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Why is Lion Slower Than Snow Leopard?

K

kkathman

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 7, 2009
10
0
I have a somewhat older iMAC with a 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB Memory, and it's about 2 years old. I'm only about 1/2 full on my disk. I recently "upgraded" to Lion, after enjoying great performance with Snow Leopard. However, my experience has been tainted dramatically with Lion.

The first thing I noticed was how slow the system responded just to do simple things like open up a Finder window. Most applications won't open without the spinning beach ball, and open a good 2-10 seconds slower than with Snow. MDS (spotlight process) was constantly running taking up well over 50% of the CPU even a month after install (and the computer stays on pretty much 24x7, and is idle most of the day). I ended up finally having to use a utility to turn off spolight because it was so invasive.

One thing that DID help, however, was to remember to start Lion in 32 bit mode. Lion is not like Snow. The default starting mode is 64-bit, not 32. So you must hold down the 3 and 2 while booting. This helped with performance rather dramatically, but I'm still pretty annoyed.

I would suggest to those of you that DON'T have the Core 2 Duo proessors, DONT upgrade to Lion. There aren't THAT many features that are worth the downgrade in performance. I've posted this in the Apple Forums and received little response, so if any of you have found tricks tha speed performance in 64 bit more, please feel free to post them here!

Thanks.
 
Gav2k

Gav2k

macrumors G3
Jul 24, 2009
9,216
1,608
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I have a 2.0ghz c2d with 8gb ram (mini) running lion with no such issues.
 
J

jgould

macrumors regular
Jan 27, 2011
166
0
Columbus Ohio
sluggish...

My 2011 MacBook Pro (2.3 GHz Core i5, 8GB RAM) has been sluggish ever since I upgraded it to Lion. I expected my 2007 Mac Mini (1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM) to be slow, but not the MBP. I had to upgrade to 8GB of RAM after I had problems with kernel_task (It's one of the system processes) using 760 MB of RAM on it's own. That problem still hasn't been fixed...

I decided to do a complete wipe and reinstall of Lion on my Mini, and it has made a difference. There are still some times when the system is sluggish, but it's improved greatly. My mini is pretty much my file server so it's on 24x7, and is constantly handing out stuff over the network...

I'm currently waiting on the Recovery disk on the MBP to download Lion again so I can do a clean install and see if that helps. Time will tell...
 
K

kkathman

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 7, 2009
10
0
I had some really good luck today by moving all the MDS files into a separate folder (so they can't run), then rebootingin 32 bit mode. This has been a drastic improvement! If you're on an older machine with Lion, I'd highly recommend this.

In essence I followed the following post:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1110672/

The only difference, was that I didn't delete the files. Once I got to that directory I did a mkdir mds-stuff, then used mv (not rm) to move the mds files to that new directory. Then rebooted into 32-bit mode.

Hope that helps others.
 
L

learnmyshot

macrumors newbie
Aug 14, 2011
1
0
lion is slower than snow leopard on start up and shut down

I have 2 brand new mac book pros: (purchased August 2011)
1. MBP 2.0,i7, 4gb ram, 7200 hd (has snow leopard)
2. MBP 2.3,i7, 8gb ram, 7200 hd (has lion)

both have same apps and everything. the one that has lion takes 3-4 seconds longer to boot, and 2 seconds longer to shut down. (even though it's a faster machine).
 
aliensporebomb

aliensporebomb

macrumors 68000
Jun 19, 2005
1,907
332
Minneapolis, MN, USA, Urth
Some thought

I've found it's not that the OS is so much slower but rather on my iMac 16 Corei7 2.8 ghz with 16 gigs of ram what seems slower is the launching of programs. In the past "Preview" would launch with 1 bounce, now it's 4-5.

Thinking.
 
Icy1007

Icy1007

macrumors 65816
Feb 26, 2011
1,075
74
Cleveland, OH
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I don't know, but everything seems to run faster since I upgraded to Lion. Everything opens with one "bounce". Startup and shutdown are about the same. Only problems I've had have resulted from using sleep mode.
 
K

kkathman

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 7, 2009
10
0
lamonsas - can you supply some direction on how to do what you suggest?
 
A

artguy3d

macrumors member
Apr 2, 2010
41
0
I agree with the Lion is slower assessment. But it really seems slower on my 30" monitor. I think it has to do with the older graphic chips on some systems and lack of enough ram.
 
A

artguy3d

macrumors member
Apr 2, 2010
41
0
Here are some tests from lifehacker:

The following tests were performed on a 2.66 GhZ iMac with 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive connected to the internet over Wi-Fi at a maximum speed of 60mbps.

Lion (10.7.0) Snow Leopard (10.6.8)
Boot 1:32 1:25
Compress a ~900MB File 0:51 0:59
Decompress a ~900MB File 0:10 0:09
Duplicate a ~900MB File 0:09 0:09
Encoder a Movie for iPhone in Quicktime X 0:56 0:53
Launch 9 Applications 0:59 0:37
Open 10 Tabs in Safari 0:15 0:17


Mostly they are very close, but Lifehacker does show a faster boot and Application launch time result in SL. I was personally bothered by a graphical slowness due to the animation effects, but I think that is more apparent on a large monitor.

I'm back to Snow Leopard now and loving it. Thought I'd put Lion on again in a separate partition, but now I think why bother....
 
eljanitor

eljanitor

macrumors 6502
Feb 10, 2011
411
20
I've been running Lion on an old small GB external FW 400 IDE HD. Runs faster then my SL SATA FW 400 HDs. Or my internal HD running SL. Using a mac Pro 2x 2.66 GHz with 5 GB RAM.
 
M

munakib

macrumors 6502a
May 22, 2011
560
120
You need to fresh install Lion (format your existing hdd), which is slightly against Apple policy i presume - (burning the installer image on a USB). Speed should be back to top notch, its just another apple fail but fanboi's will overlook it.
 
B

baummer

macrumors 65816
Jan 18, 2005
1,235
292
Southern California
Now that Lion has been installed for a few weeks, it seems to have settled for lack of a better term. It's quite snappy (especially Finder) and I am running 8GB of memory (max for my iMac model).
 
T

Trudy

macrumors regular
Sep 30, 2004
120
0
1st gen aluminum 24" iMac, 2.4 GHz. Upgraded yesterday, running very well.

Me likey.

Initially it will spend a while re-indexing for Spotlight, so that could be a temporary slowdown.

My only problem was setting the scrolling back to normal, and putting the file counts back on the folder view.
 
W

wxman2003

Suspended
Apr 12, 2011
2,580
294
I haven't noticed much of a difference other then slightly longer boot time. With SL, it would boot up in about 20 seconds. With Lion, around 30 seconds.
 
T

Trudy

macrumors regular
Sep 30, 2004
120
0
iTunes went 64-bit. On Intel, 64-bit processes get to use double the registers, much quicker. In fact, I looked in Activity monitor and almost the whole system is now 64-bit. IIRC it used to be most system processes were 32-bit.
 
sidewinder

sidewinder

macrumors 68020
Dec 10, 2008
2,425
130
Northern California
Trudy said:
iTunes went 64-bit. On Intel, 64-bit processes get to use double the registers, much quicker. In fact, I looked in Activity monitor and almost the whole system is now 64-bit. IIRC it used to be most system processes were 32-bit.
Click to expand...

On my Early 2008 Mac Pro, 10.7 was booting up in 32-bit mode. I used a utility to switch it to boot up in 64-bit mode. The system feels more responsive now. Although, that could be psychological...

S-
 
B

Bunker

macrumors member
Oct 28, 2007
90
0
Trudy said:
1st gen aluminum 24" iMac, 2.4 GHz. Upgraded yesterday, running very well.

Me likey.

Initially it will spend a while re-indexing for Spotlight, so that could be a temporary slowdown.

My only problem was setting the scrolling back to normal, and putting the file counts back on the folder view.
Click to expand...

Cool to know this.

I wanted to upgrade mine (similar iMac) but am wary about it....
 
R

rmwebs

macrumors 68040
Apr 6, 2007
3,140
0
The main reason its slower is that you're still running Snow Leopard....with a new app (Launchpad) and a few UI tweaks. Thats all Lion really is when you think about it. Hence its slower as its just your same old OS but with extra stuff bogging it down.

Consider Lion as 'Snow Leopard Service Pack 1' and it'll all make much more sense.
 
H

Hyper-X

macrumors 6502a
Jul 1, 2011
581
1
On a MBP 13 2011 model, 8GB RAM.

From what I can tell, Lion is slower on some things but faster in others. The OP's suggestion on the warning to delay upgrading on older machine to Lion something I support as well, but that's the case regarding any other legacy system to OS combo not just limited to Mac OS X but to Windows as well.

Lion is still in its infancy, hopefully Apple will get off their chairs and get to addressing all the common issues plaguing users with fixes/patches/updates.
 
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