Apple's Snow Leopard bests Windows 7 in speed tests - Page 2

Originally Posted by mytdave

I like Macs, and the tests showed Mac in a good way, but those "tests" were pointless and all over the map. Really, there is a large difference between SL and Win7. These types of tests need to be revamped, and conducted later when both OSes have a little time to mature.

Keeping in mind no test will ever be perfect, you have to make some decisions about what you want to test. Do you want to test SL & Win7 performance on Apple hardware, or do you want to test performance on *equivalent* hardware? Are you testing the hardware or the OS? Are you going to test the OS or test Apps running on the OS? Testing with Apps shows the performance of the App on a particular platform, not the performance of the OS. Choose what you want to test for.

If you want to test the OS, then boot/shutdown times are good. Disk access, network performance, I/O, graphics performance and other subsystems are what you look at.

Separately you can test App performance... but seriously, you need to find 3rd party Apps, but those where the developer has optimized for BOTH platforms, not just ported generic code from one to the other.

Based on Windows to Windows testing conducted elsewhere, Win7 is faster than Vista but slower than XP. MacOS X has been shown to be consistently faster in some functions than Windows, but behind in some others (like graphics performance ironically).

What do you need your computer to do? Games will likely always be faster on Windows cause developers optimize for DirectX. Other Apps such as video editing run exceptionally well on Mac. When serious developers optimize for multi-core processing that MacOS does very well, those apps run better on Mac. When developers start to take advantage of the full 64bit, GCD, OpenCL, etc. features of SL, then those particular apps will really spank similar/equivalent apps on Win7.

There is no blanket "faster" system. It's case by case, over time.

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

No, it thrives in spite of Apple Hardware. Also, there is no such thing as Apple hardware anymore, they died with the PowerPC. They design ways to cram other people's parts into pleasant looking forms.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

When both Mac OS X 10.6 and Windows 7 were tested on a MacBook Pro, Apple's new operating system clearly beat Microsoft in terms of speed, a new test has shown.

Both operating systems were tested on a 2008 MacBook Pro machine by CNet,

"In time-based tests, Snow Leopard consistently outdid Windows 7," the study found. "It took only 36.4 seconds to boot up, while Windows took 42.7 seconds. In a shutdown test, Snow Leopard took only 6.6 seconds, while Windows needed twice the amount of time: 12.6 secondsFinally, if money is not an issue--and it definitely is for most of us--you should get a Mac anyway. It's the only platform, for now, that can run both Windows and OS X."

See also:
Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Exploring Windows 7 on the Mac
Inside Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Originally Posted by Zoolook

What a waste of Bandwidth. I assume these tests were done in BootCamp for Windows, where there aren't even any official Windows7 drivers (and even the Vista ones are hugely out of date, last time I looked).

Snow Leopard may well be faster than Win7 (although I have my doubts outside of Apple specific applications... I mean, seriously, Quicktime encoding is well known to be slow at the best of times anyway,) but the CNET article doesn;t really prove that.

Check this out to see how Ubuntu outperforms OS X 10.6

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._leopard&num=2

OpenGL in SL (in fact in OS X generally) is terrible (mainly thanks to sucky drivers).

Again here

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._leopard&num=3

When using a NEUTRAL application (LAME), OS X brings upthe rear... again...

Actually OS X generally doesn't do well in benchmarks, so Apple fans are better off not banding them around, IMO.

Originally Posted by Hutcho

You have a PC with exactly the same specs for as your Mac? Unlikely.

What would be more fair is getting a PC running Windows 7 for $2000, and a Mac running OSX 10.6 for $2000 and see which is faster. The Windows machine would win convincingly.

Originally Posted by Asherian

This really doesn't make any sense at all.

Windows Update will update all MS software on a Windows computer, Software Update will update all Apple software on a Mac. Just claiming that the Mac's software update is significantly different than Windows goes to show how very little experience you have with the platform, and not in a position to judge.

As for "proven windows" applications running faster on Mac than PC -- which ones would those be? None of those on the list are really examples of Windows Native apps. Just more nonsense...

Originally Posted by Rot'nApple

Can PC's plastic case handle the heat??

Originally Posted by buceta

Windows Update updates windows only. Software Update on the Mac updates all Apple software

Originally Posted by Chachi

Not sure which is more lame...this so called test or the balloon boy story.

Originally Posted by Gwydion

False, Windows Update updates Microsoft software, including Office, Live and so on.

Memory cleaner? Disk defrag? Are you talking about Windows 98?

Originally Posted by pondosinatra

But the real question is which seems snappier?

Originally Posted by Hutcho

What speed processor and running what? Your blanket statement means nothing. Of course, in apps that don't take advantage of multicore processors, then a 3ghz Dual Core is going to be much faster than a 2.4ghz Quad Core. But when the program does, the Quad Core is going to kill the Dual Core (in CPU intensive tasks).

Originally Posted by buceta

Windows Update updates windows only. Software Update on the Mac updates all Apple software. The problem really starts, however, when you realize that in order to do serious work in Windows you need a vast array of 3rd party little software to do things like virus, malware, defrag, memory defrag, clearing of cashes, mail, calendar, contacts, a descent web browser, etc, etc.

Originally Posted by Hutcho

You have a PC with exactly the same specs for as your Mac? Unlikely.

What would be more fair is getting a PC running Windows 7 for $2000, and a Mac running OSX 10.6 for $2000 and see which is faster. The Windows machine would win convincingly.

Originally Posted by suckerpunch86

what would the results be if Apple delivered Windows-7 optimized and compatible drivers?

Originally Posted by Mazda 3s

1)
I'll spot you the antivirus, but Microsoft provides their AV software for free:

Originally Posted by teckstud

I tried click2flash for 1 week and couldn't stand the way my web pages looked- like something out of George Orwell's "1984". It looked like I was banned from viewing 15% of the web. I un-installed it last night. I hate to impose censorship just because Apple and Adobe can't solve the problem. I'm not running any other Apps (usually) when I surf at nioght anyway. But I'm glad you can tolerate the look of censorship.

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

Anyone with common sense can see this is biased. How about comparing Office versions?

Originally Posted by Gustav

Regardless, the only speed test I care about is me.

Originally Posted by Povilas

Which eats CPU cycles.

Originally Posted by Gustav

"The look of censorship" Ha ha! Give us a break! Flash wastes RAM and CPU and ClickToFlash is the best way to solve that problem.

Your opinion that it "looks like censorship" is irrelevant and it's simply your opinion. The rest of us are able to tell what real censorship looks like so ClickToFlash is not a problem.

Originally Posted by Mazda 3s

You don't want to know how much crap I have running on my MacBook Pro right now

Originally Posted by pondosinatra

But the real question is which seems snappier?

Originally Posted by jb510

Crappy article... Couldn't this have just as easily been titlted "Apple software runs slower under windows"? They really should have tested more non-apple software. Especially something modern and available in 64-bit on both, Lightroom comes to mind. for example.tOt would have been good to also see something like Photoshop which is 64-bit on Windows but 32-bit on Mac. I look forward to someone doing a proper and thourough review.

Originally Posted by iekozz

A Apple OS is faster on a Apple machine.. WOW I did NOT expect that! /sarcasem I'd say that a Windows 7 is faster on a Windows laptop. But oh wait, os x can only run on Apple stuff.

I find this test a waste of time for something we already knew.

Originally Posted by Gwydion

On the same hardware, Lightroom and DXO Optics Pro run faster on Windows 7 than in Leopard

Originally Posted by Povilas

I'm not surprised. All Adobe products run faster on Windows, mainly because Mac version are still 32 bit and carbon based.

Originally Posted by Gwydion

DXO is not from Adobe, is a OS X Cocoa 32 bit application and Windows .NET 32 bit application.

And iTunes is still a 32 bit Carbon application, doesn't it?

Originally Posted by MacTel

Even if this was compared with a comparable HP system with a Macbook and Windows 7 edged OSX SL that still would be bad.

Tack on anti-virus and anti-malware software and you'll lose anywhere between 5 to 20% of your system performance. Then over time your registry becomes bloated and slows down lookups that all apps do and so on. Whatever edge Windows 7 had at the beginning is soon gone after a month of use.

Originally Posted by Mazda 3s

1) Windows Update updates Windows, Office, other Microsoft programs, AND hardware device drivers -- just like Software Update and respective Apple software. So what's your problem?

2) Disk Defrag is built into Windows. Memory defrag? WTF? Mail and Contacts are built-in with Windows. IE8 is a sucky browser for power users, but it works just fine for everyday users. My parents use it just fine (they're 59 and 60). Malware detection is present natively in Windows 7 with Windows Defender.

I'll spot you the antivirus, but Microsoft provides their AV software for free:

http://www.microsoft.com/security_Essentials/

Don't quit your day job

Originally Posted by buceta

Windows Update worked for %30 of my software and took forever. Because of the instability one had to update by parts, restart numerous times, and every week there was a freaking update. Factor into that the other 70% of software which had their own separate updates, each happening very often and you have a situation where you spend a considerable time every day updating and restarting.

Originally Posted by MacTel

Tack on anti-virus and anti-malware software and you'll lose anywhere between 5 to 20% of your system performance. Then over time your registry becomes bloated and slows down lookups that all apps do and so on. Whatever edge Windows 7 had at the beginning is soon gone after a month of use.