Mac OS 10.1.4--How Fast Is It?

We have benchmarked the speed of each version of Mac OS X because the biggest complaint about it has been its slowness. There was an improvement in 10.0.3 and a big improvement in 10.1. Since then, things have either remained the same or slowed down.

Our test computer has been a Power Mac G4 Cube with a Rage 128 Pro video card. The only physical change has been a steady increase in RAM. We added a 512K chip before the !0.1.3 results which could have affected startup time if there is a RAM check. We conduct the tests using all networking ports closed, AppleTalk off and the ethernet cable disconnected. Each action was timed three times and the average rounded to the nearest second is reported.

Here are the results for Mac OS X 10.1.4, the latest version:

450 MHz G4 Cube Average Launch Times in Full Seconds

Application	10.0.4	10.1	10.1.1	10.1.2	10.1.3	10.1.4
Startup Chime to Login	96	68	60	59	75	71
Login to Desktop	20	9	11	12	18	20
Shutdown	-	4	4	3	4	6
Classic Mode	40	46	46	46	46	44
Netscape 4.77-4.79	4	2	2	2	2	2
AppleWorks 6.1-6.2.4	6	2	1	1	1	1
IE 5.1-5.1.4	9	2	2	2	2	2
OmniWeb 4.0-4.0.6	10	3	4	4	4	4
System Preferences	3	1	1	1	1	1
Scroll in Acrobat 5	69	82	86	87	82	73
Let1kWindowsBloom	-	-	61	62	57	58

Application launches remain the same from 10.1 through 10.1.4. Startup times for versions 10.1.3 and 10.1.4 remain longer than previous versions since 10.0.4. The increased RAM could have affected the chime to login time but not the login to desktop time which is also longer.

There seems to be a small improvement recently in 2D graphics. Unfortunately, 2D graphics are still very slow when compared with other OS's. Scrolling the Virtual PC 4.0 manual PDF fine takes only 34 seconds in Mac OS 9.2.1, less than half the best time in 10.x.x. Let1kWindowsBloom, an application that times how long it takes to open and close 1000 windows, takes only 7 seconds in Mac OS 9.2.1, much faster. The next major update, Jaguar, is supposed to improve 2D graphics by using a technology called Quartz Extreme, i.e. OpenGL and the graphics card rather than the CPU. Unfortunately, an nVidia GeForce2 or ATI Radeon AGP or better graphics card is required to take advantage of Quartz Extreme according to Apple.

In anticipation of Quartz Extreme, we ran some additional scrolling benchmarks but using our home 450 MHz Cube with 1.5 GB RAM and an Apple OEM GeForce3 graphics card. There is an external fan under the Cube to keep it cooler when we play Quake3. We loaded Macs Only!'s CVGS Watch page into several web browsers and timed how long it took to scroll the complete page in Mac OS 9.2.2, Classic Mode (9.2.2) and Mac OS X 10.1.4. We also copied the source code into an AppleWorks 6 document (about 100 pages) and timed how long it took to scroll it. Here are the results:

Time to Scroll CVGS Watch (sec)

Application	9.2.2	Classic	10.1.4
AppleWorks 6.2.3/4	5	-	27
I'net Explorer X 5.1.4	-	-	37
OmniWeb 4.1b7	-	-	32
Netscape 4.79	17	26	-
I'net Explorer 5.1.4	13	19	-

AppleWorks scrolls better than 5 times faster in Mac OS 9.2.2 than in Mac OS X 10.1.4. The browsers take roughly half again as much time to scroll in Classic mode under Mac OS X 10.1.4 than they do under Mac OS 9.2.2. They take over twice as long in Mac OS X 10.1.4. There is room for lots of improvement in 2D graphics performance.

It is expected that Mac OS X 10.1.x will be updated once more before Jaguar is released in late Summer. We will post our benchmark results when the next update comes out.