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Ram & Performance Fine Tuning
I thought this post about RAM and tweaking your Mac for top performance might be interesting to post in this thread. Copied from another thread and posted by Kenji Kato.
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If you are running any Dual CPU G5 system with OS 10.3 or newer, then you will see speed and memory usage improvements at the following memory levels.2.5GB – When you hit this magic number you should see as much as a 20%+ increase in performance with some apps (even more under OS10.4). Below this level (2.5GB) your system does LOTS of virtual memory swapping, and you will NEVER see full performance usage out of your CPUs.
4GB+ – Very little improvement over the 2.5GB level, but measurable.
Any other memory levels will only change how much is available for usage, but they won’t change the overall system performance.
Also make sure that the memory is added in pairs of the exact same speed. Some of the cheaper memory chips out there don’t run at the same rate as the memory you might all ready have in the system, and as such problems could arise.
One other speed optimizer that every graphics pro using a Mac (especial a G5) should know is how to tune for optimal performance. By default all G5 (and G4) Macs running OS 10 are set to NOT take full advantage of the CPUs horse power. Why? you ask. Because most users don’t need it, and would rather have a “pleasant” computing experience rather than a noisy heater of a computer.
So how do you turn the dial to 11 you ask? Go to the Apple menu and choose System Preferences… Then go to Energy Saver. When the Energy Saver preferences come up click the Options button. Near the bottom of the Energy Saver Options window you will see a pop-up menu with Processor Performance: next to it. Select the menu and choose Highest. That’s it!
You have now told your Mac to run a full processor speed at all times for applications. By default the system is set to cycle its CPU speed automatically, but as a result you will almost never see the optimal performance out of your G5 when working with graphics apps. The down side is that your G5 will now run like a wind tunnel more often. This means that it is producing more heat. But that’s the price you pay for top performance.
Now, as for Motion. If you want to increase performance for Motion (or the new FCHD, DVDSP or Shake), your video card is WAY more important than your main system memory, although if you don’t have the minimum 2.5GB then I would start there.
Because Motion relies HEAVILY on the graphics card you need to make sure you have at least a 128MB or higher end card graphics card (ATI Radeon 9600). If you can afford it. The 256MB graphics cards (ATI Radeon 9650 with 256MB DDR SDRAM, ATI Radeon X850 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM or NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT DDL with 256MB GDDR3 SDRAM) give you even more performance. This is because Motion “caches” much of the graphics its working with in video memory first, then when there isn’t enough video memory it uses you main system memory. But this is much slower than video memory because of the way Motion works.
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“Give a skeptic an inch and he’ll measure it” -
3 Replies
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Also in motion if you do a search in the Help pdf for “performance” it will give you results for things to turn off or on for better performance. By following this it made my machine 2.5G5 run so much smoother.
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Thanks for the info!
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Mike,
Great post!!! You get a big gold star.
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