Hands-On Speed Report--Mac OS X 10.4.7--Supplement

First, please note that we revised yesterday's 10.4.7 speed report. We also ran our speed tests on a 2GHz iMac Core Duo and a 1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo to see if we could generally confirm the conclusions reached for our MacBook Pro, i.e. an OpenGL graphics speed boost and a slowing of the startup/shutdown process. Here are the salient results compared with those for our MacBook Pro posted yesterday:

2.0GHz iMac Core Duo and 1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo Speed Tests (average* scores or secs).
Test+ Mac OS X
10.4.7
10.4.6
Perf. Chg. %
2GHz iMac Core Duo:
Cinebench 2003 OpenGL HW Lighting
2858
2542
+12
Xbench 1.2 OpenGL Graphics
145
136
+7
Doom 3 1.3A (frames/sec)
70
55
+27
Startup (sec)
25
nv
--
Shutdown (sec)
7
6
-17
1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo:
Cinebench 2003 OpenGL HW Lighting
1154
825
+40
Xbench 1.2 OpenGL Graphics
188
183
+3
Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec)
44
44
0
Startup (sec)
29
28
-4
Shutdown (sec)
9
9
0
2.16GHz 15" MacBook Pro
Cinebench 2003 OpenGL HW Lighting
2888
2475
+17
Xbench 1.2 OpenGL Graphics
154
142
+8
Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec)
135
134
+1
Halo 1.5.2 (frames/sec)
25
22
+14
Call of Duty 1.5 (frames/sec)
35
32
+9
Doom 3 1.3A MQ (frames/sec)
62
59
+5
Quake 4 (frames/sec)
66
56
+18
Startup (sec)
29
22
-27
Shutdown (sec)
10
8
-25
*Average of 3 runs. nv=not valid. Red is much faster. Blue is much slower.

The results from our iMac Core Duo and Mac mini Core Duo tests are consistent with and generally bear out the results from our MacBook Pro tests. OpenGL graphics performance is improved with Mac OS X 10.4.7 and the startup/shutdown process is slowed down a bit. [Bill Fox & Dana Baggett]

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