Why is windows faster on my macbook than OSX?

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I bought a black MacBook yesterday and transferred all my stuff from my 1.67GHz Powerbook. I loaded XP via boot camp as well. Windows is really fast on the computer but OSX is really sluggish. WTF?! Any ideas? Oh and I swapped one of the 256 sticks of RAM for a 512 stick so I am running 768 total.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 40
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by GreggWSmith

    I bought a black MacBook yesterday and transferred all my stuff from my 1.67GHz Powerbook. I loaded XP via boot camp as well. Windows is really fast on the computer but OSX is really sluggish. WTF?! Any ideas? Oh and I swapped one of the 256 sticks of RAM for a 512 stick so I am running 768 total.



    1.) It's not a good idea to use differently-sized RAM modules in a MacBook, as that makes the bus single-channel rather than dual-channel, halving the bandwidth and therefore degrading GPU performance.



    2.) Which operations in Windows are faster? Have you timed anything?
  • Reply 2 of 40
    So it would be better to keep the 2 256 sticks until I get matching 512 or 1 gig sticks?
  • Reply 3 of 40
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by GreggWSmith

    So it would be better to keep the 2 256 sticks until I get matching 512 or 1 gig sticks?



    It depends what you are doing, really. If you are running a few or more not-so-intensive-on-the-graphics-side-of-things programs simulatenously and switching between them often, you may be running into virtual memory swaps with only 512 MB RAM in the machine, but not with 768 MB, making 768 MB much faster over all despite the graphics performance hit.



    In the long run, get another 512 stick (make sure it's the same configuration as the first 512 stick you bought - best to get it from the same place), then you're less likely to run into VM swapping, and you'll have maximum graphics performance.
  • Reply 4 of 40
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Windows has a much more primitive graphics layer. it's quite possible that the Intel graphics don't really do much for quartz extreme, and that would certainly have to do with perceived slowness.
  • Reply 5 of 40
    joeyjoey Posts: 236member
    I agree completely... the mismatched memory sizes primarily affect graphics performance. Quartz Extreme(the OS X graphics interface engine) is MUCH more GPU intensive than XP. If you think back, Apple has always had fairly powerful GPUs in their machines so they can run smoothly. Even the basic iBooks had dedicated graphics processors and memory. The newer Intel integrated GPU is fine for running Quartz Extreme in dual channel. The XP GUI can run smoothly on the most basic of GPUs.
  • Reply 6 of 40
    alexluftalexluft Posts: 159member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Joey

    I agree completely... the mismatched memory sizes primarily affect graphics performance. Quartz Extreme(the OS X graphics interface engine) is MUCH more GPU intensive than XP. If you think back, Apple has always had fairly powerful GPUs in their machines so they can run smoothly. Even the basic iBooks had dedicated graphics processors and memory. The newer Intel integrated GPU is fine for running Quartz Extreme in dual channel. The XP GUI can run smoothly on the most basic of GPUs.



    It will be very fun"nnnnyyyyy" to see what the Viiiistta Longshot GUI will run smoothly on... From what I can smell, looks like people wanting the OS X-like effects in Vista will have to buy a notebook with a dedicated gpu...
  • Reply 7 of 40
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Splinemodel

    Windows has a much more primitive graphics layer. it's quite possible that the Intel graphics don't really do much for quartz extreme, and that would certainly have to do with perceived slowness.



    OS X is also very inefficient with memory, as well as encouraging keeping programs going. I can do very well with 512MB of memory with Windows, in OS X, I like to have 1.5GB or more.
  • Reply 8 of 40
    sandausandau Posts: 1,230member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by JeffDM

    OS X is also very inefficient with memory, as well as encouraging keeping programs going. I can do very well with 512MB of memory with Windows, in OS X, I like to have 1.5GB or more.



    huh? i can see your preference but please prove this inefficiency. any OS runs better with more RAM. Win XP sucks with 512mb if I'm coding. OS X sucks with 512mb if I'm doing the same. They both are ok if i'm just reading email and browsing the web with 512mb.
  • Reply 9 of 40
    skatmanskatman Posts: 609member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sandau

    huh? i can see your preference but please prove this inefficiency. any OS runs better with more RAM. Win XP sucks with 512mb if I'm coding. OS X sucks with 512mb if I'm doing the same. They both are ok if i'm just reading email and browsing the web with 512mb.



    What are you coding that 512 MB is not enough? Perhaps you should make the code more efficient?! I've coded a lot of things in my life ranging from word processors to large scale molecular dynamics simulations for clusters and there aren't a lot of things that 512 MB in not enough for while you're actually coding...



    As far Windows vs. OSX on the same hardware it all depends on the configuration. XP, just like OSX, offloads some of the graphics work to the GPU through directX. And just like XP, OSX will be able to offload the graphics work back to the CPU should the hardware be incapable of fully utilizing the OpenGL instruction set dictated by Quartz Extreme subsystem.

    The main difference has probably do to with drivers. It takes a while to hone the drivers for graphics hardware. XP has been around longer on the Intel hardware than OSX has.
  • Reply 10 of 40
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    I'd have to disagree here. Mach will aggressively cache anything it can, as will Core Image on the GPU. The goal is to keep 90% of your real RAM in use by whatever means necessary. Unused RAM is wasted RAM and wasted money. Keeping RAM "free" is counterproductive and serves no purpose.





    Quote:

    Originally posted by JeffDM

    OS X is also very inefficient with memory, as well as encouraging keeping programs going. I can do very well with 512MB of memory with Windows, in OS X, I like to have 1.5GB or more.



  • Reply 11 of 40
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by lundy

    I'd have to disagree here. Mach will aggressively cache anything it can, as will Core Image on the GPU. The goal is to keep 90% of your real RAM in use by whatever means necessary. Unused RAM is wasted RAM and wasted money. Keeping RAM "free" is counterproductive and serves no purpose.



    My point is that I find I *have* to have at least 1.5GB of memory to use OS X efficiently, which is about 3x what I need for Windows, so I don't need to spend extra money on memory for Windows. Windows does cache things pretty well, I can kill a program and restart it very quickly at a later time, so long as it is still cached, with sufficient memory, it is. Part of it seems to have less to do with Mach than it does with the OS X way of discouraging closing programs, rather than RAM acting as cache, programs have to get put to swap file.
  • Reply 12 of 40
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by JeffDM

    My point is that I find I *have* to have at least 1.5GB of memory to use OS X efficiently.



    What are you doing? I've got 768 MB (half what you've got), I never run into VM swapping; I'm running 10.3.9. My GF, running 10.4.6, also has 768 MB RAM, and she doesn't have any VM swapping problems, either.
  • Reply 13 of 40
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. H

    What are you doing? I've got 768 MB (half what you've got), I never run into VM swapping; I'm running 10.3.9. My GF, running 10.4.6, also has 768 MB RAM, and she doesn't have any VM swapping problems, either.



    Yeah, my main computer uses 1.5 gigs, but I find it to be overkill. 512 isn't enough, but 768 seems to be the threshold where things become fast.
  • Reply 14 of 40
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by JeffDM

    My point is that I find I *have* to have at least 1.5GB of memory to use OS X efficiently, which is about 3x what I need for Windows, . . .



    Well, I have 2GB on my PC and I run into "Not enough RAM" messages all the time. It upsets me that the PC rarely utilizes the full 2GB, and when it does, it seems to leak all over the place. I have to restart frequently due to memory fragmentation.
  • Reply 15 of 40
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. H

    What are you doing? I've got 768 MB (half what you've got), I never run into VM swapping; I'm running 10.3.9. My GF, running 10.4.6, also has 768 MB RAM, and she doesn't have any VM swapping problems, either.



    I don't know, maybe you can help me on that...



    http://demaagd.com/gr/grab.jpg
  • Reply 16 of 40
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Splinemodel

    Well, I have 2GB on my PC and I run into "Not enough RAM" messages all the time. It upsets me that the PC rarely utilizes the full 2GB, and when it does, it seems to leak all over the place. I have to restart frequently due to memory fragmentation.



    Are you sure that is the OS leaking memory and not the app? The major leaker in my Windows system is Firefox, even that's not that bad.



    The two operating systems do report their memory use differently, my current system has "used" about 256MB but there is another 256MB that is cached too, OS X seems to lump them together, at least in the graphical bar.
  • Reply 17 of 40
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by JeffDM

    I don't know, maybe you can help me on that...



    http://demaagd.com/gr/grab.jpg




    Looks to me that both Firefox and Cyberduck have memory leaks (the memory usage numbers are very high). In my experience, Safari has lower memory usage than Firefox.



    Of course, if you want to stick with using Firefox, just restart it every so often. Ditto with Cyberduck.



    Do you run activity monitor all the time? Try not doing that.
  • Reply 18 of 40
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. H

    Looks to me that both Firefox and Cyberduck have memory leaks (the memory usage numbers are very high). In my experience, Safari has lower memory usage than Firefox.



    Of course, if you want to stick with using Firefox, just restart it every so often. Ditto with Cyberduck.



    Do you run activity monitor all the time? Try not doing that.




    Activity monitor is on all the time. Its memory footprint is negligible.



    Restarting Firefox and Cyberduck frees about 150MB, but not enough to make 1GB ram efficiently usable.
  • Reply 19 of 40
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  • Reply 20 of 40
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ichiban_jay

    .



    I agree with your point.
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