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Performance, Speed Lion Vs SL,Leopard ?

I'm surprised to read the comments from some, because on my iMac running DP4 (latest update also) it absolutely flies, it's like getting a new computer.

Snow Leopard, while no slouch, is certainly not as responsive as Lion and the likes of Safari is far, far quicker than it is on Snow Leopard. The general UI navigation is also faster, with windows opening quicker, options loading faster (especially noticeable in the Settings panel when going between options), and the whole system feels so much quicker overall.

I did install Lion on my internal drive, as I found it more slugging on the USB 2.0 external drive. Instead, I partitioned my external drive and installed Snow Leopard fresh on there. From Snow Leopard I formatted my main internal drive and ran the Lion installer from within Snow Leopard, pointing the installer to my now blank 250GB internal disk. The installation was less than 20 minutes and a fresh install is the way to go in my opinion.

Even though this is (the final?) Developer Preview, I find it stable, fast, and better than Snow Leopard to the extent that I now use it primarily every day without issue.

For me, going back to Snow Leopard is hard once you're used to Lion.

My ONLY "complaint", and this could just be my system, is that the animations when going in/out of fullscreen mode on Safari, etc is a little jerky or sluggish, especially when the system has a lot going on. I found that for the Folders to open smoothly all the time, I had to move the Utilities folder onto the second page. From there, it sprung open and shut as smooth as it does on an iPhone 4 or iPad 2. Back on page one, alongside a lot of other icons, it returned to being sluggish.
 
WeegieMac said:
I'm surprised to read the comments from some, because on my iMac running DP4 (latest update also) it absolutely flies, it's like getting a new computer.
Click to expand...

Quartz debug isn't lying. It is a Apple devs tool that can trace graphic performance issues.
In general SL has a 60fps for all animations.
The latest Lion build has about 30-40fps.

Now, some people do not see a difference between a 60fps shooter (COD) or 30fps (Halo). I see the difference on the spot and do find Lion is not very smooth.
 
ErikGrim said:
I can guarantee you that those reporting jerkiness will be due to display drivers on certain graphics cards. And I would bet you that will be fixed before release as optimising for different configurations is usually far down on the development chain.
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Yes, I know it is a driver issue. I already said this several times. And yes, it will be addressed in future Lion updates. I know that too. But it is a pity Lion is slow on my new Macbook Pro 17 i7 2011 (the top of the Macbook line up).

@jeanlain - I really think it is a driver issue. ;-)
 
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Atarikid said:
Quartz debug isn't lying. It is a Apple devs tool that can trace graphic performance issues.
In general SL has a 60fps for all animations.
The latest Lion build has about 30-40fps.

Now, some people do not see a difference between a 60fps shooter (COD) or 30fps (Halo). I see the difference on the spot and do find Lion is not very smooth.
Click to expand...

Where did I say anyone was lying?

I've not got the time or patience to argue about who's got the better eyes or whatever. I mentioned the animations of the folders opening/closing (which did improve when I moved the Utilities folder onto page 2 of Launchpad), as well as the animations going in/out of fullscreen mode on the likes of Safari, iTunes 10.5, iPhoto, Photobooth, etc.

Other than that, those little animation issues aside, it's faster than Snow Leopard on my machine, and Snow Leopard was no slouch. Note: I'm talking about performance regarding it being faster, not animations.

Again, not here to argue. People ask for opinions on this forum, no-one has to agree with any of them, but all I can do is cite my own experience.
 
WeegieMac said:
Again, not here to argue. People ask for opinions on this forum, no-one has to agree with any of them, but all I can do is cite my own experience.
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True. :)

Mac OS X highly depends on graphical mojo. imo if that isn't smooth, the overall OS X experience is flawed for me. That is one of the reasons I do not like Windows - it is slow performing on overall GUI 'feeling'.

I also use Ableton Live and feels much slower in response. With Quartz debug it shows about 50% less faster then running it in SL. Even mouse clicks have a slight delay which is certainly noticeable if you use this app a lot. Live is also a good example why Lion is not as fast as SL concerning graphics speed.

About memory usage:
In general Lion indeed allocates more memory compared to Lion for the same app you run. But I do not think this affects speed.
 
richpjr said:
How does the memory footprint of Lion compare with SL? I wonder if some of the reports of it being slower or faster are tied with the amount of RAM installed.
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Lion uses much more RAM than SL in my experience. But it's not swapping to disk, so RAM usage shouldn't explain the (moderate) performances decrease I see on my MBP.
 
As a good indicator of performance, play a movie in cover flow and try to resize the cover flow pane or the Finder window. See how painful that is in Lion.
 
Apple have lots of work to do in the next few weeks to get Lion up to speed. They are better off taking their time even if it means delaying the release. When the same machine can run Windows 7 better it wont look good for Apple.
 
The 'big' problem with Lion is when it is doing animations, it is redrawing the full window content. Within SL in only redraws the area the needs to be redrawn. This could explain why it is slower on some graphics configurations (shared RAM).

Also, Lion uses OpenGL 3.2. My guess it is not yet optimized.

BTW still strange why Apple didn't go for OpenGL4. :-/
 
BlackMangoTree said:
Apple have lots of work to do in the next few weeks to get Lion up to speed. They are better off taking their time even if it means delaying the release. When the same machine can run Windows 7 better it wont look good for Apple.
Click to expand...

Apple is know to release 'unfinished' releases in the past. It won't hold them to do so again. :-/
I bet they will release on 1/7/2011
But I do agree they should wait 2-3 month to streamline the GUI speed for ALL GPU's. OS X is highly depended on smooth GUI operation imo
 
The worst performers are my Mac Mini's 2009 and 2010 models, a 2007 Macbook the performance is piss poor. Shouldn't it be getting more efficient.

Probably Apples way of trying to make people to upgrade to newer hardware.

For me Windows 7 performs better than Lion or Snow Leopard on my Mini's if things are not improved i'll have no issue switching over. Might even end up switching to Windows on all my Macs. The nightmare the dock and mission control is compared to the very useable taskbar.
 
Atarikid said:
The 'big' problem with Lion is when it is doing animations, it is redrawing the full window content. Within SL in only redraws the area the needs to be redrawn. This could explain why it is slower on some graphics configurations (shared RAM).

Also, Lion uses OpenGL 3.2. My guess it is not yet optimized.

BTW still strange why Apple didn't go for OpenGL4. :-/
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:eek: I hadn't run Quartz Debug during animations (mission control, etc). Just during scrolling. Why the Hell are windows contents being redrawn? :roll eyes:
I wonder if quartz debug reports that correctly, to be honest.
EDIT: something's fishy there. If windows were actually redrawing, their respective apps should use some CPU, and it's not the case (mission control). Only the window server uses a moderate amount of resources, as expected.

(I have asked questions about redrawing on the forum I can't speak about, and haven't got any reply).
 
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Just installed DP4 on my base model 13" MBA.
For the most part the animations are jerky. Dock magnification is in need of major improvement. Mission controls animations are also poor but not as noticeable. Scrolling is not as enjoyable in SL, it's just not as smooth. Although overall feel of the OS is very snappy. You can definitely get to whatever you want is much quicker. That's definitely due to the added gestures, enhanced UI, and coding. If they can somehow improve the graphics performance I will gladly switch over. If not I will just stick with SL.
 
I've been running DP4 on my MacBookPro4,1 for a while now, runs pretty well, most animations seem smooth, though it's not consistent. Swiping between fullscreen apps and the desktop is initially jerky, but once you've done it once it works fine for a while.

Scrolling content in Safari though is really jerky, especially if it's running on battery, even though other animations are smooth, which is a little odd.

My machine reports 4h 30m battery (just had a new one installed) whereas SL on the same settings says 4h, so a minor improvement there.

It also gets 3450 in Geekbench, which is also a minor improvement over the 3400 it gets under SL.

All apps that I use work fine, apart from CCleaner, which reports an unsupported OS, then crashes, and Ableton Live, which just dies on the spot.

Two rather minor things that impressed me that haven't really been reported about much are;

Boots the 64-bit kernel by default (Leopard SL both booted to 32-bit as standard), though I guess this is because Lion's only supported on 64-bit machines (officially, anyway).

sudo diskutil repairpermissions / actually repairs permissions, rather than listing them over and over. This was a problem since Leopard, and I'm glad it's fixed.
 
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Ok so it's evident that some people are experience a *FAR* faster experiene, and some slower.

Any slower performance doesn't mean Lion is slower as on OS, just on your hardware, and the beauty of Apple making their own hardware is I think it's safe to say it'll all be worked out.

And saying it's Apples way of "getting people to upgrade their hardware" I think is just kinda beyond preposterous lol, gotta love personal vandettas? JK (I hope), Seriously though that's highly unlikely given A.) Apple I've found is all about getting all their hardware to really run as fast as possible and B.) Some users are having their machines run far faster than SL.
 
Draeconis said:
I

All apps that I use work fine, apart from CCleaner, which reports an unsupported OS, then crashes, and Ableton Live, which just dies on the spot.
Click to expand...


lolwut, AFAIK..CCleaner isn't on Mac lol


NVM! Just surprisingly found out that it is..wow, never knew. Gotta check it out.

EDIT: Yeah..gotta love theirs virtually no bloat for it to clean out haha, but still cool that it's on Mac, but given the efficency of the OS I kinda wonder just how useful it will be, at least for me, for one-click cleaning of all Safari and FireFox info it could be useful then?
 
Tucom said:
lolwut, AFAIK..CCleaner isn't on Mac lol


NVM! Just surprisingly found out that it is..wow, never knew. Gotta check it out.
Click to expand...

I normally just use sudo periodic daily weekly monthly to clean my system up, but I thought I'd give CCleaner a go, seeing as I use it on all of my Windows boxes. It's still under development really, but seems promising. :)

link for lazy people. This is a beta, so use as your own caution.
 
Tucom said:
Ok so it's evident that some people are experience a *FAR* faster experiene, and some slower.
Any slower performance doesn't mean Lion is slower as on OS, just on your hardware, and the beauty of Apple making their own hardware is I think it's safe to say it'll all be worked out.
Click to expand...

Not sure. It could be the OS. I mean, if Apple now decides to refresh a full screen instead of a part of a screen, then this can result in lower graphics performance. Very probable this has a good reason why they do this but it seems to have back draws for 'not-so-fast' GPU's like Intel HD 3000 atm.

Tucom said:
And saying it's Apples way of "getting people to upgrade their hardware" I think i
Click to expand...

Well, I have bought a MBP 17" i7 2011 two months ago. If it doesn't run smooth on this MBP ... ..
 
I just browsed the App store a bit, in Lion 11A494A, and performance is appalling. Scrolling is bad, and resizing is awful. It's as bad as the iTunes store.
It wasn't that bad before, so hopefully, this will be improved.
 
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