Macbookpro Chokes Hard on Steam

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topslop1

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When I open steam it just chokes super hard. It's a 2.4ghz I5 with 4gb of ram. I'm wondering whether or not another 4gb of ram OR an SSD would really clear things up for me. I'm thinking its the HD since steam was updating a game and the laptop's hard drive had a lot of activity going. What say the hive?
 
Is it the stock HDD from Apple. I figure it's got a little to do with the 5400RPM speed. I found that on my wife's 2012 MBP I can't do as many things quickly as I can on my 2011 MBA that has a 256GB SSD driving it.

What game was updating? It could've been a huge tax on your machine in other ways too like bandwidth and other resources if it was trying to update and play another game at the same time.....
 
topslop1 said:
When I open steam it just chokes super hard. It's a 2.4ghz I5 with 4gb of ram. I'm wondering whether or not another 4gb of ram OR an SSD would really clear things up for me. I'm thinking its the HD since steam was updating a game and the laptop's hard drive had a lot of activity going. What say the hive?
Click to expand...

Your RAM is what's holding you back, no question about it. I also bought mine with 4GB, and a week later upgraded it to 2x8GB (since I run Windows8 on Parallels). Even without virtual machines running, 4GB wasn't cutting it for OSX and upgrading was like day and night.

I'm not sure if you're going to want to jump all the way up to 16GB (just FYI Apple doesn't officially support that size for my Mid 2012 non-retina, but it DOES work without issues).

You should be fine at 8GB.
 
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I was gonna say "Odd, works fine for me" But I forgot I am not using a 13" from 2009 anymore. But I definitely recommend upgrading that ram. If you can afford it doing an SSD will definitely be nice as well.
 
Even mine hangs up a little when it downloads an update to the client. Not bad, but enough that I stop for a moment and wonder what's going on.
 
I can almost guarantee RAM is NOT the problem. 4GB is plenty for Steam on Windows 8, and in maxing out BF3 and Crysis 3, and there is no way in hell Steam on OS X uses more VRam then those games on Windows.

I won't be much more help then that, as I'm not intimate with OS X.
 
PCunicorn said:
I can almost guarantee RAM is NOT the problem. 4GB is plenty for Steam on Windows 8, and in maxing out BF3 and Crysis 3, and there is no way in hell Steam on OS X uses more VRam then those games on Windows.

I won't be much more help then that, as I'm not intimate with OS X.
Click to expand...

steam doesn't need more "vram." just ram.

your anecdote is based on windows8, yet i already explained that my stock macbook choked on 4gb ram and was fine after an upgrade. osx and windows8 don't have the same ram requirements, nor do they manage ram the exact same way.

he needs more ram based on his symptoms.

/thread
 
RAM. Feed it more. 4G just isn't cutting it these days if you have anything else open.
 
4GB is more than enough to just open Steam. He's not even playing games. I bet that when you open Steam it tries to verify some game files. That's killing your hard drive.
 
Volume said:
he needs more ram based on his symptoms.

/thread
Click to expand...

not /thread, based on what hes saying it is most likely the HDD, I would swap that to a ssd. 4gb is what comes with the standard air now days. Are you really saying a new macbook air couldn't run steam? (I know for a fact it can and that if it really is a ram issue he likely should reinstall the OS as something is going terribly wrong that just running steam is choking)

Right now my steam is updating dota 2, it is using a total of, wait for it, 83 mb of memory. If he does have a memory issue I would recommend he reinstall the os as something else is going on, but as I said its most likely the hdd and a swap to a ssd would do wonders for him.
 
It's definitely something that only concerns OSX. I've been looking at forum post after forum post of people having issues playing DOTA2 on their Macs in general. Audio stuttering and choking are the main issues.

I too am having issues with my DOTA2 and I can tell you with certainty that I can play DOTA2 on my older laptop with only 3GB of RAM and a Intel onboard Video Card way better than I can play on my 2011 MBA (4GB of RAM and 256GB SSD). My MBA is unplayable still.

I have seen remarks of people disabling the Steam overlay and others actually firing up the game, then quickly quitting and then jumping back on and that seems to clear it up. I've been swamped with work lately and haven't had a chance to try any of those options yet though.
 
Which choking are you referring to: IO bound, CPU bound, GPU bound, running out of memory so swapping is occurring, CPU is over heating so throttling is occurring, etc?
 
Considering that I have absolutely no issues launching Steam and playing Civilization 5 on my 2013.5 MBA 11 with an I5 and 4GB of RAM, I'm calling out your HDD even though I think there are other problems with your system too. You don't mention any actual attempts at playing games, so can we assume that once you get through the 'choking' you're able to run the game of your choice?

A solid state drive definitely helps when it comes to read/write/seek operations but for your computer to completely 'choke' once Steam is opening... need more info. Any other programs have a hard time?
 
Steam is just really poor on OSX/lower powered devices. It's extremely bloated, and even on my late 2013 MBPr 13", it slows down sometimes. Make sure you aren't running anything else in the background, and let it finish any updates it has to download.
 
Considering this is a mobile device, how much space do you have left on the drive? Regardless what platform you're using if your consuming more then 75% of your drive's capacity. Your system is going to slow down considerably.
 
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