New iMac 24' Performance, Snow Leopard

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johnobnjohnobn
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I'm very pleased with my purchase (about a week ago) and I don't regret spending 2 grand now than waiting for the iMac upgrade due in November. But I do have one question...why do I feel it's faster when I boot it at times than others? Like right now I booted Safari, iPhoto, and iTunes and they took one bounce each to load? The average for those applications is 2 tops plus a bit more to load (iTunes, iPhoto) and when I started widgets it was like a second to start and load all applications when it's usually 2-3 seconds...what gives? Why is my mac super fast on certain days?



Also, I was wondering if leopard takes full of advantage of the dual processors of my computer. I've read that Snow Leopard will be more of a performance upgrade, so I wondered if my mac could possibly get a boost from new software...or is my current OS taking full advantage of the Core 2 Duo?

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    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    One reason you see a difference in launching is if an application has been cached. If you launch an app it usually takes a few seconds to start but the libraries etc required to load the app are put in a cache. Quitting the app and relaunching should bring it up much faster. If you've opened and run several apps since then, it's likely that the cache was removed and the next time you launch will take a bit longer.



    Sometimes the VM caches can get a bit slow depending on what you are running. If for example, you run Photoshop for a while and edit loads of files and then try to switch and launch say Indesign, it will take longer than if you had tried to launch Indesign from a freshly booted system as the OS tries to free up resources to give to the frontmost app.



    A difference of a few seconds is normal.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by johnobn


    Also, I was wondering if leopard takes full of advantage of the dual processors of my computer. I've read that Snow Leopard will be more of a performance upgrade, so I wondered if my mac could possibly get a boost from new software...or is my current OS taking full advantage of the Core 2 Duo?



    Snow Leopard should give some performance boost but launch performance isn't so much a CPU factor as disk factor. The apps have to load the files required into your Ram. What would help more is a faster disk - at least one with a higher read performance.



    SSD is one such type of disk and the launch times are usually 30-100% faster than a platter drive. Like I say though, apps will be cached no matter what you do so you will probably always see a slight variation in launch performance.



    If you have enough Ram and you don't turn off your machine, you could try using a Ram disk. There are programs like this:



    http://www.clarkwood.com/old/rambunctious/



    or you can do it in the command-line:



    http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/23/creat...k-in-mac-os-x/



    You can then launch apps from the Ram disk - someone said about using it as a Photoshop scratch. You'd have to have over 2GB Ram to be able to use this effectively.



    The problem is you lose the contents of the Ram disk on reboot so you'd be as well opening apps and just leaving them open.
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