"Snow Leopard" and "Lion" comparison on 12-Core Mac Pro

[Zwhaler]

Thank you for this comparison. I have a similar 12 Core Mac Pro and have been avoiding Lion because of this reason, and you confirmed my suspicion. Snow Leopard works way too well to replace at this point especially because I rely on Expose and 10.6 compatibility and most importantly.... SPEED! Thanks again.

 

[throAU]

I suspect the increased RAM usage is due to lion's sandboxing. Rather than sharing running code with other apps, a sandboxed app will/may be loading its own copy of said code...

 

[limo79]

Just benchmarks results. Lion is more comfortable OS to use it everyday. I feel like to use iPad. Snow Leopard has good performance, but Lion is generally more friendly for web browsing - especially with Safari 5.2 Beta. Also video decoding support is better in Lion. So sorry if I want to choose old fashioned OS I prefer Leopard - looks much better than SL and gives you the best battery life ever. Also benchmarks results were best on Leopard. And I want to highlight that I feel much scepticism regarding new OS X releases. I also suffered from the memory leaks in Safari, but generally speaking Lion has something that SL do not have "magic fluidity". Regarding memory leaks I STRONGLY suggest a clean installation of 10.7.3 - previously I updated 10.7 releases using combo updates and results were not good.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Also, I tried the VM recommendation posted here, and it was terrible. With 16GB's of RAM I shouldn't have to resort to such measures, I'm just surprised that running simple Apple app's takes up ~47-54% of my RAM while SL running the same (as possible) setup is ~25-30% usage. I know, Lion has other features that may require such a difference, but I notice that iTunes takes up a great deal of RAM (~540 MB's in Lion) while running EyeTV takes ~249 MB's and that's a much more intense application.

I think your concentrating on the numbers too much and trying to use that as a way to gauge performance. Which is not always an accurate way to do it.

Unless your actually seeing slow downs in some of the applications or the OS in general. Not sure if your a developer and know how memory interacts with the operating system or applications.

As was mentioned, many applications and operating systems cache memory, even when you quit them. That increases performence for your most used applications if you restart them. But when you need the memory for other application the operating system frees it.

For instance Google Chrome is a memory hog and uses 7 processes that uses 873MB for me right now and only have two tabs open. But it was designed that way so if one tab crashes the whole browser won't crash.

I've been using iTunes in Lion for an hour now and only showing around 177MB of RAM usage. Maybe it depends on how long you leave it open for as I do see it slowly increasing as time goes by.

I think it depends on how you have your Mac Pro setup, what applications you have open ect.

I'm also wondering if Mac OSX knows it has a lot of memory so it lets applications use more then normal. I mean why should it not? If you have a lot of memory available, but don't want applications to utilize it sounds counter productive to me. Thats why people put more memory in their computer in the first place to increase performance.

 

[labarker]

Thanks for all the hard work OP.

Yet another reason (more like justification) why Lion will NEVER, EVER see the light of day on my Mac Pro. Forums like Gearslutz and other places are riddled with rants about how Lion screws up Logic Studio and various 3rd-party plugins. And the OP's research has proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Lion SUCKS.
.

I upgraded to Lion on my Mac Pro simply because I needed software that doesn't work on Snow Leopard (and yes, that sucks too--big time). Otherwise I'd have been perfectly happy to stick with Snow Leopard. Maybe once I no longer need the software ...

 

[3282868]

Update:

Some state free RAM should be used which is why Lion uses most of it. This is simply false. It's bad memory management, and is an acknowledged bug by Apple engineers. I've been using 10.8 and it has improved memory management tremendously over 10.7. The notion that "if you have the RAM, use it" fails in many conditions. For example, in Lion 10.7.4, Safari, Mail, Contacts, Calendar and iTunes open use ~50% of my 16GB RAM, when I open FCPX 10.0.4 it jumps to ~80% (what would have happened should my RAM have been taken more? OS X mem management hasn't demonstrated shifting memory to those app's that need it most, in this it has failed) and HD rendering maxes my cores. In 10.8, I set the systems up as much as I realistically could to keep variables as equal as possible. Running the same scenario on 10.8 with FCPX 10.0.4, RAM usage was ~40-50%, major differences (10.8 and 10.7 on partitioned 240GB OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G).

Surprisingly, 10.8 is shaping up to to a decent OS X variant as it moves along. The option to uncheck "Group windows by application" in Mission Control in the current DP acts as "All Windows" Exposé, a major contention for many since Lion DP1. It seems Apple engineers are finally taking developer (and even consumer) reported bugs seriously.

"ReSpaceApp" by Stephen Sykes was bought by the makers of "TotalFinder" (BinaryAge) and renamed "TotalSpaces". It is finally fully polished and has all the features from 10.5/6 "Spaces" to Lion and Mountain Lion (multiple display support in Spaces grid, assign apps easily preferences as before, move windows easily between desktops/multiple displays with the option to snap them in same position or not and many more features). Well worth the $12 and is still free until final version is released, highly recommend; the developer has worked hard and is great at responding to requests and reported user bug reports instantly.

http://switchstep.com/ReSpaceApp/support

 

[nontroppo]

Paging serves a valuable purpose!

Some state free RAM should be used which is why Lion uses most of it. This is simply false. It's bad memory management

Why go to all the trouble of your analysis yet not read just a bit on virtual memory in modern operating systems? There are reasons all modern operating systems without exception use a paging mechanism and hold onto data for probable future use, and why huge amounts of research by computer science departments have looked at the different algorithms used for virtual memory and data paging. You are simply throwing the baby out with the bath water with that statement. Is there a specific bug in how Lion handles inactive pages, it is seemingly more probable (but getting hard data is so far impossible). Perry Metzger[1] has the only reasoned theory on the balance between anonymous pages and disk pages in the unified buffer. Virtual memory performance is one thing that is being touted as being improved in Mountain Lion, enhancing the view that something has changed. This argues that it is disk intensive processes like Time Machine or Apple Mail that cause the pressure on the unified buffer. This could well explain why some users see swapping, and others like me [2] have not seen any problems.

But to simply say lots of free memory is good just does disservice to the overall message of specific issues in complex algorithms that mostly always work better than not. You can have a large inactive page pool, limited "free" memory and an optimally functioning system, if the paging system is working properly...

----
[1] https://plus.google.com/116685507294337280246/posts/camYp28M9St
[2] running heavy neuroscience computations in Matlab, along with virtual machines, Adobe suite apps and other productivity programs on many working systems, mostly Mac Pros but also more contrained laptops

 

[duncyboy]

Update:

Some state free RAM should be used which is why Lion uses most of it. This is simply false....

Thanks for the OP and the update. I'm in two minds over what to do over the pending release of Mountain Lion.

My old iMac JUST makes the cut for supported models in Mountain Lion but it's never been 100% smooth with Lion.

It's the little things like web browsing and Mission Control that falter and stutter.

I think this weekend I'm going to do a full back-up and a completely fresh install of Lion (I did an upgrade install with Lion) and see how that performs not just initially (new installs are always lovely to use!) but until the release of Mountain Lion. That's approximately a month away and so should allow plenty of time to bed in.

If it doesn't work so good I'm going back to Snow Leopard and MAY try Mountain Lion on another partition and read plenty of reviews.

 

[3282868]

Thanks for the OP and the update. I'm in two minds over what to do over the pending release of Mountain Lion.

My old iMac JUST makes the cut for supported models in Mountain Lion but it's never been 100% smooth with Lion.

It's the little things like web browsing and Mission Control that falter and stutter.

I think this weekend I'm going to do a full back-up and a completely fresh install of Lion (I did an upgrade install with Lion) and see how that performs not just initially (new installs are always lovely to use!) but until the release of Mountain Lion. That's approximately a month away and so should allow plenty of time to bed in.

If it doesn't work so good I'm going back to Snow Leopard and MAY try Mountain Lion on another partition and read plenty of reviews.

I've given up on Lion, and for the first time in 10 years have used a beta OS X as a primary OS (still have 10.6 on a second partition on my OWC 240GB Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD). While I miss 10.6, 10.8 has added features such as "All Windows" Exposé, improved memory managements (and if it wasn't an issue as another poster stated then why was it overhauled in 10.8?), "Save As..." and other 10.6 options re-added along with "TotalSpaces" adding 10.5/6 Spaces, 10.8 is shaping up to be the baby of 10.6 and 10.7 so many want(ed).

DP4 has been great, aside from the new Sandboxing protocols that will have to be addressed by third party developers and lagging OpenGL 4.0+ Core support with better multiple display support once offered in previous OS X variants, 10.8 will be worth the upgrade. I'm not keen on iOS integration into OS X, as long as it is an option and doesn't interfere with my workflow I'll live. Third party developers have worked hard on addressing many concerns, and I have made a point in informing as many as I can on their efforts. They deserve it, and their app's are much needed.

I agree that clean installs are always best. I use "Time Machine", unless I need a restore from a failed HDD or to retrieve deleted mail, files, etc. I restore the "ESDInstall.dmg" to a USB drive, wipe my SSD, install OS X, and install every app one at a time. I open my "Time Machine" backup folders and manually move over any files and plists needed. It is work, but it makes a world of difference.

 

[duncyboy]

That's pretty much what I'm planning to do with Lion this weekend. I ran a disk check last night and all came fine so I'm thinking it may well be Lion is a the problem for me.

I've bookmarked this thread and we'll see where I am in a few weeks from now with regards to a full, clean install

 

[nontroppo]

... improved memory managements (and if it wasn't an issue as another poster stated then why was it overhauled in 10.8?),

We don't yet have any technical details of "what" exactly was changed yet, nor whether what was changed was a bug or expected behaviour, or how many people benefit etc. My issue with the blanket meme that only FREE RAM is "free" stands whatever particular tweaks to the algorithms Apple engineers have made...

DP4 has been great, aside from the new Sandboxing protocols that will have to be addressed by third party developers and lagging OpenGL 4.0+ Core support with better multiple display support once offered in previous OS X variants,

Well, multi-monitor support in ML is certainly "better" than Lion (nothing could really get worse!), being able to assign the fullscreen "space" to either monitor, but the question remains what "space" does the other monitor end up in?

I certainly agree with you that OpenGL support, and graphics drivers in general are a joke in OS X. We are still missing basic support for >8bit display output (critical for graphics professionals and research scientists), a feature available even in the dungpile that is Windows XP. We are still stuck with very limited hardware options, all outdated and overpriced; and the professional cards we do get have significantly worse performance.

ML is supposed to bring an updated OpenGL/OpenCL stack, but looking at hackintosh sites (who very quickly reverse engineer the GPU drivers in Apple releases), nothing including DP4 seems very much changed at all

 

[ThomasJL]

bedifferent, thank you very much for creating and posting in this thread. I have found your posts in this thread to be very valuable and helpful.

If you have ever have more thoughts and experiences regarding Mountain Lion in comparison to Lion and Snow Leopard that you feel like posting, I would love to read them.