Apple
OS X Snow Leopard vs Leopard on a Macbook Pro. Disappointment
1 year ago Posted in: Apple, Macbook Pro, REVIEWS View Comments

I just installed Snow Leopard on my Macbook Pro 3.06Ghz. So far I haven’t noticed much in the way of a visual upgrades rather than the menu options looking a little different and Snow Leopard overwriting all of my custom settings.

I decided to run Xbench just to see if what’s under the hood has improved at all and to my surprise Snow Leopard sucks. Maybe all that snow is causing some processor problems? My brand new Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard scored a mind-blowing 133 compared to the 160 it scored running Leopard; higher is better.

Even my 2.8Ghz MBP was faster.

Screen shot 2009-08-28 at 2.48.17 PMWTF!!!

WTF Apple? I just paid $35 to downgrade my performance?

I’m extremely disappointed. So much hype… for what? Just like Apple to deliver on the hype and not deliver on the goods. Like every other Apple product, I supposed I’ll have to wait until next year when they release Snow Leopard V2?

I don’t want to jump the gun on this so I will run a few more tests. But so far it’s a bust.

Run XBench, post your scores in the comments section!

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 2:06 pm

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  • I've had some more time to really test Snow Leopard since the install and I can say with certainty, it is noticeably faster than Leopard. Startup and shutdown are much quicker, opening applications is quicker, connecting to my network and working off of network drives also seems much quicker.

    For $35, it's been well worth the price at the very least.
  • blufire
    Xbench is outdated (3+ years old) and not what I'd call a "good" test of system performance. There are many alternatives that are much better at testing various areas of the OS, but it should really come down to the timing for your day-to-day tasks.
  • My XBench score has not improved at all. The only increase in performance that can be seen via Xbench is when booting my Macbook Pro in 64 bit mode.

    http://christopheraceto.com/2009/08/29/32-bit-and-64-bit-snow-leopard-speed-on-a-macbook-pro/
  • S. A. Welsh
    I scored a 125.84 now that SL is installed.

    I noticed that Spotlight was "indexing" my computer for a few minutes after I finished the update. This could very easily lower your score on xBench. Perhaps it was not finished indexing your system at the time of your test?

    I agree that it may also be true that xBench is not testing things that are helped by Snow Leopard. There are a couple of [not so nice] thoughts floating around the internet about the whole 32/64 bit deal in Snow Leopard anyway...

    So... did your score improve the second [or third] time around?
  • Actually I did test it right after. It's been off for about 5 hours, I'm going to run it again. Maybe Xbench doesn't support 64 bit? Can someone verify?
  • S. A. Welsh
    I shot a 118.37 with my 2 x 2GHz Dual-Core Xeon Mac Pro (9GB DDR2) running 10.4.11

    Just out of curiosity, did you test it immediately after completing the install? I have a theory about MBP's slowing way down due to heat, like the kind that might build up reinstalling the OS...

    I'll repost my score after upgrade.
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