hardware questions

bertkroma

I have a 2 year old mac book pro (intel dual core) 2gb ram. Sometimes when I click the attribute [...] I get the pin wheel, other times no pin wheel. Watching the activity monitor I can see I have 1GB of ram free and the pin wheel is maxing out one cpu. This happens randomly, meaning I could go back and click the same [...] and get no pin wheel or maybe I will get the pin wheel. I know this laptop isn't the best, but any thoughts would be nice. I am planning on getting a new mac at some point, but I would like to know what causes the pin wheel so when I upgrade I don't get the pin wheel.

MotherHoose

@bertkroma … my belief is GS stores all our code/actions in memory

to clear out the memory … save and quit GS often … especially after you import many image and sound files … and of course when a section of code/rules/behaviors work perfectly …

also do frequent Save As to have backup versions …
and close the splashScreen window … with the New, etc. … as that has a feed from GS site.

use the Preview in the sceneEditor … when you can … rather than the whole project Preview

GS does open fast! … thus quitting/reopening is not a big deal …

MH

bertkroma

Thanks, yes I do all of those things, as well as reboot my computer every so often. Still wondering what the minimum system requirements are for GS and what the recommended system is.

deadlights

2GB of RAM isn't very much - my MacBook Pro has 8GB and even I run out of RAM now and then.

calvin9403

2GB of RAM isn't very much - my MacBook Pro has 8GB and even I run out of RAM now and then.

yes if you run a tons of software at the same time

but gamesalad doesn't need 8 G to run

MotherHoose

only sources I see for system requirements state:

" Intel mac running 10.6 + " … and no mention of RAM
I used on 2GB for years with no problems … (except the ones I created!)

MH

RP

2 gigs is plenty fine, this is not final cut we are talking about here.
I assume the system profiler displays that the ram is recognized properly? (check it again when you see the pin wheel).Try reseting your parameter ram on start up. Intermittently there are memory allocations that do not get freed up via PRAM and the board's power management unit (PMU).

Here's a few steps that may be a bit overkill, but should resolve the issue if it is a power distribution/memory allocation issue. Shut your machine down. Give it a bit in the off position. Remove power and even pull the battery for a good 15, 20 minutes. With the power removed, hold the power button on (this will spin out any excess power on the board). Plug it back in. Turn it on hold apple, option p and r. Keep holding those down until your machine does the start up chime again. Let it boot as normal and test.

If you still see the same issues try creating a new user and test to see if the issue remains. There could be startup items and third party preferences/plugins that could be chowing down on your memory.

bertkroma

thanx for the feed back, I'm running only GS on this laptop, and did a fresh install of mac os before I started with GS. I will try the pram thing, but it really seems like rebooting the laptop fixes it temporarily. I have no problem upgrading ram if it will help, or a new computer if the ram thing is a maybe will help. Would be nice to get a recommended system spec from GS team.

matthewsuttles

I am running a 2.4 GHZ Macbook and 2gb of ram. I get the same problem. It is due to trying to load images into Vram and Ram. Since GS is still, in a way, a beta, it is not completely optimized yet. Future releases will keep improving this. Just make sure you save often to prevent losing your work and just put up with the rainbow wheel of death for now. It will get better.