Macbook Pro Santa Rosa Performance

Pandamonium · Post by **Pandamonium** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 3:24 pm

Boraxx:- what kind of plugs are you running that requires you to freeze lots? Im gettin kinda nervous about plopping down 3 and a half grand (Australian) for a laptop that runs at half speed on the apps I want to mainly use. I really want a Mac laptop as my Mac pro quadcore has been fantastic, and I much prefer OSX to Windoze. My 5 year old Toshiba PC lappy that I am typing this on can play back around 8 tracks in Ableton (including a session drums track, an operator track, and and a few sampler tracks) without freezing.

boraxx · Post by **boraxx** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:18 pm

dont get me wrong, these laptops are the shit. and live runs pretty good on them, just maybe not as "HOLY SHIT IM RUNNING 100 MOOGS AND IT DOESNT BLINK" kind of way.

im not really running anything too crazy, actually most of my synth lines are made on ableton's own ANALOG.

after a while you just learn how to cut corners: freezing, consolidating audio that has been warped (even more in complex mode), consolidating audio that is highly edited / chopped, and so on and so forth.

trouble is some of the more adventurous routing (like sidechaining) prevents tracks from being freezable. so that kind of gets in the way.

but hey, no tool is perfect

fed

fragmentated · Post by **fragmentated** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:34 pm

My SR macbook pro seems to run fine and I do not use coolbook here. Live7.02 and leopard 10.5.2 with a motu ultralite.

One thing I have noticed is a something called syslogd that likes to take over my CPU. From what I can gather it might have to do with Leopard and still randomly happens with the 10.5.2 update.

Every once in a while if I start getting glitches in my audio or my fans start spinning really fast I'll open up the activity monitor and this syslogd is consuming 80-100% of the CPU.

Don't really now what its for, what its doing, why it randomly kicks in, and why it consumes so much power.

Has anyone else experienced this runaway Syslogd kick and and start stealing their resources?

Pasha · Post by **Pasha** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:35 pm

Timur wrote:
bleepsnbreaks wrote:It seems to me that you are failing to understand some of the problems being experienced by people.
My CPU will NEVER run higher than 800mhz, even when you run a CPU stress app. the speed stepping NEVER makes the CPU step up. THE SPEEDSTEPPING IS BROKEN. there are a few different problems being experienced by people
I did NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM on my core duo macbook it only sterted on my santa rosa macbook pro. The only way I can get my CPU to tun higher than 800mhz is to run coolbook and force the CPU at 2400
No, you fail to understand that this is a software problem and not a hardware one, because apparently it seems to run well on Windows when using Bootcamp (if I understood some of the posts here right). Also the fact that Coolbook is well able to clock the CPU shows that there's something wrong in Mac OS software, not in CPU/chipset hardware. Speedstep is not performed by the chipset or CPU but by a software driver that uses functions of the chipset/CPU.

SpeedStep is a trademark for a series of technologies (including SpeedStep, SpeedStep II, and SpeedStep III) built into some Intel microprocessors that allows the clock speed of the processor to be dynamically changed by software.
...
Intel's website specifically states that such drivers must come from the computer manufacturer; there are no generic drivers supplied by Intel which will enable SpeedStep for older Windows versions if one cannot obtain a manufacturer's driver.
...
Mac OS also has SpeedStep built into the kernel, since the release of the Intel version of OS X 10.4 and is controlled in the System Preference "Energy Saver"
Conclusion: Blame Apple, not Santa-Rosa!

Even my Rev 2 MacBook C2D has some problems and does not scale as possible.
It's Mac OS X (Tiger). If you unload form the kernel the module IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext, resposible of Speed Steeping. If you show the contents there's a plist file under ACPI_SMC folder that contains the speed steeping schema in an impossible to understand text file but googling a little you could find answers. If you want to do a test do it using a copy made with superduper, do not make any changes on your system. I simply unloaded the module from the kernel, and my Macbook boosts from 1.33Ghz to 1.67Ghz at Startup and it's more willing to scale to 2.0 ghz when needed. By testing Live 7.0.2 I have discovered that Live is also responsible for this, because other applications scale with no problem when needed. I'm building a case that can be tested from anyone and I'll post it soon.

- Best
- Pasha

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:37 pm

Frag:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php? ... 0233438149

bleepsnbreaks · Post by **bleepsnbreaks** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 7:08 pm

IM still havin to use coolbook when I use ableton otherwise I get the crazy stutters and artifacts etc.....

Pandamonium · Post by **Pandamonium** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:29 am

If Pasha is correct then it seems as though it is an Ableton problem, is anyone using logic 8 with no scaling problems? Would be good if the abes could step in here and either deny or confirm that it is an issue fixable by them.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 9:06 am

Pandamonium wrote:Machinesworking:- Do you have to run coolbook? or does Ableton run fine now on your Santa Rosa MBP without coolbook?

Honestly it seems that my particular problems were due to Speakerphone, and Akoustik Piano. Basically new updates to those applications and no problems.
Even before I updated I noticed that Coolbook had mixed results, sometimes no difference, and a glitch anyway. Sometimes I just think we all get carried away, and though PC's have issues, everyone accepts that they will and troubleshoots. No one wants to blame Apple software or third party plug ins when things go awry, especially if it seems like a new laptop brings on difficulties.
I'm not saying you guys are wrong etc. but just that I really really try to keep it clean testing wise, and even then, variables will pop up, and fix themselves etc.

bleepsnbreaks · Post by **bleepsnbreaks** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 9:33 am

Well I have had this problem since day 1 of having this macbook pro and my macbook doesnt do it. Both on leopard and on tiger.
And if I run coolbook at full speed I get no problems with live, without it, its unusable.
Ive pretty much given up that either apple or ableton will address the issue and I just leave coolbook running all the time.

Pandamonium · Post by **Pandamonium** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 9:48 pm

beepsnbreaks:- I notice in your signature that you are using live 6, have you tried the latest live 7 demo and noticed any change in performance?

bleepsnbreaks · Post by **bleepsnbreaks** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:05 pm

Yeah, it does it with 7 aswell, I have the demo installed and I was on the beta program....

shorm · Post by **shorm** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:51 am

fragmentated wrote:My SR macbook pro seems to run fine and I do not use coolbook here. Live7.02 and leopard 10.5.2 with a motu ultralite.

One thing I have noticed is a something called syslogd that likes to take over my CPU. From what I can gather it might have to do with Leopard and still randomly happens with the 10.5.2 update.

Every once in a while if I start getting glitches in my audio or my fans start spinning really fast I'll open up the activity monitor and this syslogd is consuming 80-100% of the CPU.

Don't really now what its for, what its doing, why it randomly kicks in, and why it consumes so much power.

Has anyone else experienced this runaway Syslogd kick and and start stealing their resources?

same problem here on a brand new MBP with OSX10.5.2 and Live7.0.3. any news about it?

m.Lo · Post by **m.Lo** » Wed May 07, 2008 9:31 am

Hi folks, I didn´t buy coolbook yet and watch the following: when I use the performancetest I got 65%. Now I opened the unregistered coolbook and set the cpu load slider from 0 to 2 and the test now shows 50%. The speed ranges 1.2 or 2.2, mostly 2.2 and the fan starts getting loud. What´s that? The stepping now seems to be influenced. Former it changed speed from 800 to 1200 to 1600 to 2200, now only 1200 and 2200. That means it works without registration to make performance better? I have to do some more tests and will report later.

Macbookpro S.R. 2,2 ghz, Echo Audiofire 2

mrbook · Post by **mrbook** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 7:35 pm

Man... I can't believe this, after trying to do almost everything to my mac setup, getting a new audio interface and seriously considering a reinstall I was never able to get rid of the sound artifacts.
Finally I found this thread and is really disappointing to find that my allegedly pro-grade MBP SR is sub-standard when running Live? that really sucks.

Does anyone know if this issue has been addressed by either Ableton or Apple? I don't want to have to install coolbook if I don't have to.

zeropoint · Post by **zeropoint** » Sun Aug 08, 2010 3:23 am

I'm bumping this thread again because I just discovered something else which is being affected. I haven't really been using my 15" Santa Rosa MBP for audio production any more as I've since got a Unibody 17". Consequently I had switched Coolbook off on the 15". But I've since been noticing that HD video will just not stream properly on the Santa Rosa. Then I remembered all this palaver from a couple of years back so switched Coolbook on again and what do you know? HD streams fine now.

I was also noticing, as it seems have plenty of others, that the fans were racing up to 5500rpm when streaming content from youtube etc even though the cpu temp was staying around 50 degrees celsius. Running Coolbook again has sorted that out too....I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows why that should be the case.

Macbook Pro Santa Rosa Performance

coolbook without purchase

Re: Macbook Pro Santa Rosa Performance