Why does my mac lag even when it says CPU load is 80% idle?

0

If you add up all the processes in Activity Monitor it probably adds up to over 100% a lot of the time, but the CPU load always says system is about 7%, user about 10-15, the rest is idle. kernel_task takes up about 15 to 50 or occasionally 80% CPU which I have tried everything to fix except taking the laptop apart and cleaning the fans which I will do when my P5 screwdriver gets here in a week or so.

Can anyone explain why it always says I have so much idle CPU? I also use Intel Power Gadget and when trying to export a movie in Premiere or something, sure it gets up in the 90C+ range but generally it's at about 73-75C. Frequency generally about 3Ghz.

I can not find what the normal temperature level of this 2013 MBP is. Does anyone have any suggestions of anything I can try while I wait for my screwdriver to come in the mail? I have tried resetting SMC, the other one, PMC or whatever, did a hardware scan by holding down D while restarting the computer, etc. Blew compressed air into the intakes which might have helped a bit but I'm not sure. The battery says replace soon, could that be making my computer slow?

Thank you for your help!

steve

Posted 2019-02-21T15:40:44.257

Reputation: 11

It's really hard to figure out exactly what your issue is. The only description you give is that your computer is "slow" and that it is "lag". But that is really very vague. Is it slow to launch programs? Slow to switch between programs? Is Internet access slow? Did it gradually get slower and slower or was it just suddenly slow one day? There's almost no description of the actual problem here and lots of information that probably has nothing to do with your issue. – David Schwartz – 2019-02-21T19:28:27.033

Answers

1

This all sounds a bit confused, however...

Things to consider:

  1. In activity monitor, the percentages for each listed process are "percent of one [virtual] core" The totals below are for 'all cores'.

  2. If kernel_task is ever running at high CPU load, that's an intentional structure to force your machine to cool itself. A side effect of that is it will slow down.

So it would appear that your first task when you receive your screwdriver would be to strip & clean the airflow. 5 years is one heck of a time to leave a machine before cleaning it. I do the ones here every 6 months.

Tetsujin

Posted 2019-02-21T15:40:44.257

Reputation: 22 456

Asked: 2019-02-21T15:40:44.257

Viewed: 338 times

Active: 2019-02-21T18:56:47.697