- why it is that playing any sort of music on the Mac uses way too much CPU compared to a PC? Try any media player, be it playing MP3s on iTunes, or streaming music on RealOne or WMP, or Audion or whatever: you'll see your CPU getting sucked away when it should barely make a dent on a modern system. This is getting sooooooooooo freakin' long on the tooth... i thought by waiting a bit, things would improve but boy is the pace at which key consumer apps are updated glacial on the Mac... the list is so long it's not even funny: WMP, RealOne, pretty much any big name IM software (MSN IM, Yahoo IM), etc. And iTunes is still the slow piggish molasse it always was (as even PC users reckon).
Sorry, sounds like you use task manager etc to gauge CPU usage. Try using Performance monitor (Start - Admin - Performance monitor. Select appropriate columns (threads, virt mem, cpu etc) and see what is really being done. Speedupmypc also gives more accurate cpu usage figures.
Our HP530's (3Ghz) still requires 4% cpu to run Windows Media Play 9 (with optimized XP code) and our Dual 1.25Ghz Macs also require 4% for iTunes.
Where does it use the cpu? Starting, displaying the visuliser.
Even our itunes server (G3 300Mhz) only uses 15-20% cpu and its also runs Distiller for some other apps.
Yahoo needs to get its head out of its ass and rewrite launch so it works with standards based browsers like firefox. If they want to keep using obsolete techniques that work in out-of-date browser engine implementations like IE and Netscape 4.x, it is not Apple's problem. I would recommend sending feedback to Yahoo, that is what I did.
On my Dual 1.4 GHz system here at work, iTunes is playing and takes about 3 to 4% of my CPU resources. Process Viewer is taking less than 1%, and its polling every 5 seconds.
Applications running:
Finder, Illustrator 10, Photoshop 7, InDesign 2, Acrobat Pro 6, Safari 1, Entourage X, iChat 1, Word X, iTunes 4.2, Stickies, Suitcase, PowerPoint, Preview, Excel X, Proess Viewer, CPU Monitor.
I don't see a problem here. I suppose weaker systems might have an issue, but I've never noticed a lag in iTunes on this system, my 700 MHz iBook G3 or my old iMac G4/800.
Sorry, sounds like you use task manager etc to gauge CPU usage. Try using Performance monitor (Start - Admin - Performance monitor. Select appropriate columns (threads, virt mem, cpu etc) and see what is really being done. Speedupmypc also gives more accurate cpu usage figures.
Our HP530's (3Ghz) still requires 4% cpu to run Windows Media Play 9 (with optimized XP code) and our Dual 1.25Ghz Macs also require 4% for iTunes.
Where does it use the cpu? Starting, displaying the visuliser.
Even our itunes server (G3 300Mhz) only uses 15-20% cpu and its also runs Distiller for some other apps.
Dobby.
I disabled audio hardware acceleration on my athlon 1.3ghz and couldn't get Performance Monitor to show more than 0% of processor time on winamp unless I played with the GUI or it was crossfading. Cranking up the scale didn't show finer results either.
Comments
Originally posted by cygsid
can somebody tell me:
- why it is that playing any sort of music on the Mac uses way too much CPU compared to a PC? Try any media player, be it playing MP3s on iTunes, or streaming music on RealOne or WMP, or Audion or whatever: you'll see your CPU getting sucked away when it should barely make a dent on a modern system. This is getting sooooooooooo freakin' long on the tooth... i thought by waiting a bit, things would improve but boy is the pace at which key consumer apps are updated glacial on the Mac... the list is so long it's not even funny: WMP, RealOne, pretty much any big name IM software (MSN IM, Yahoo IM), etc. And iTunes is still the slow piggish molasse it always was (as even PC users reckon).
Sorry, sounds like you use task manager etc to gauge CPU usage. Try using Performance monitor (Start - Admin - Performance monitor. Select appropriate columns (threads, virt mem, cpu etc) and see what is really being done. Speedupmypc also gives more accurate cpu usage figures.
Our HP530's (3Ghz) still requires 4% cpu to run Windows Media Play 9 (with optimized XP code) and our Dual 1.25Ghz Macs also require 4% for iTunes.
Where does it use the cpu? Starting, displaying the visuliser.
Even our itunes server (G3 300Mhz) only uses 15-20% cpu and its also runs Distiller for some other apps.
Dobby.
Applications running:
Finder, Illustrator 10, Photoshop 7, InDesign 2, Acrobat Pro 6, Safari 1, Entourage X, iChat 1, Word X, iTunes 4.2, Stickies, Suitcase, PowerPoint, Preview, Excel X, Proess Viewer, CPU Monitor.
I don't see a problem here. I suppose weaker systems might have an issue, but I've never noticed a lag in iTunes on this system, my 700 MHz iBook G3 or my old iMac G4/800.
Kirk
Originally posted by dobby
Sorry, sounds like you use task manager etc to gauge CPU usage. Try using Performance monitor (Start - Admin - Performance monitor. Select appropriate columns (threads, virt mem, cpu etc) and see what is really being done. Speedupmypc also gives more accurate cpu usage figures.
Our HP530's (3Ghz) still requires 4% cpu to run Windows Media Play 9 (with optimized XP code) and our Dual 1.25Ghz Macs also require 4% for iTunes.
Where does it use the cpu? Starting, displaying the visuliser.
Even our itunes server (G3 300Mhz) only uses 15-20% cpu and its also runs Distiller for some other apps.
Dobby.
I disabled audio hardware acceleration on my athlon 1.3ghz and couldn't get Performance Monitor to show more than 0% of processor time on winamp unless I played with the GUI or it was crossfading. Cranking up the scale didn't show finer results either.