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SL vs Lion - Performance ?

U

UKBeast

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 21, 2010
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Turkey
I have got a 2010 13inch mbp

2.4 c2d
4gb ram
128gb Apple SSD

does anyone who has the same configuration with me tried lion ?

I want to know will i be crawling if i upgrade to lion with this machine like everytime happens with PC's microsoft ?

Any benchmark results ?
 
Installed on a white 2,1 Macbook with only 1gb ram and Lion is definably more of a ram hog: will upgrade to 2gb and possibly 4gb cost permitting when I get a chance. Still, it's usable with Dashboard turned off. Safari in particular seems much more responsive which has prompted me to give it a chance after using Firefox full time the last few years.

edit -- While the difference between SL and Lion is entirely a matter of ram usage near as I can tell, it's interesting to note that Ubuntu 10.04 runs FAR faster on the same hardware, albeit it also runs a lot hotter. Lion is the first OSX release since 10.1 that I haven't noticed a speed improvement on the same hardware, whereas Linux seems to have gotten a lot faster in recent months (IIRC there were some dramatic performance improvements in recent kernel releases). I'm not sure how Windows 7 compares but I think there's a lot of room for optimization in Lion when compared to other OSs.

edit2 -- does anyone know if a 2,1 Macbook (2ghz C2D w/ 32bit EFI) can accept 4gb of ram?
 
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For you it would be about the same. Like others said, probably more of a resource hog.

If you have an integrated card (some 2011 models do) performance on Lion will be considerably less. Disabling the dashboard with itweax will speed it up considerably, but its pretty bad.
 
I have the unibody Macbook model right before yours, and the GM runs smooth as silk for me.
 
I actually feel like Lion is faster. Noticeably faster, I'm on a 24" iMac 2008 (2.4ghz/4gb). Though someone posted a geekbench with Lion vs. SL and Lion was a lower number, take it for what you want.
 
Here are some Xbench results. Unfortunately in Lion Xbench fails to perform the Thread Test so I was unable to get the overall score. But I was mostly interested in the graphics tests anyway.

System Info: Mac mini (early 2009), 2 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 9400M 256 MB VRAM.

Look at the User Interface Test score in Lion. Big failure. :mad:
 

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Beavix said:
Here are some Xbench results. Unfortunately in Lion Xbench fails to perform the Thread Test so I was unable to get the overall score. But I was mostly interested in the graphics tests anyway.

System Info: Mac mini (early 2009), 2 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 9400M 256 MB VRAM.

Look at the User Interface Test score in Lion. Big failure. :mad:
Click to expand...

These results are interesting. Comparing Dragon Age 2 performance in both SL and Lion, I would be tempted to say that it runs faster on Lion. However, it is also true that even with 4 Gb of RAM, the GUI's graphic performance is tendentially choppier in Lion. The FPS while zooming through items in the dock is always constant, and also the Mission Control animations still feel choppy as well.
 
WeegieMac said:
How do you do this? And does it make much difference, really?
Click to expand...

It shouldn't make much difference for you. Dashboard mostly just uses ram which how much it uses is dependent on the number of widgets you have open. Since stewacide has a MacBook with only 2GB of ram compared to your 4GB, ram is much more of an issue for them.
 
WeegieMac said:
How do you do this? And does it make much difference, really?
Click to expand...

I had it turned off in SL using Onyx and when I upgraded the setting was migrated. Since Onxy isn't working for Lion yet I dunno what to tell you other than to dig through .plist files probably for the Dock.
 
stewacide said:
I had it turned off in SL using Onyx and when I upgraded the setting was migrated. Since Onxy isn't working for Lion yet I dunno what to tell you other than to dig through .plist files probably for the Dock.
Click to expand...

Go to Onyx's official website. You can already download the new 2.4 version (still in "beta", but it works well).
 
UKBeast said:
I have got a 2010 13inch mbp

2.4 c2d
4gb ram
128gb Apple SSD

does anyone who has the same configuration with me tried lion ?

I want to know will i be crawling if i upgrade to lion with this machine like everytime happens with PC's microsoft ?

Any benchmark results ?
Click to expand...

Well on my Mac Pro workstantion at work Snow Leopard wins hands down.
 
According to benchmarks, everything in Lion is faster, except OpenGL and interface test. The latter being about half of SL. Disks benchmarks are higher too.

Overall, I find Lion to feel snappier and quicker, but it does jury somewhat sometimes in the GUI.
 
For my money SL is still the faster cat but that will change with updates of course.
 
from what I read a Snow Leopard can run around 10 km/h faster then a lion but just for short distances....
 
RJCP said:
These results are interesting. Comparing Dragon Age 2 performance in both SL and Lion, I would be tempted to say that it runs faster on Lion. However, it is also true that even with 4 Gb of RAM, the GUI's graphic performance is tendentially choppier in Lion. The FPS while zooming through items in the dock is always constant, and also the Mission Control animations still feel choppy as well.
Click to expand...

That's what I said several times. Lion running on a Macbook (pro) with Intel 3000HD or any other onboard grpahics chip is much much slower.
It makes Lion feel like a kitten.

No seriously, Lion is not good for running on any Macbook Pro (even the expensice 17"). The GUI is just too jercky. Sad but true.

I am running SL again as my main OS X and the speed difference is BIG.
 
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throttlemeister said:
According to benchmarks, everything in Lion is faster, except OpenGL and interface test. The latter being about half of SL. Disks benchmarks are higher too.

Overall, I find Lion to feel snappier and quicker, but it does jury somewhat sometimes in the GUI.
Click to expand...

Offcourse everything will run the same CPU speed wise compared to SL. No doubt about that.
But OS X depents heavely on graphic mojo (genie fx, rescaling windows, fadings, nice scrollings, ...) and thats where Lion is performing very bad on Macbook Pros. IMO that is very important to most OS X users.
I mean, everybody loves the nice and smooth working OS X GUI right? When this fails, OS X fails. Period.
 
Atarikid said:
That's what I said several times. Lion running on a Macbook (pro) with Intel 3000HD or any other onboard grpahics chip is much much slower.
It makes Lion feel like a kitten.

No seriously, Lion is not good for running on any Macbook Pro (even the expensice 17"). The GUI is just too jercky. Sad but true.

I am running SL again as my main OS X and the speed difference is BIG.
Click to expand...

GUI is and stability are most essential things for us mac os x users, thats why we were switched from windows.

Dashboard is also important for me as well but considering i have ssd i am expecting better performance due to trim support enabled in lion, what would u think ?
 
WeegieMac said:
How do you do this? And does it make much difference, really?
Click to expand...

To turn Dashboard off:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
To turn Dashboard on:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
You have to restart the Dock after making either change for it to take effect:
killall Dock

There is also a "Dashboard Manager" app I downloaded.
 
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