Twitchy Leopard on AMD-Normal?

[Ali C.]

I've been just living with this for a long while, figuring it was a normal symptom of the Hackintosh on AMD way. But now I figure I may as well ask like, perhaps a n00b.
My install and practically every one before it (been so long since I've used 10.5.2 I don't even remember) has a strange little problem. Sometimes seemingly at random (but on a fairly regular basis of every few minutes), the cursor stops moving for about half a second to a second. Rarely, music playing will also skip. If I'm watching a movie or TV show at the time, the video (but usually NOT the audio) will skip a little with this cursor freeze, and during this time the hard drive light is *always* steadily on. This has behaved the same way even after installing my HD 3650 and leads me to suspect either it's CPU-related (Voodoo kernel?) or my paltry 1GB of RAM + IDE drive is at fault.
My question is simply, is this normal? I'm not complaining, it works beautifully and fast even with this little bug and hardly ruins using OS X. I was simply curious as to what might be causing this (personally I suspect RAM and hard drive rather than the Voodoo kernel or the CPU), because if I can even cure that, it would be downright perfect. Thanks in advance to anyone with a clue about this.;)

[naquaada]

This looks like the dual-core bug which several AMD users had... I never had it although I'm still using 10.5.3 on my machine, and heavily overclocked the cpu. The Voodoo 9.5.0 kernel should solve the problem.

[Ali C.]

Yeah, I now realize I should have said every few minutes, a "twitch" occurs, rather than every few seconds (which is true under heavy load).
And I have Voodoo 9.5.0. Could the lack of RAM combined with PATA drive be to blame?

[naquaada]

Oh my god, I've just seen you're only using a 40 GB Harddisk... OS X uses Gigabytes of virtual memory, on my system it are actually 55.27 GB. And if it's an old 40 GB HD then it has mostly only 5400 rpm or is slower anyway.

I have four systems and using 2 GB and 3 GB RAM in my spare systems, my main system has even 4 and contains a massive harddisk storage of 1.82 TB. I'm preferring IDE for booting, I'm using a 320GB Maxtor actually but will upgrade to a 400GB Samsung - Logic and Final Cut alone are needing about 130 GB for program data. I'm using the PATA harddisk ONLY for booting and system, there are no data files on it. That makes it easy if you have to reinstall your system, you don't have to worry where you leave all the data you have. And if you have less harddisk space at all this can be problematic. I only have to backup the 'Library' folder of my home directory sometimes, that's all. I can fully skip Time Machine this way. My personal files, documents, pictures, disk images, software storage, backups and t*rrent stuff I keep on a 500 GB Samsung SATA disk. For streaming media like music, videos and similar media I'm using a Samsung HD103UJ terabyte hard disk which is very fast.

Using more than one harddisk is an ideal solution. For example, you have only one harddisk and you're working with the system, browsing the net, downloading some t*rrents and listening to iTunes. In this case way the harddisk has to very much to do, it must read system data, read and write application data (f.e. browser cache), write and read virtual memory, write t*rrent data in different files, and read streaming media data. That's very much action for the read/write head, you can imagine that the system will slow down. And not only this, the harddisk also will be more fragmented very quickly. In my case, the system harddisk is in normal use only reading system data, reading and writing application data and using virtual memory. My second harddisk only is needed for writing t*rrents and the third harddisk is only needed for music streaming.

Today's harddisk costs are very low. The Samsung 103UJ - one Terabyte - I get on ebay (new) for 73 Euro new in Germany. Big IDE harddisks are often more expensive, but there's a trick. Check out for Samsung HDs on ebay and ask the seller about the manufacturing date. If it's beneath 3 years (f.e. for now june 2006) you can buy it. Format it with the Mac and contact support the Samsung harddisk support. They will always ask you if you have tried the Samsung disk test utility. If you say you've got only a Mac so you can't use it. With a good story and a little persuasion you can ship it to Samsung and you'll get a new one of the same model. This works even with completely defective harddisks. Samsung HDs are perfect because they are extremely silent and very cool, only 37°C/98°F even after long use.

Which type of memory do you have, 2x 512 MB or 1x1 GB? Are you using Windows? If so, you can't use 4 GB, a normal 32bit-Windows only supports 3.somethingelse GB. I have a reducting option in my BIOS that disables one full GB of RAM to avoid problems with Windows if 4 GB are installed. OS X is fully capable to use 4 GB RAM. But I can tell you, even with big applications you don't need it. DDR2-RAM is so cheap actually, I saw 2 GB bundles for 12 Euro sometimes.

[Ali C.]

Got 2x 512MB in dual-channel because it runs faster this way (supposedly).
Ah yes, I have an old 40 gig drive and it's 3/4 full with music and a few videos. The majority of my heavyweight files (movies, tv, etc.) are on a second IDE drive that's 200GB. This drive runs at 7200RPM, though, which I figure helps.
Shouldn't more RAM reduce the need for a bigger HDD, though? Then again I'm thinking SATA drive + RAM = no more stickies. And my 40 gig has been making some funny noises lately that do not help the situation. Occasionally, those "stickies" come with a CLANK! from the hard drive, then it moves freely again. So basically, I need to get a new drive soon, anyway. Thanks for the tips.

[nunrg2009]

Got 2x 512MB in dual-channel because it runs faster this way (supposedly).
Ah yes, I have an old 40 gig drive and it's 3/4 full with music and a few videos. The majority of my heavyweight files (movies, tv, etc.) are on a second IDE drive that's 200GB. This drive runs at 7200RPM, though, which I figure helps.
Shouldn't more RAM reduce the need for a bigger HDD, though? Then again I'm thinking SATA drive + RAM = no more stickies. And my 40 gig has been making some funny noises lately that do not help the situation. Occasionally, those "stickies" come with a CLANK! from the hard drive, then it moves freely again. So basically, I need to get a new drive soon, anyway. Thanks for the tips.
I have two gigs of ram and leopard still uses 35gb of hard disk space for virtual memory while pretty much doing nothing. If my free space goes under 30gb I start having similar problems with things hanging and getting jumpy

[Ali C.]

Under 30 Gigs!?!?
Guess that settles it then. One larger SATA drive and a side of cross-fingers-and-hope-OSX-can-see-it sauce. Thanks for the tips, folks.

[erick2red]

OS X uses Gigabytes of virtual memory, on my system it are actually 55.27 GB
Ok, i'm scare right now, how's that 55.27 G of virtual memory. i need to check mine. How can i do this. I notice that in /var folder my system has like 3Gb, but is it that "the virtual memory"?.

[naquaada]

Start the Activity Monitor, in the Utilities folder. I have this thing running in the Dock all the time, starting at login. It is very informative, and you can use it like an advanced Taskmanager, better than Win+Alt+Escape.

I set the Dock Icon to 'Show CPU history', so I always can see what my CPUs are doing. In Activity Monitor I'm sorting all tasks after CPU usage and the bottom shows the RAM. These are the most information you need.

[Ali C.]

Just looked at mine and I'm suspicious.
How the hell does it fit 58GB of VM into a 40GB hard drive!? My other 200GB drive only has 10GB of space left, so it can't well be shoving it there.

[naquaada]

I don't know how OS X handles its virtual memory. Windows XP uses C:/PAGEFILE.SYS for the virtual memory and C:/HIBERFIL.SYS for sleep mode. Linux and AmigaOS 4.1 need a SWAP partition for this. But in OS X I don't find similar things.

I did a bit research but what I found wasn't really informative. But I read that some programs are reserving a specified amount of RAM (virtual and real) although they aren't using it completely. For example, if you run Parallels in which the virtual machine is set to 1 GB RAM Parallels must allocate 1 GB minimum, even if the virtual machine doesn't need it.

[erick2red]

Same question like Ali C. (http://www.infinitemac.com/member.php?u=3491) i had 30 G on my boot partition and the system says in "Activity Monitor" VM Size: 53.47 G. So how does it fit?