Mac OS X 10.3.3--How Fast Is It?
As background, we have benchmarked every version of Mac OS X (except 10.3.1, a quick fix) starting with 10.0 because its speed has been the source of its biggest complaint, one that has persisted right through Jaguar's last version, 10.2.8. Apple made some progress with a couple of 10.0.x updates and with 10.1 and 10.2. But, as we noted in our last Jaguar benchmark, all of the Jaguar versions through 10.2.8 were basically the same speedwise. Our previous speed test of Panther (10.3) in October concluded that it was much faster in some very important aspects than the last version of Jaguar, 10.2.8. Panther's latest update is 10.3.3 and it appears to include some new graphics drivers so it may be even faster. Well, just how fast is it?
We ran our complete suite of speed tests on 10.3.3, consisting of a number of "canned" benchmarks and several so-called "real world" tests. They are described in detail in our G4 Cube 1.2-GHz upgrade review and are simple enough for anyone to repeat on their own Mac for comparison. We used a completely stock 450-MHz G4 Cube (except for the 704 MB of RAM) and our dual 2-GHz Power Mac G5 with 1.5-GB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (retail) graphics card as test machines. Each test was run three times with a cold boot in between and the average score or number of seconds computed. Here are the results comparing 10.3.3, 10.3.2, 10.3 and 10.2.8:
| Test | Cube 450 MHz |
G5 dual 2-GHz
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mac OS X Version: |
10.2.8
|
10.3
|
10.3.2
|
10.3.3
|
10.2.8
|
10.3
|
10.3.2
|
10.3.3
|
| Benchmarks: | ||||||||
| Altivec Fractal 1.1.3 (GFLOPS) |
1.5
|
1.5
|
1.5
|
1.5
|
10.3
|
10.3
|
10.3
|
10.3
|
|
Cinebench 2003 - Rendering
|
49
|
48
|
48
|
47
|
520
|
523
|
521
|
511
|
|
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting
|
92
|
90
|
93
|
93
|
1347
|
1384
|
1295
|
1438
|
| Let1kWindowsBloom 1.0 (sec) |
61
|
42
|
55
|
42
|
19
|
34
|
24
|
34
|
| Xbench 1.1.3 - CPU |
52
|
52
|
53
|
53
|
194
|
193
|
193
|
193
|
| - Threading |
34
|
42
|
42
|
42
|
205
|
209
|
209
|
208
|
| - Memory |
64
|
76
|
76
|
76
|
302
|
311
|
324
|
314
|
| - Quartz Graphics |
63
|
72
|
72
|
72
|
279
|
274
|
282
|
281
|
| - OpenGL Graphics |
84
|
81
|
81
|
81
|
178
|
179
|
178
|
192
|
| - User Interface Graphics |
60
|
104
|
103
|
105
|
215
|
348
|
343
|
346
|
| - Hard Disk |
66
|
64
|
56
|
51
|
110
|
110
|
106
|
108
|
| "Real World" Tests: | ||||||||
| Startup (sec)** |
54
|
44
|
75/52
|
51
|
43
|
45
|
76/48
|
51
|
| Shutdown (sec) |
7
|
13
|
13
|
14
|
9
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
| Launch Classic Mode (sec) |
-
|
-
|
25
|
28
|
16
|
11
|
11
|
13
|
| Dup. 700 MB Folder 3600 Files (sec) |
131
|
134
|
147
|
140
|
81
|
90
|
84
|
87
|
| Scroll 142p Acrobat Reader File (sec) |
57
|
55
|
56
|
55
|
14
|
13
|
14
|
13
|
| Encode MP3 in iTunes 3.0.1 (sec) |
105
|
105
|
108
|
106
|
51
|
51
|
52
|
52
|
| Export QT Movie in iMovie 3.0.1 (sec) |
35
|
32
|
33
|
33
|
24
|
23
|
23
|
24
|
| Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec) |
22
|
21
|
33
|
34
|
281
|
291
|
355
|
364
|
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