Hands-On Report: Mac OS X 10.4.5--How Fast Is It?

2004–09February 21, 2006Bill FoxReviews
Last Wednesday (2/15), Apple released Mac OS X 10.4.5 Update to Tiger for the Power PC CPU, Intel CPU and server editions. As frequent readers know, we have benchmarked virtually every release of Mac OS X from the original 10.0 release through 10.4.4 to keep track of the improvements in its speed, a major complaint initially about Mac OS X. Mac OS X runs very well these days and its recent speed enhancements have largely focussed on graphics.

So how fast is it? Did 10.4.5 speed anything up or slow anything down? To determine this we ran our usual suite of speed tests on our three test-bed Macs. The speed tests are composed of a series of "canned" benchmark applications and several so-called "real world" tests that anyone can repeat on their own Mac for comparison by following the steps that we perform.

Our long-term test Mac (since Mac OS X 10.0) has been a mostly-stock, year-2000 vintage 450 MHz Power Mac G4 Cube with 704MB RAM. We also used Apple's top-of-the-line Power Mac G5 Quad that is stock except for an additional of 2GB RAM to 2.5GB. Our third test Mac is a 20" 2 GHz iMac G5 (Rev. B), stock in every way, to represent a recent mid-range Mac.

Here are the results for the G4 Cube using Mac OS X 10.4.4 and Mac OS X 10.4.3, 10.4.2, 10.4 (Tiger) plus the last update of 10.3.9 (Panther). Other versions back to 10.0 can be found in our previous articles:

450 MHz G4 Cube Speed Tests (average* scores or secs).
Test 450 MHz G4 Cube
Mac OS X Version:
10.3.9
10.4
10.4.2
10.4.3
10.4.4
10.4.5
Benchmarks:
Altivec Fractal (GFLOPS)
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.5
Cinebench 2003 - Rendering
48
48
48
49
48
47
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting
91
90
91
92
91
90
Let1kWindowsBloom 1.0 (sec)
53
30
30
31
32
29
Xbench - CPU
54
54
54
53
53
49
- Threading
42
42
42
42
42
41
- Memory
76
77
79
80
79
78
- Quartz Graphics
74
73
77
77
75
72
- OpenGL Graphics
80
88
88
88
87
86
- User Interface Graphics
102
150
148
147
146
144
- Hard Disk
54
56
54
51
50
54
"Real World" Tests:
Startup (sec)
52
53
49
52
52
54
Shutdown (sec)
15
16
15
16
15
25
Launch Classic Mode (sec)
25
36
30
31
30
30
Dup. 700 MB Folder 3600 Files (sec)
152
128
130
133
132
122
Scroll 142p Adobe Reader File (sec)
55
55
54
55
54
55
Encode MP3 in iTunes (sec)
105
104
104
104
104
108
Export QT FQDV Movie in iMovie (sec)
36
38
39
38
41
39
Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec)
34
32
32
34
34
34
*Average of three runs. Red is much faster. Blue is much slower.

For this now low-end Mac, there are no real improvements in 10.4.5. The QuickTime Export is back down to an ambient level and file duplication is faster but not by over 10%. There is, however, a significant increase in time to shut down. This did not happen with the other test Macs so it is a mystery to us like the shut down time increase for the Power Mac G5 Quad with 10.4.4.

Here are the results for the 20" 2 GHz iMac G5 comparing 10.4.5 with 10.4.4, 10.4.3 and 10.4.1:

2.0GHz iMac G5 (Rev. B) Speed Tests (average* scores or secs).
Test 20" 2 GHz iMac G5 (Rev. B)
Mac OS X Version
10.4.1+
10.4.3
10.4.4
10.4.5
Benchmarks:
Altivec Fractal (GFLOPS)
4.9
4.8
4.7
4.8
Cinebench 2003 (G5) - Rendering
276
277
277
277
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting
1152
1142
1145
1139
Let1kWindowsBloom 1.0 (sec)
10
9
9
9
Xbench - CPU
139
144
145
146
- Threading
111
112
113
112
- Memory
232
236
236
235
- Quartz Graphics
332+
232
231
219
- OpenGL Graphics
212
207
210
216
- User Interface Graphics
296
345
354
346
- Hard Disk
138
137
136
140
"Real World" Tests:
Startup (sec)
37
40
40
40
Shutdown (sec)
8
8
8
7
Launch Classic Mode (sec)
14
14
14
13
Dup. 700 MB Folder 3600 Files (sec)
53
49
48
44
Scroll 142p Adobe Reader File (sec)
18
15
15
15
Encode MP3 in iTunes (sec)
56
52
52
53
Export QT FQDV Movie in iMovie HD (sec)
23
27
22
21
Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec)
140
147
142
142
Halo 1.5.2 (frames/sec)
19
20
19
19
Call of Duty 1.4 (frames/sec)
56
56
57
56
Doom 3 1.3 MQ (frames/sec)
-
30
31
31
*Average of 3 runs. +With Quartz 2D Extreme enabled.Red is much faster. Blue is much slower.

The results for the 20" 2 GHz iMac G5 show no real differences between 10.4.5 and 10.4.4. The Xbench Quartz Graphics score is lower but not by over 10%.

Here are the Power Mac G5 Quad's results comparing 10.4.5 with 10.4.4 and 10.4.3:

Quad 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 Speed Tests (average* scores or secs).
Test Quad 2.5GHz Power Mac G5
Mac OS X Version:
10.4.3
10.4.4
10.4.5
Benchmarks:
Altivec Fractal (GFLOPS)
25.0
25.0
24.6
Cinebench 2003 (G5) - Rendering
1091
1101
1107
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting
1854
1848
1829
Let1kWindowsBloom 1.0 (sec)
6
6
6
Xbench - CPU
243
242
243
- Threading
516
520
521
- Memory
517
534
517
- Quartz Graphics
311
310
312
- OpenGL Graphics
237
241
246
- User Interface Graphics
541
549
554
- Hard Disk
111
123
117
"Real World" Tests:
Startup (sec)
44
46
44
Shutdown (sec)
13
25
12
Launch Classic Mode (sec)
10
11
10
Dup. 700 MB Folder 3600 Files (sec)
42
42
43
Scroll 142p Adobe Reader File (sec)
11
11
11
Encode MP3 in iTunes (sec)
52
52
52
Export QT FQDV Movie in iMovie HD (sec)
19
19
44
Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec)
416
417
414
Halo 1.5.2 (frames/sec)
31
31
31
Call of Duty 1.4 (frames/sec)
69
85
85
Doom 3 1.3 (frames/sec)
52
52
52
*Average of 3 runs. Red is much faster. Blue is much slower.

For the current top-end Power Mac G5, the Quad 2.5 GHz, there are two differences of note between Mac OS X 10.4.5 and 10.4.4. First, the Quad's time to shut down under 10.4.5 decreased back to the 10.4.3 level. We could not isolate a reason for the previous increase nor the current decrease. Second, the one application that really decreased in performance is iMovie HD 6.0.1. It took over twice as long for the new iLife '06 application to export a full quality DV movie from the test clips. We believe this is due to the iMovie HD 6.0.1 application and not 10.4.5 since the time did not increase for v 5.0.2 used on the iMac G5 or v3.0.3 used on the G4 Cube.

Mac OS X 10.4.5, like the other 10.4.x updates, has mainly security, compatibility and stability improvements and no real speed improvements. We have used Mac OS X 10.4.5 for nearly a week on a number of Macs and PowerBooks without running into any new or significant problems. [Bill Fox]



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