Leopard, Part 2 - Performance
There’s a lot of press out there about Leopard being faster than Tiger. I say, "Maybe." My testing says it can be a function of the machine configuration you’re running.
To compare Mac operating system performance using some simple benchmarks, I timed application launch, machine boot, and machine shutdown times on each of my machines under Tiger and under Leopard. For my MacBook Pro, I did it in both configurations I typically run it, i.e., using its internal hard drive or booted from an external Firewire hard drive. For the following discussion, you’ll need a copy of Microsoft Excel or some other application that can open an Excel file. Click here to open the file, and then click on the “MacBook Pro” tab and position its window so you can read the blog and glance at the table at the same time.
The table shows the various times for Tiger and Leopard using the machine’s internal hard drive, i.e., a 120GB FUJITSU MHW2120BH, as well as the times using Maxtor One Touch III Firewire 800 external hard drives with Tiger and Leopard installed. The internal hard drive is a 5400 rpm drive that uses native command queuing. The rest of the specs for the MacBook Pro (MBP) are: 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 3 GB DDR2 SDRAM with a 667 MHz front side bus, and the ATI Radeon X1600 GPU with 256MB VRAM.
First, let’s talk about the results obtained running on the MBP’s internal hard drive alone. Nothing was gained in boot-up time, with both operating system times close enough to call them in “a dead heat”. Adobe Photoshop CS3 actually took 1.24 seconds longer to open under Leopard, but I would call that a tie with Tiger since I was manually timing and subjectively judging when the application was “open”. Adobe Illustrator CS3 took about six seconds longer to open in Leopard, but Adobe InDesign CS3 opened six seconds faster than it had under Tiger.
The first opening of Microsoft Word 2004 after the Leopard upgrade took significantly longer time under Leopard than the first of the day under Tiger. That appeared to be due to some font menu operations going on with Word during the very first opening after the upgrade; “Optimizing the Font Menu” hung across the opening window. The second opening, after completely killing Word, took only 5.26 seconds. To be fair, I rebooted and re-timed a Word opening under Leopard while writing this article, and it timed out at 13.99 secs, slightly faster than Tiger’s 15.3 second time. (This time is from application launch to the appearance of the Project Gallery window, all of which is being handled by Rosetta.)
PowerPoint 2004 didn’t exhibit such a lag (perhaps because Word had previously done the deed with the font menu) and opened under Leopard in 14.14 secs compared to Tiger’s 5.09 seconds. (I probably need to re-time that one to ensure some kind of optimizing wasn’t causing PPT to open too slowly under Leopard.)
Some of the biggest speed gains seem to be with Apple’s own applications. Mail opens blazingly fast (I’ll give you actual numbers when discussing performance on the Mac Pro). iPhoto 08 with only 71 photos took 10.31 secs to open under Tiger but only 6.79 secs under Leopard. Shutting down is also significantly faster under Leopard. The MBP took 31.94 seconds to shutdown under Tiger but only 8.67 seconds under Leopard! That’s one thing I noticed right away.
Some of the most interesting numbers came from running my MacBook Pro using Maxtor One Touch III Firewire 800 external hard drives. There were some rather large differences between the two operating systems in those scenarios. (At this time, I don’t have a good way to see if any of it was due to differences between the two hard drives; theoretically, at least, performance was supposed to be almost identical. But it wasn’t.) Adobe Photoshop CS3 took 48.97 seconds to open under Tiger and 14.11 seconds to open under Leopard! Illustrator took 43.56 seconds to open under Tiger but only 29.13 seconds to open under Leopard! Similar performance gains were seen under Leopard using In Design CS3 which opened in 31.56 seconds under Tiger but only 21.44 seconds under Leopard. Word and PowerPoint pretty well tied but Mail opened about 36% faster under Leopard (3.14 secs versus 4.87 secs under Tiger) and iPhoto 08 opened up about 39% faster (6.91 secs under Leopard vs 9.58 secs under Tiger).
(The far right column shows even slower performance using the Tiger external hard drive. In that case, it was daisy-chained to the MBP through the other FW800 drive. The other Tiger column shows performance under a direct-to-drive FW800 hookup.)
Any questions?
Now, let’s move onto the Mac Pro. Mine is a 2.66 GHz Quad-Core with 6GB RAM and four hard drives. The Mac OS X boot portion is on a 500GB hard drive partitioned into a 337 GB for OS X and a 128GB for Windows XP Pro. Hard drives 2 and 3 are 250GB hard drives running in a RAID 1 set, and the fourth is a 500GB hard drive used solely as a backup drive. The video card is the standard Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT with 256 VRAM that came with the machine.
The Mac Pro was upgraded to Leopard just like the MacBook Pro was. Similarly, both sets of performance numbers show the same basic trends, i.e., most applications actually take a bit longer to launch in Leopard than in Tiger. You can see the values on the spreadsheet, so I won’t repeat them here, except for the times associated with Apple's Mail.Under Tiger, Mail took 14.24 seconds to open, but under Leopard it took only 3.31! That aside, the one thing that surprised me the most is Leopard doesn't shut the Mac Pro down any faster than Tiger did, unlike how it handles the MacBook Pro.
Admittedly, I haven’t shown any benchmarks with respect to application performance under Leopard. I might do that at some point in the future; but, for now, here are some from the premiere website on Mac performance, Bearfeats.com.
Numbers aside, Leopard feels snappier than Tiger. The data show that sometimes Leopard is faster, and sometimes it is not. Still, considering that each operating system upgrade is always bigger than the one before, I have to say I’m pleased with what I’m seeing. Leopard is responsive if not the speed demon I had hoped it would be.
Next blog: My Leopard Bugs and Bitches
To compare Mac operating system performance using some simple benchmarks, I timed application launch, machine boot, and machine shutdown times on each of my machines under Tiger and under Leopard. For my MacBook Pro, I did it in both configurations I typically run it, i.e., using its internal hard drive or booted from an external Firewire hard drive. For the following discussion, you’ll need a copy of Microsoft Excel or some other application that can open an Excel file. Click here to open the file, and then click on the “MacBook Pro” tab and position its window so you can read the blog and glance at the table at the same time.
The table shows the various times for Tiger and Leopard using the machine’s internal hard drive, i.e., a 120GB FUJITSU MHW2120BH, as well as the times using Maxtor One Touch III Firewire 800 external hard drives with Tiger and Leopard installed. The internal hard drive is a 5400 rpm drive that uses native command queuing. The rest of the specs for the MacBook Pro (MBP) are: 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 3 GB DDR2 SDRAM with a 667 MHz front side bus, and the ATI Radeon X1600 GPU with 256MB VRAM.
First, let’s talk about the results obtained running on the MBP’s internal hard drive alone. Nothing was gained in boot-up time, with both operating system times close enough to call them in “a dead heat”. Adobe Photoshop CS3 actually took 1.24 seconds longer to open under Leopard, but I would call that a tie with Tiger since I was manually timing and subjectively judging when the application was “open”. Adobe Illustrator CS3 took about six seconds longer to open in Leopard, but Adobe InDesign CS3 opened six seconds faster than it had under Tiger.
The first opening of Microsoft Word 2004 after the Leopard upgrade took significantly longer time under Leopard than the first of the day under Tiger. That appeared to be due to some font menu operations going on with Word during the very first opening after the upgrade; “Optimizing the Font Menu” hung across the opening window. The second opening, after completely killing Word, took only 5.26 seconds. To be fair, I rebooted and re-timed a Word opening under Leopard while writing this article, and it timed out at 13.99 secs, slightly faster than Tiger’s 15.3 second time. (This time is from application launch to the appearance of the Project Gallery window, all of which is being handled by Rosetta.)
PowerPoint 2004 didn’t exhibit such a lag (perhaps because Word had previously done the deed with the font menu) and opened under Leopard in 14.14 secs compared to Tiger’s 5.09 seconds. (I probably need to re-time that one to ensure some kind of optimizing wasn’t causing PPT to open too slowly under Leopard.)
Some of the biggest speed gains seem to be with Apple’s own applications. Mail opens blazingly fast (I’ll give you actual numbers when discussing performance on the Mac Pro). iPhoto 08 with only 71 photos took 10.31 secs to open under Tiger but only 6.79 secs under Leopard. Shutting down is also significantly faster under Leopard. The MBP took 31.94 seconds to shutdown under Tiger but only 8.67 seconds under Leopard! That’s one thing I noticed right away.
Some of the most interesting numbers came from running my MacBook Pro using Maxtor One Touch III Firewire 800 external hard drives. There were some rather large differences between the two operating systems in those scenarios. (At this time, I don’t have a good way to see if any of it was due to differences between the two hard drives; theoretically, at least, performance was supposed to be almost identical. But it wasn’t.) Adobe Photoshop CS3 took 48.97 seconds to open under Tiger and 14.11 seconds to open under Leopard! Illustrator took 43.56 seconds to open under Tiger but only 29.13 seconds to open under Leopard! Similar performance gains were seen under Leopard using In Design CS3 which opened in 31.56 seconds under Tiger but only 21.44 seconds under Leopard. Word and PowerPoint pretty well tied but Mail opened about 36% faster under Leopard (3.14 secs versus 4.87 secs under Tiger) and iPhoto 08 opened up about 39% faster (6.91 secs under Leopard vs 9.58 secs under Tiger).
(The far right column shows even slower performance using the Tiger external hard drive. In that case, it was daisy-chained to the MBP through the other FW800 drive. The other Tiger column shows performance under a direct-to-drive FW800 hookup.)
Any questions?
Now, let’s move onto the Mac Pro. Mine is a 2.66 GHz Quad-Core with 6GB RAM and four hard drives. The Mac OS X boot portion is on a 500GB hard drive partitioned into a 337 GB for OS X and a 128GB for Windows XP Pro. Hard drives 2 and 3 are 250GB hard drives running in a RAID 1 set, and the fourth is a 500GB hard drive used solely as a backup drive. The video card is the standard Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT with 256 VRAM that came with the machine.
The Mac Pro was upgraded to Leopard just like the MacBook Pro was. Similarly, both sets of performance numbers show the same basic trends, i.e., most applications actually take a bit longer to launch in Leopard than in Tiger. You can see the values on the spreadsheet, so I won’t repeat them here, except for the times associated with Apple's Mail.Under Tiger, Mail took 14.24 seconds to open, but under Leopard it took only 3.31! That aside, the one thing that surprised me the most is Leopard doesn't shut the Mac Pro down any faster than Tiger did, unlike how it handles the MacBook Pro.
Admittedly, I haven’t shown any benchmarks with respect to application performance under Leopard. I might do that at some point in the future; but, for now, here are some from the premiere website on Mac performance, Bearfeats.com.
Numbers aside, Leopard feels snappier than Tiger. The data show that sometimes Leopard is faster, and sometimes it is not. Still, considering that each operating system upgrade is always bigger than the one before, I have to say I’m pleased with what I’m seeing. Leopard is responsive if not the speed demon I had hoped it would be.
Next blog: My Leopard Bugs and Bitches
posted by Andy Foster at
8:12 PM
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