the nvidia cards are either 256mb £99 or £1,000 quadro (old technology and overpriced), they need a card in the middle ground that's not an ATI

Strange CPU Performance issue Mac Pro, Logic 7.2.3......

Hi there,
I am experiencing a strange issue with Logic 7.2.3 and my Mac Pro.
I am running about 70 tracks in a tune I'm writing, with a lot of the EQ and dynamics processed on a Liquid Mix, but am experiencing a lot of CPU spikes, and drop outs in logic.
The System Performance meters are showing that one of the CPU cores is at full capacity, whilst the Activity Monitor is showing a total usage of about 40%.
http://www.ephexis.co.uk/images/cpu-grab.jpg
I have tried every combination of settings in the audio preferences, but cannot seems to get this track to play properly.
With 71 tracks, this machine is currently LESS powerful than the G5 that I have been working on until purchasing the Mac Pro.
I there anything else I can try? Are there any other means of controlling buffer size?
I have a suspicion that this may have something to do with the Plugin Delay Compensation set to 'All' - But without doing this, I cannot use the DSP effects of the liquid mix to work on a Bus! Very frustrating.
Many thanks for the help, any ideas at would be deeply appreciated,
Adam Ephexis
Mac Pro 2.66, 2GB, 1.5TB -=- MacBook Pro 2.16, 1GB, 100GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) Liquid Mix, Fireface 800, Apogee MiniDAC, Creamware A16 Ultra

Great!
Thanks for the tips guys.
I have tried to find an offending loop or part in the sequence, but cannot find anything at all thats causing the issue.
My suspiscion is that using the focusrite Liquid mix on a part, that is in turn going into a delay compensated bus, which has another Liquid mix plugin on it, is causing the issues. I use the total mix software in the fireface to perform the summing of the busses, which I think in turn may be causing the PDC to glitch a bit more.
Which is a bit annoying, as the mix in this tune is my best yet!
So I will attempt to remove the liquid mixes that are running in series in a chain, and see if thats the problem, but if that fails, time to re-format again!
I'll let you know how I get on in the next couple of days!
Thanks again,
Adam
Mac Pro 2.66, 2GB, 1.5TB -=- MacBook Pro 2.16, 1GB, 100GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) Logic 7.2.3 - Fireface 800, Focusrite Liquid Mix, Apogee MiniDAC, Creamware A16 Ultra

CS2 performance on Mac Pro vs G4 based computers

I'm currently using a Powerbook G4 1.5 with 512mb. I am having a hard time using Photoshop because I've been working with really high resolution scans lately. I'm looking for someone who has both a Powerbook and a Mac Pro 2.66ghz, I would like to know whether or not moving up to a Mac Pro would speed things up for me since i'm on a G4. I know that the Mac Pro runs Adobe CS2 slower than the G5, but the G4 is a much slower processor than the G5 and my Powerbook has a 4200rpm drive. Any input would be greatly appreciated, I'm off to an Apple store for more info from a Genius, but I'd like some input from someone who uses both on a regular basis or something like that.
Thanks

My somewhat educated guess is that photoshop on the MacPro will be faster. The much faster cpu speed will offset the performance penalty of Rosetta.
I'd recommend at least 2gig but more like 4 gig, as that seems to be the sweet spot for photshop running on intel macs.
Take a look at these Benchmarks Actually the whole article is very informative.
Mike

OT: PS2 performance on Mac Pro

I'm sick and tired of waiting for the mythical x1900XT G5 PCI-e edition, and I'm considering a Mac Pro with that card and 3 GB of RAM. I know from reports here that it should be quite fast with Aperture, but what I'm concerned about is Photoshop performance. I do most of my editing in PS2 (using the open in external editor command). The image files start out at 45 MB or so, and are often at 150 MB by the time I save them again.
My current set-up is a dual-core G5 2.0Ghz with 2.5 GB RAM and Raptor 10k RPM boot drive, using a second 400 GB HD as a scratch disk in PS2. I'm wondering how PS2 performance with a 2.66 MP + 1900XT + 3 GB of RAM would compare in "real world" usage with my current set-up.
My other option would be to get a ridiculously priced 7800GT for $800 and bump up RAM to 4 GB on my G5. But I figure I can sell the G5 for $1800 or so, and for a few hundred bucks more get a MP instead of sinking money into an older machine.
What do you think?

Sell the G5 and buy a MP. At this time of year it
often makes sense to wait for MacExpo SF January 8,
because new choices will be available (almost
assuredly quad cores) and prices of today's best
boxes will lower.
Hmmm... tricky. The MP boxes will be cheaper, but the resale value on my G5 will be lower too. I wonder if there's an advantage either way.

FCP Performance on Mac Pro

Hi! After 3 months of pushing, I finally got a Mac Pro 2.8ghz 8-core with Final Cut Studio 2. I just got the workstation setup and Final Cut Studio installed, all the updates are completed. Now I am getting down into some light training with some DV footage I have to familiarize myself with the capabilities of this system. So far I have not been impressed. I imported 2 30-sec DV clips, dropped them into the sequence with crossfades, and when I playback, I hear 2 seconds of audio followed by beeps, and at the point where the clips are supposed to cross-dissolve the playback stops with a warning that frames have been dropped. I had better performance with iMovie on my G4. I know that FCP is a bigger beast but having worked with Avid MC on a PowerMac 9600 I am expecting more out of this setup. What in the world could I be doing wrong?

LD Bear old wrote:
When I open the .dv clip in Quicktime it shows format: DV, 720x480 (640x480), Millions, Stereo, 48.000 kHz. What else should I check?
Ahh, I think I see your issue - and it's something that many folks who are moving up from iMovie experience.
Basically, FCP doesn't like .dv files. It likes .mov files. Open up you .dv file in QuickTime and export it out as a QuickTime movie (a .mov file). Be sure to select the Options... button in the export dialog (since you're bound to be overwhelmed, use the settings from your FCP Timeline as a guide) in QuickTime. Using the default settings in QT will not help you (the default is meant for web sharing, not editing, and will end up being step backwards).
In the future, avoid using iMovie captured material in FCP. Capture and digitize using FCP. Don't ask me why Apple decided to do this, but you cannot simply port your files from iMovie and get them working in FCP without a lot of hassle.

HD video performance on Mac Pro 4

I have a new Mac Pro 4 core. It has 1.5TB of disk in a raid 0 configuration and 5GB of RAM. It also uses the ATI x1900 video card. The display is an Apple Cinema 23".
It has done all of the software updates.
The only software loaded onto the machine so far is FCS.
Now when I try to watch The BBC HD video at 1920x1080 that I download to my local hard drive (vide from here http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/bbc-blue.html ), it is very choppy.
IMHO, this machine should be able to play this video back in real time with NO issue. What do I need to do to correct this issue?

To tell the truth, sending folks off to read a blog or another site when asking for help troubleshooting. And you fail to mention you have the X1900 in a non-supported or alternate slot.
Mixing 7300 GT and Radeon doesn't work. And having two Radeons???
There are lots of threads here on using the Expansion Slot Utility and video card configurations.

XAVC 4K playback performance on Mac Pro

2009 Nehalem 2.66GHz 8-core Mac Pro with 16GB RAM and GTX570, running OS X 10.8.5.
As part of my freelance post work, I've started tackling 4K XAVC-I footage from the Sony FS7. The footage loads alright, but is impossible to play without serious stuttering. Brand new project. I tried any playback resolutions between full and 1/8, same behavior. I can't play a single second without the drop frame indicator going orange and starting to rack up dropped frames.
CPU utilization during playback is steady at 70%, and drive reads are at 80MB/s (our SAN successfully delivers 350MB/s).
Tried both Premiere CC and CC(2014), same behavior.
Performance in DaVinci Resolve doesn't look much different.
It's going to be a week or so before I'm back at the machine, so I'm preparing my attack plan. "Gotta buy a new computer" is the easiest possible answer but also the most expensive (we can all predict the boss` reaction) and not necessarily accurate one. Maybe it is the right one, but part of my job is to eliminate other possible (and cheaper) causes first.
What is the current state of 4K playback in Premiere? Is it two camps of "always worked for me" and "never works for me"? Has anyone had playback issues that were fixed by updating CUDA drivers, Premiere patches, identifying odd bugs, etc.?
I'm going to play with the video output, Mercury settings, source drive, and transcode to 4K ProRes at different bitrates... any other suggestions?
We all know that the new black Mac Pro "can do 4K", but I haven't heard a statement that "no other Macs can". Surprisingly, I haven't found discussions (let alone official recommendations) of minimum hardware requirements for Premiere and 4K. I'd be happy to be pointed to any if they exist. The CPUs in this 2009 Mac Pro should still pack more punch than any iMac model in the market, and is 25% slower than the baseline 2013 MP. If it's the GPU, I'd be happy to hear at least one testimony like "never worked with my GTX570 but once I went GTX680 I finally set sailing".
Thanks!

I use a Sony Notebook with 4 K Display and a USB 3 disk 2TB with footage from the FS 7, sequence lenght 3 hours and I have no problems. All is working very well.

Best hard drive performance on mac pro for final cut express

This week I'll be setting up a basic 4 core mac pro with 16 gb ram and 2 internal- 2tb WD Caviar Black drives. I'm wondering what would give me the best performance for running final cut express, and I'm considering setting up software raid 0 or using one drive for boot and one for scratch. Or should I set up software raid 0 with boot and scratch partitions? Or other suggestions? Thanks.

My recommendations -
With 2 drives in your Mac Pro, use *one disk for OS X and all of your apps;* the *second disk for data* (including your FCE scratch disk location). Partition each drive as a *single partition,* which will maximize performance over time.
In addition, you should invest in at least 1 external drive to use for backup purposes; if you don't, the day will come when you wish you had.
I strongly recommend AGAINST doing software RAID. Certainly not for your situation with only 2 drives, one of which will be your system HD; but also because hardware RAID is faster, more reliable, and does not require CPU resources to run.
Your internal SATA drives will provide plenty of performance for most video editing needs. You also have the ability to put 4 drives in your Mac Pro, in which case you can utilize the extra drives to provide additional performance if/when you get into serious multi-multi track video compositing.

Slow Performance On Mac Pro 12-Core

Hello Everyone,
I just recently purchased a 2012 Mac pro 12-Core and i have been getting unbelievabley slow performance with it. I am using Premiere Pro CS6 and it seems that the footage can sometimes get a bit laggy at times and not play back smoothly, sometimes rendering can take a bit of time as well. However here are the specs of my system:
Mac Pro 12-Core 2.4GHz (2.67GHz Turbo Boost)
40GB of Ram
ATI 5770 Graphics Card
1TB scratch disk (with a user on the drive that i can boot into)
OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 SSD OS/APPS drive
First question i would like to get answered once and for all.. Did i make a bad decision by purchasing a computer with such a slow clock speed (2.4GHz)?? I figured since The new editing software is switching to 64bit it shouldn't depend on clock speed anymore? (i just want to be sure that i purchased a more than capable machine) However i will be buying a Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD Drive for Scratch within the month. (I dont have the budget to buy a Raid controller yet to utilize 6GB/s transfer speeds, so 1 Fast SSD drive will have to do for now)
I should mention the current SSD drive im on right now only has 13GB remaining, would that affect performance? Also, my 1Tb media drive is filled up with CRAP from my previous computer (Migration transferred EVERYTHING to that drive, only 120GB remains) would that drive with the media im working with affect performance too? Also just as a test, i took some footage from my GoPro Hero 3 camera and put it on my SSD to see if that would eliminate the lag, but still lag was present in Premiere.. (the footage was in a crappy .M4P format, so that may have affected it, but I dont know)
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
-Thanks in Advance!

The new editing software is switching to 64bit it shouldn't depend on clock speed anymore?
Wrong, clock speed is everything.
I should mention the current SSD drive im on right now only has 13GB remaining, would that affect performance?
No, not really.
Also, my 1Tb media drive is filled up with CRAP from my previous computer (Migration transferred EVERYTHING to that drive, only 120GB remains) would that drive with the media im working with affect performance too?
When fill rates go up, performance goes down. With almost 90% fill rate, the disk performs only at around 50% of a new disk.
Two disks is absolute bare minimum, and your cores will constantly be waiting for the disks to read or write data, sitting idle most of the time.
Also just as a test, i took some footage from my GoPro Hero 3 camera and put it on my SSD to see if that would eliminate the lag, but still lag was present in Premiere..
GoPro material requires a very fast computer, which yours is not with the low clock speed, outdated E5620 CPU's, only two disks, and a non-CUDA capable video card.
Take a look at the PPBM5 Benchmark and look at the system at rank # 854, which is a MacPro, very similar to your system, dual E5620, AMD video card, less memory but uses three disks.
So, your system would be around the same rank as the one above, among the slowest 25% of all systems and something like 10 - 15 times slower than a fast system. You tax your system to the extreme with the GoPro Hero3 material, and the consequence is the slow performance you see.
Sorry, not much you can do, other than get a new system. If you sell it now, it may get you a price, good enough to get a much faster Windows system and maybe even keep the change. Simply said, you bought a MacPro for € 3.5 K, sell it for € 3 K, buy a PC for € 2.5 K that is around 5-6 times faster and your loss is recovered.
However i will be buying a Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD Drive for Scratch within the month
What a pity the MacPro does not have SATA 6G ports, only SATA 3G, because then that SSD will run at almost half speed.

Parallels performance on Mac Pro

I'm strongly considering a Mac Pro purchase to replace not only a Dual G5 but also a Dual Core Pentium Dell. I run large format posters and prints from my home office. I only have the Dell because the RIP software (Roland Versaworks) is Windows only. Can anyone running Parallels on either a 3GHz or 2.66GHz give me some insight as to performance of ANY apps that you may be using Parallels for.
My setup would include either the 2.66 or 3GHz, 4GB RAM and the 250GB HD for starters. I'm going to customize storage with HD I purchase seperately.
It would be real nice to be able to get those two heaters from under my desk!
Power Mac G5/2.7GHz DP, MBP 2.16GHz, Powerbook 12 G4/1.5GHz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

parallel currently does not work with the Mac Pro.
The folks at Parallels have said they will release an
update n the near future that will correct the
problem that keeps the Mac Pro and Parallels from
running.
Not 100% correct.
From the Admin user go into the terminal and enter
sudo nvram boot-args="-legacy maxmem=XXXX"
where XXXX is a number. Parallels suggest 1024 or 2048, but for me I had to go-to 4096 before it worked. Then reboot. This puts the Mac Pro back into 32 bit mode.
You can then start parallels again and create & run your virtual systems.
To reset back to 64 bit user
sudo nvram boot-args=""
A screen-shot of Parallels running on my Mac Pro
Here I am running both Suse 8.2 Linux and WinXP SP2

GarageBand performance on Mac Pro

Yesterday when I was composing a beautiful song I had a couple of instruments playing at the same time. At the bottom of the screen I see the notes of the score I´m composing as they are played. While this is nevertheless surprising, I am actually curious about how this would look on a Mac Pro.
As soon as the song audio produces just a little bit of work for the CPU, the screen refresh goes down from perfect timing to one second chokes on my machine as the same time as CPU load goes beyond 110 %. Activity monitor show there are about 20 threads in GarageBand. The sound is perfect. What happens if, say one buys a 2x2.0 GHz Mac Pro(4 cores totally)? The actual CPU frequency will be lower, but would the display respond better? That is: Is GarageBand a program that handles multiple threads well or does one have to buy a Mac Pro with higher CPU frequency?
(I´m using a 30" Apple Cinema HD Display)

pink_snow wrote:
The hatter wrote:
Can you imagine a Mac Pro not handing it without breaking into a sweat? I can't.
What does this sentence mean? Please simplify!
I'm positive he worded that incorrectly. "What he meant to say is "Can you imagine a Mac Pro that couldn't handle it without breaking a sweat?" Basically a Mac Pro is designed to go the distance with applicaitons like this, given you've configured the machines with enough memory and storage resources.

I recently bought a 2008 mac pro which came with leopard 10.5. I can't load any new programs because it calls for a password, but it won't accept it. I bought new snow leopard 10.6.3 but I can't load it for the same reason. How can I completely reboot.

Help. I recently bought a 2008 Mac Pro from Mac of all Trades. It came with Leopard 10.5 installed. When I set initially started the computer, I followed the instructions on the screen. I was asked to set up a password which I did. Since I'm very forgetful and not too tech savy, I wrote it down as I typed it in. I first went to install Office Mac 2011 but when it asks for a password, it won't accept the one I set up. I was told that if I bought the new Snow Leopard 10.6.3 and installed it, that it would reset everything. Well, it won't allow me to load it without the password. I am new to Apple - this is my first. I have always been able to "reboot" a computer with discs but I'm not sure how to do this one. Is there a way to do it without the password and reset everything? Could somone please email me
Thank You. David Moore
<Email Edited by Host>

If you don't have original install disks for your Mac, you can order replacements disks directly from Apple at a nominal cost. The original install DVDs are required to reset the password.
If you have no data on your drive that you want to keep, you can boot up from the OSX Snow Leopard disk and install OSX SL.
Insert the Snow Leopard DVD and hold the C key during startup. The Mac should boot from the CD/DVD drive into the installer.
Follow the prompts, erase the disk and install OSX Snow Leopard.

Mac Pro - Newly Updated to Leopard - No Longer Boots

I upgraded my Mac Pro to Leopard yesterday and everything appeared to go smoothly. I was experiencing issues with left mouse clicks not registering but after running Software Update and getting the latest updates I was able to click again.
I tried to wake the Mac from sleep this morning and it refused. I reset and it will not boot.
As it's a Sunday, Apple Care are closed so here's what I've tried so far:
1. Safe Mode: it won't enter into safe mode.
2. Resetting PRAM: done
3. Single user mode - fsck: done and no issues
4. Disk Utility from DVD: done and no issues
5. Verbose Mode: Hangs
6. Reinstall Leopard: I chose archive and install and it tells me there are files missing on Mackintosh HD so the installation is cancelled.
I have a bootable clone, via Super Duper, of Tiger before I upgraded, so I was considering trying the erase and install option with Leopard but I'm not exactly sure how I would get all my data back in Leopard.
Getting increasing frustrated as I desperately need access to my applications and data. I would be very grateful if anyone would be kind enough to offer any suggestions.

I've had another thought. I was playing around with folder and screen sharing yesterday and at one point I could not access Mackintosh HD because I had insufficient privileges.
I managed to get it working again but having just checked the log from when I tried to archive and install Leopard earlier today I found this on the last line:
Failed to open databse on '/Volumes/Mackintosh HD' , Error 14, 13, Permission denied.
Please excuse my ignorance but could I have somehow simply locked myself out?

Lousy Performance of Mac Pro X1900 XT in Leopard

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