So... Why does my Dual G5 only use one of the two processors in Logic 8? The one processor will go to max, stop the song from a cpu overload, yet the second processor never kicks in. Please help! U_U Thanks, bp

Hi, Is this problem occuring in all of your song or only in a specific project ? Please download all the latest updates for Logic and Mac OS X. Make sure that "Processor Performance" in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Options is set to "Highest" Also, launch Activity Monitor (in Applications / Utilities) and check if you are getting CPU usage for the 2 processors (under the CPU tab). Christian

i think i have figured it out ohmicide:melohman and the ohmboyz running in Logic 8 are causing my syslogd to jump all the way up to 80% cpu usage in order to write to the system log (you should see how many ohmforce logs there are in my system.log file) so basically syslogd was using an entire processor but, i have found out that there are many things out there other than my ohmforce plugz that make other peoples syslogd freak out and use most of their cpu on even new intel multi-core macs fun oh, and i always run the latest osx and logic, and my processor performance has always been set to highest (ever since i read a thread a while back on some forum about it)

Hello mate, someone else might chip in about this but I'd read somewhere that Logic deals with it's multi threading in a bit of an odd way... and it was to do with the vector engine. Not sure what version of Logic you're running but on my DP G5 (soon to be upgraded to Mac Pro come on the Mr nice courier delivery man) and Logic 7 it won't actually kick the other processor in until it has overloaded the first one. So you'll get the audio engine alert message which says something about not being able to maintain sync between audio and MIDI tracks and THEN it'll shift the load over both processors. I've also read that it's not tapping in to the more modern Intel multi core's all that well either. Look at the system performance meter in logic versus the activity monitor in your utilities folder and you'll see a discontinuity in performance metering. Apple will sort it when everything is fully 64 bit supported I'm sure.... but my underpants could well be talking again.

YADJ, thanks for your post. my macbook pro (2G) seems have the same problem these days. most of time, only one channel takes all the task with that red end, the other channel doesn't kick much. the message of "midi/audio sync problem" shows, with lots of pops and noises. unfornunately, this is 80% of time for me these days. the other 20% of time, both channel work in a pretty balanced manner, i don't get any error message and can use as many plug-ins as i want. the two states can shift from one to another without any warning. but most of time i'm in trouble. is it a problem for all logic users? i only have it recently. is there any way to fix it? by the way, the second chip in my mac is a third party one, from "crucial", not a paired. will that be a possible effect too? i doubt it, since it was working very fine in the past and the problem has just come recently. will appreciate any suggestions! have a good weekend!!

Kia Ora, When I bounced in Logic 7 that was the case, one processor would only get loaded, but for mixing and all the rest of it, it would go over both processors. I take it you've played with the buffer settings, got the latest software revisions, Operating system and Logic wise, repaired permissions and that kind of thing? You could also look at emptying the cache in logic itself... trash the preferences and reimport your key commands and autoload etc. It is preferred to use identical RAM from the same supplier for optimum performance as RAM can be a tricky bugger and hard to diagnose. Try taking the second chip out and see if it behaves itself would be my suggestion. That and to zap your PRAM (command option + p + r on boot up I think it is). Keep us posted. Cheers, j

j, my computer comes back to life these days. i didn't change any of my settings, so i can only assume that it's the second chip which makes the performance unstable. i think i will buy paired ones if the issue comes back. many thanks! cx

Kia Ora, hummm... it does happen. When things start to behave themselves though it always pays to find out why to the best of your knowledge. Have you run any software updates? Nothing coming down automatically? As a rule of thumb, it is always best to buy RAM made by the same manufacturer. There used to be a time when you could run RAM with different clock speeds from different sources and they would be downsampled to the slowest clock, but I'd never recommend doing that. Not then or now really.

many thanks, my friend! have a good new week! cx

No worries. You too :)