Hands-On Report: Mac OS X 10.4.6 (Intel)--How Fast Is It?

2004–09April 12, 2006Macs Only!Dark Side
Last Tuesday, Apple released Mac OS X 10.4.6 Update to Tiger for the Power PC CPU, Intel CPU and server editions (see this Apple Web page).As frequent readers know, we have benchmarked virtually every release of Mac OS X from the original 10.0 release through 10.4.5 to keep track of the improvements in its speed, a major complaint initially about Mac OS X. On Monday, we posted the results of our speed comparo of Mac OS X 10.4.6 (PPC) with Mac OS X 10.4.5 (PPC). Today, we have the results for Mac OS X 10.4.6 (Intel).

How fast is it? Did 10.4.6 speed anything up or slow anything down on Intel-based Macs? To determine this we ran a reduced set of our usual suite of speed tests on our two Intel-based test 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. In these tests, we used a 20" 2GHz iMac Core Duo with 2GB RAM and a 1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo with 1GB of RAM.

Here are the results for the 20" 2 GHz iMac Core Duo comparing 10.4.6 with 10.4.5:

2.0GHz iMac Core Duo Speed Tests (average* scores or secs).
Test+ Mac OS X
10.4.5
10.4.6
Chg. %
Benchmarks:
Altivec Fractal (GFLOPS)
3.8
3.7
-3
Cinebench 2003 (9.5)+ - Rendering
566
567
+0
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting
1681
1679
-0
Let1kWindowsBloom 1.0 (sec)
12
11
-8
Xbench 1.2+ - CPU
77
76
-1
- Threading
199
199
0
- Memory
108
110
+2
- Quartz Graphics
72
72
0
- OpenGL Graphics
132
136
+3
- User Interface Graphics
nv
nv
-
- Hard Disk
92
90
-2
"Real World" Tests:
Startup (sec)
29
64
+221
Shutdown (sec)
7
6
-14
Dup. 500 MB Folder of Files (sec)
32
32
0
Scroll 144p Adobe 7.0.7 Reader File (sec)
38
38
0
Doom 3 1.3A+ MQ (frames/sec)
65
55
-15
*Average of 3 runs. +Universal binary version. nv=not valid. Red is much faster. Blue is much slower.

The results for the 20" 2GHz iMac Core Duo show, with two exceptions, no appreciable differences between 10.4.6 and 10.4.5. First, the startup time increased substantially. We can not explain this huge change and wonder if anybody else has seen this change--let us know using the "News tips" link above. And second, the frame rate for Doom 3 v1.3A dropped significantly. This also happened on our iMac G5 which we reported on Monday. This Doom 3 result is a re-run using a new user created to explore why the startup time increased so dramatically and it's less of a difference than we showed Tuesday, more in line with the same decline in Doom 3 performance that we saw in the iMac G5.

Here are the results for the 1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo comparing 10.4.6 with 10.4.5:

1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo Speed Tests (average* scores or secs).
Test Mac OS X
10.4.5
10.4.6
Chg. %
Benchmarks:
Altivec Fractal (GFLOPS)
3.3
3.3
0
Cinebench 2003 (9.5)+ - Rendering (2X)
464
474
+2
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting
546
545
-0
Let1kWindowsBloom 1.0 (sec)
19
19
0
Xbench 1.2+ - CPU
64
64
0
- Threading
166
166
0
- Memory
97
108
+11
- Quartz Graphics
60
68
+13
- OpenGL Graphics
183
183
0
- User Interface Graphics
nv
nv
-
- Hard Disk
30
27
-10
"Real World" Tests:
Startup (sec)
25
28
+12
Shutdown (sec)
8
9
+12
Dup. 500 MB Folder of Files (sec)
48
49
+2
Scroll 144p Adobe 7.0.7 Reader File (sec)
78
76
-3
Export QT FQDV Movie in iMovie HD 6.0.2 (sec)
nr
49
-
Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec)
44
44
0
Call of Duty 1.4 (frames/sec)
18
18
0
*Average of 3 runs. +Universal binary version. nv=not valid. nr=not recorded.Red is much faster. Blue is much slower.

For the 1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo, there are generally no appreciable differences between Mac OS X 10.4.6 and 10.4.5. The Quartz Graphics score in 10.4.6 is statistically higher, however. Somewhat surprisingly, the Mac mini Core Duo's Quartz and OpenGL graphics scores are similar to those of the iMac Core Duo, maybe even better in OpenGL. Also surprisingly, we got the same QuickTime DV compression performance from iMovie HD 6.0.1 as we did with the Power Mac G5 Quad. The Intel GMA945 integrated graphics chip in the Mac mini is proving to be very good except at fast 3D games.

Like the iMac Core Duo, the startup time for the Mac mini Core Duo also increased but nowhere near as much.

Mac OS X 10.4.6 (Intel) has mainly security, compatibility and stability improvements and no general speed improvements. To the contrary, the only speed effects are that startup time has increased and the performance in Doom 3 for at least some Macs with ATI Radeon cards has been reduced. [Bill Fox & Dana Baggett]



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