Best OS for a 2.1 MacBook Pro

[mikiotty]

Hi guys!
I recently bought a 17” 2.1 MacBook Pro for just 25€.
Which OS would you run on it?

 

[amagichnich]

SL performs very good in terms of speed. Lion and ML are slower but can run slightly newer software. I prefer a dual boot setup of SL and ML or newer if I can

 

[Amethyst1]

I ran Tiger, Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion (courtesy of MacPostFactor 1.0.1) on my 2,1.

 

[bunnspecial]

To me, Snow Leopard is a "sweet spot" on a lot of CD/C2D Macs.

 

[timidpimpin]

I put an SSD in my Snow Leopard Mac (late 2009 Mac mini), and it's now the most snappy system I own. And it boots in 1.5 gear spins!

I bought this SSD, which typically sells for about $20 US.

 

[bunnspecial]

I put an SSD in my Snow Leopard Mac (late 2009 Mac mini), and it's now the most snappy system I own. And it boots in 1.5 gear spins!

You should see it in a 12-core Mac Pro booting off a PCIe SSD.

 

[timidpimpin]

You should see it in a 12-core Mac Pro booting off a PCIe SSD.

I'm guessing less than 1 gear spin, or at that level of performance it might not even show the spinning gear.

 

[amedias]

I'm guessing less than 1 gear spin, or at that level of performance it might not even show the spinning gear.

5~6 seconds from power button press to desktop on my old Mac Pro 1,1 on 10.6.8 or 10.7.5 just with a normal SATA SSD in one of the bays.

It actually takes a little longer on 3,1s and 5,1s even with a AHCI PCIe SSD, but most of that is taking longer to initially post, once the grey screen happens it's equally quick, think it just takes longer to initialise hardware on the later models, still extremely speedy though even booting into 10.11 or 10.13 just noticeably slower than earlier OS's but that's to be expected really, they're a bit more complex and bloated.

On the original topic, for older Intel hardware my default choice is always Snow Leopard, unless there is some critical piece of software that needs later, in which case I setup a secondary partition and boot into that only when needed. You just cant beat the simplicity and snappiness of Snow Leopard for general productivity IMO.

 

[timidpimpin]

5~6 seconds from power button press to desktop on my old Mac Pro 1,1 on 10.6.8 or 10.7.5 just with a normal SATA SSD in one of the bays.

It actually takes a little longer on 3,1s and 5,1s even with a AHCI PCIe SSD, but most of that is taking longer to initially post, once the grey screen happens it's equally quick, think it just takes longer to initialise hardware on the later models, still extremely speedy though even booting into 10.11 or 10.13 just noticeably slower than earlier OS's but that's to be expected really, they're a bit more complex and bloated.

On the original topic, for older Intel hardware my default choice is always Snow Leopard, unless there is some critical piece of software that needs later, in which case I setup a secondary partition and boot into that only when needed. You just cant beat the simplicity and snappiness of Snow Leopard for general productivity IMO.

Very impressive performance. The 1,1 Mac Pro's are readily available for about $100-150, so maybe I should get one. I mainly use Snow Leopard as a gaming OS, and a 1,1 Mac Pro would allow me to use a better video card.

The 9400M in the mini is more than enough for the PowerPC games I play, but is a bit lacking with newer Intel games.

 

[amedias]

Very impressive performance. The 1,1 Mac Pro's are readily available for about $100-150, so maybe I should get one. I mainly use Snow Leopard as a gaming OS, and a 1,1 Mac Pro would allow me to use a better video card.

Apologies for thread drift, both in terms of more Intel chat and not MBP related!

The 1,1 can be picked up super cheap, the last one I bought was a base model quad 2.0Ghz for £40 with 4GB of ram, but upgrades are cheap too, this one immediately got:

- £13 for 32GB of ram
- £11 for a pair of Quad core CPUs (work fine with or without the 2,1 firmware update)
- £10 for an Nvidia 8800GT

If you're only going to go for 10.7 or lower then the 1,1s are a deccent budget option, with a better GPU they can be hacked to run 10.11 too, but finding decent GPUs is a little harder than later models but they are very nice under 10.6.

The 3,1s are also now quite cheap, and support more ram, better CPUs and thanks to the 64bit EFI have more GPU options available and support 10.11 natively and can easily run 10.12 and 10.13 with dosdude patches so are a better option if you might need them for other uses as well.

I've got a pair of 3,1s that run headless (no GPU) as my VM hosts for testing and lab work, 16 physical cores and 128GB of Ram between them for not a lot of money makes a decent setup and they're cheaper to max out than the 4,1/5,1 for this kind of use.

Even the 4,1s and 5,1s are quite affordable now, but depending on exactly what form factor the 'new' Mac Pro is when it arrives later in the year we may see prices on them plummet as a load of folks upgrade...I could use another one so here's hoping!

 

[timidpimpin]

Thanks for the tips. Appreciated.

And to the OP... IMHO 10.7-10.9 is the worst run for modern Mac OS. They're more bloated and just nasty IMO. 10.10 went lighter, and El Capitan improved on that.

Long story short... I would run Snow Leopard over 10.7 - 10.9 any day.

 

[mikiotty]

I’m already running Snow Leopard on it and even on a regular 2.5” 500GB HDD it flies. I’m eager to get an SSD in it, even though I’m really happy with the performance as it is

 

[bunnspecial]

It actually takes a little longer on 3,1s and 5,1s even with a AHCI PCIe SSD, but most of that is taking longer to initially post, once the grey screen happens it's equally quick, think it just takes longer to initialise hardware on the later models, still extremely speedy though even booting into 10.11 or 10.13 just noticeably slower than earlier OS's but that's to be expected really, they're a bit more complex and bloated.

Yes, I've noticed that POST is relatively slow on the 5,1. It seemed to get worse after I upgraded the CPUs, but I also suspect that the amount of RAM I have(32gb) contributes at least somewhat.

I dual boot it with SL and High Sierra, although spend more time in SL for legacy app support. Boot speeds for both are quite fast, especially since both are booting off "salvaged" AHCI PCIe drives(one from an MBA, the other from "trash can" Mac Pro). Now that the 5,1 natively supports NVMe, I may switch over to that for recent OSs, but AFAIK it won't work for SL. I've also resisted Mojave on this particular computer because there's not a GPU that's compatible with both SL and Mojave.

I'm not so concerned about boot time, though. Once SL is up, stuff like file browsing almost feels like the computer is reading my thoughts. Of course, there's a lot more to what I do than file browsing. The computer is connected to three scanners-two Nikon film scanners(Coolscan V and LS8000) and a higher end consumer flatbed(Epson V700). Those generate some BIG files, and they only stick around on the boot drive long enough for me to finish editing them. Once I've done that, they get shuffled off to a WD Green, which is not exactly a speed demon of a drive.

 

[Amethyst1]

5~6 seconds from power button press to desktop on my old Mac Pro 1,1 on 10.6.8 or 10.7.5 just with a normal SATA SSD in one of the bays.

Ever tried Tiger on there with an SSD?
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If you're only going to go for 10.7 or lower then the 1,1s are a deccent budget option, with a better GPU they can be hacked to run 10.11 too, but finding decent GPUs is a little harder than later models but they are very nice under 10.6.

Since unflashed GPUs can be used, finding compatible, i.e. EFI32, ones is only an issue if you need boot screens.