Multiple profiles

Question

Is there a hit in performance with multiple profiles? Say 20 or 30 profiles. And if so, is it in application performance as in simple use or is it in render times when you are waiting for a project to render?
Thanks.

Answer 1

1327/3773
Hi Todd,
Do you mean 20 or 30 User Accounts?
Anyway, a general approach about Mac OS X memory management:
When a task is running, it uses as much memory (+ virtual memory) as it can find left. Other running tasks share the memory at the same time, but they will "give away" some or all memory they are using (thus slow down), in favor of the main task.
This is roughly, not exactly detailed of course, how it works, no matter if the "secondary" tasks are being ran by the same User, by another (others) User(s), or by the System (although system tasks usually don't give away much of their default memory...).
To observe all this very clever and efficient Mac OS X behaviour, use Activity Monitor: Watch "All Processes", you'll see how some are slowing down when others need more juice.
Of course if other Users Accounts or apps are simply logged out or closed, they simply don't have any performance influence.
In a word
(concerning User Accounts):
As long as you don't run many tasks at the same time, there will be no performance hit for the one application you are running.
Of course if you are talking about more tasks to be run within the same application, certainly the application will not run as smoothly, quickly, as if it was doing only one simple task.
I hope this helps, or did I misunderstand your question completely?
Axl