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BENCHMARKED: Mac mini 2009 + Yosemite = MEGA slow!

MuzakaEklekta said:
Why is Yosemite SO slow?
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VERY glad you posted this, as I was thinking of upgrading mine this weekend. Won't be doing that now. (Mine, btw, is the 2.53GHz server model with 8GB RAM and a homemade 620GB Fusion drive - 120GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD and stock 500GB hard drive).

On a related note, my buddy messaged me last night... he's an Apple Certified Technician (I believe that's the one he holds - he'll probably be reading this, as I sent him the link), so he knows what he's doing. He installed Yosemite as a clean install on his MacBook Pro - I think it's a 2012 model, but I know for a fact its an i7, 4GB RAM, 128GB Samsung SSD. He said the same thing. As a matter of fact, his initial text to me after using it a bit (and letting it run overnight to finish indexing and such) was this (and yes, I'm quoting):

"Yosemite = 100% useless i7 MacBook Pro"

Also:

"...it idles at 3.9GB" (RAM usage, out of 4GB)

and:

"The mouse lags across the screen"

If his i7 behaves like that, my Core 2 Duo doesn't have a prayer. I'll stick with Mavericks, thanks (at least until a couple of "dot" updates have come and gone).

EDIT: Oh yeah, and before someone says "it's because he needs RAM" let me say this - idling at 3.9 is a joke. My Mini with Mavericks idles in the 2.2-2.5GB range, and that's with PS3 Media Server and Moom running in the background at startup.
 
Good info. from previous post received from Apple technician. Confirms OP's findings.

For those of us still on Mavericks with our 2009 Mini's, what does Yosemite give us in features that we'd miss? If not much, my thought is best to stay with Mavericks.

I'm also guessing Yosemite will be the last OSX version that supports 2009 Mini's anyway (early 2009, anyway).
 
We've three 2009 machines - two Macbook Pros and one Mini. All have SSDs and the Mini has 8GB ram. So far I've put Yosemite on both MBPs and they are performing fine - Safari in particular, which I've had a lot of problems with on the Mini. I'm going to put it on the Mini but will do a full clone in case...

M.
 
I have done some further testing.

Just done a test in work. Mac Pro 2,1 (2007) is blistering compared to the iMac C2D in work.

The Mac Pro is running Snow Leopard. The iMac is running Yosemite. The iMac has also taken a huge performace hit. Before Yosemite, my boss' iMac would out perform the Mac Pro.

I really think something fundamental has changed in Core Animation and I'm probably going further in this thread than intended.

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I just think that if you haven't upgraded to Yosemite yet, create another partition for the install and A-B between the two. The responsiveness will be noticeable and hopefully help draw a conclusion. Unless of course I'm just unlucky!
 
MuzakaEklekta said:
I have done some further testing.

Just done a test in work. Mac Pro 2,1 (2007) is blistering compared to the iMac C2D in work.

The Mac Pro is running Snow Leopard. The iMac is running Yosemite. The iMac has also taken a huge performace hit. Before Yosemite, my boss' iMac would out perform the Mac Pro.

I really think something fundamental has changed in Core Animation and I'm probably going further in this thread than intended.

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I just think that if you haven't upgraded to Yosemite yet, create another partition for the install and A-B between the two. The responsiveness will be noticeable and hopefully help draw a conclusion. Unless of course I'm just unlucky!
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Sorry if my attitude this morning was a bit off, I was up extremely early thanks to my dog. I guess what I meant to say is, what is the meaning of this number if you can't notice any differences at all between 10.9 and 10.10? Because frankly there are couple other guys on the thread saying that is not worth the upgrade, but I mean if you can't notice the difference why not upgrade? You do get a new looking UI, you also get some of the new ios8 functions e.g., phone calls, SMS relay.

Hence my earlier question, is this more for gamers or maybe people who works on graphic intensive softwares? I mean do all the regular stuff, plus Matlab, and some software for technical paper writing.
 
aajeevlin said:
Sorry if my attitude this morning was a bit off, I was up extremely early thanks to my dog. I guess what I meant to say is, what is the meaning of this number if you can't notice any differences at all between 10.9 and 10.10? Because frankly there are couple other guys on the thread saying that is not worth the upgrade, but I mean if you can't notice the difference why not upgrade? You do get a new looking UI, you also get some of the new ios8 functions e.g., phone calls, SMS relay.

Hence my earlier question, is this more for gamers or maybe people who works on graphic intensive softwares? I mean do all the regular stuff, plus Matlab, and some software for technical paper writing.
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No worries :)

I actually ran benchmarks to reinforce my initial experience. I didn't run them on the off chance. I was convinced is the UI felt less responsive, especially as soon as I used the Zoom (Ctrl+Scroll).

I guess if someone is happy with the performance on Yosemite then that's great, but unfortunately, I'm in the group who do notice the difference :(

Anyway, I'm over and out. I think it's time I either a) upgrade RAM b) get the newer model!
 
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MuzakaEklekta said:
No worries :)

I actually ran benchmarks to reinforce my initial experience. I didn't run them on the off chance. I was convinced is the UI felt less responsive, especially as soon as I used the Zoom (Ctrl+Scroll).

I guess if someone is happy with the performance on Yosemite then that's great, but unfortunately, I'm in the group who do notice the difference :(

Anyway, I'm over and out. I think it's time I either a) upgrade RAM b) get the newer model!
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Sounds good. I will live with the 09 model for a while. The 2014 is just not gonna working. I hope my machine will live until the next upgrade.
 
MuzakaEklekta said:
Would you mind running an Xbench [download DMG] graphics/ui test and sharing your results? I would love to know how it compares having the extra 4GB ram. Maybe more VRAM is being allocated.
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There you are.

I really mean it that it works perfect. As an example I can tell you that I can play with no issues and no lag Xenonauts (recent game but not 3D) in Parallels virtualizing Windows XP.

I'm using TotalSpaces 2 and I have one monitor with 6 spaces. No issues and very fluid.
Sometimes beach ball appears but not very frecuently.

If you want more benchmarks, just ask me. Hope it helps.
 

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nsurlstoraged

So i had a look at my activity monitor and i managed to narrow down what was causing all this cpu usage and lag...

Its to do with something called nsurlstoraged... it had a compressed memory of close to 8gb.

As soon as i force quit it, the mac came back to life and was responsive as usual..


Anyone know what this is and whether this might be a bug?
 
Thank OP. I have a couple machines running Mavericks that can't take any more thank 4 gigs of RAM. I believe they will be sticking with Mavericks for a LONG time.
 
I've noticed that the window resizes faster if the Finder window is showing an empty folder. Yosemite just can't handle drawing all of those folder icons! You know, icons which even Windows 98 can draw.
 
Yosemite is certainly faster and more responsive on my machine than on any OS X before it. It is very confusing that we get such contrasting experience here.
 
aajeevlin said:
So I just ran the test for you real quick. I've got a Early 2009, HDD, 8GB of RAM. Ran the test with your setting and I'm getting a 48.75.

Now, I've never been a big fan of these numbers, but Yosemite on my mini rans just fine. I'm not sure if you are basing all of your conclusion from just looking at the numbers, or if you are hardcore gamer. But since installation I have been using it like before, and I can hardly tell the different between 10.10 and 10.9.
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Is your Expose choppy as hell, as well? Try having 5 windows open plus Safari and invoke Expose. For my Mini it's near impossible to draw the windows fluidly.

The 9400m seems to be competent enough for Mavericks. I submitted a big report, too.
 
I've now put Yosemite on a 2009 2GHz Mac Mini with 8GB ram and a 256GB Crucial SSD. It seems about the same as Mavericks - the only slight lag I'm seeing is a hesitation in Safari in opening a new page. But in Mavericks, Safari would soon get bogged down so hopefully this will be better now.

At present I'm streaming a Youtube video and playing a live radio show, and am working with Word, Indesign and VLC and the Mac is running at about 35% CPU load and the fan speed is 1530 or so.

M.

PS This was not a clean install but an upgrade on a very busy existing volume. I also haven't cleaned out Safari cache etc.
 
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marclondon said:
I've now put Yosemite on a 2009 2GHz Mac Mini with 8GB ram and a 256GB Crucial SSD. It seems about the same as Mavericks - the only slight lag I'm seeing is a hesitation in Safari in opening a new page. But in Mavericks, Safari would soon get bogged down so hopefully this will be better now.

At present I'm streaming a Youtube video and playing a live radio show, and am working with Word, Indesign and VLC and the Mac is running at about 35% CPU load and the fan speed is 1530 or so.

M.
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Glad Yosemite seems to be working for you. As a general question, I've got the early 2009 with 2.26ghz. I wonder if that makes any difference compared to the 2.0ghz machine in this case.
 
marclondon said:
I've now put Yosemite on a 2009 2GHz Mac Mini with 8GB ram and a 256GB Crucial SSD. It seems about the same as Mavericks - the only slight lag I'm seeing is a hesitation in Safari in opening a new page. But in Mavericks, Safari would soon get bogged down so hopefully this will be better now.

At present I'm streaming a Youtube video and playing a live radio show, and am working with Word, Indesign and VLC and the Mac is running at about 35% CPU load and the fan speed is 1530 or so.

M.

PS This was not a clean install but an upgrade on a very busy existing volume. I also haven't cleaned out Safari cache etc.
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That's good news :) 8GB seems to be helping a lot of people with a 2009 Mac mini, making me wonder whether the 9400 is the bottleneck at all.
 
MuzakaEklekta said:
That's good news :) 8GB seems to be helping a lot of people with a 2009 Mac mini, making me wonder whether the 9400 is the bottleneck at all.
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I think the previous poster is right that the UI is a bit slower (and it's hard to even remember now) but the trade-off for me so far is that the apps are more stable - I was having big problems with Safari and Mail, and also windows selection problems generally, under Mavericks. Maybe a clean Mavericks install would have done but life is too short and there are new features now.

What I usually do is keep my main disk in two partitions and install a new OS in one so I can switch between the two if necessary. Needing space this time I deleted the spare partition and just have one large Yosemite install now, although I have a full Mavericks clone on a hard disk if needs be.

M.
 
mabaker said:
Is your Expose choppy as hell, as well? Try having 5 windows open plus Safari and invoke Expose. For my Mini it's near impossible to draw the windows fluidly.

The 9400m seems to be competent enough for Mavericks. I submitted a big report, too.
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Just gave that a try. Yea, it a bit lagging. But I won't say it's near impossible, I have 5 tabs in Safari, I got 5 apps on at the same time, I'd say expose happen pretty fast, I certainly can't say it's fluid like motion, but not to the point of impossible.
 
aajeevlin said:
Just gave that a try. Yea, it a bit lagging. But I won't say it's near impossible, I have 5 tabs in Safari, I got 5 apps on at the same time, I'd say expose happen pretty fast, I certainly can't say it's fluid like motion, but not to the point of impossible.
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Thanks. I am driving the Apple cinema display with 1200 resolution so it is slowing things down for sure but it hasn't been that laggy on Mavericks like it is in Yosemite. They need to address this in the x.1 update.
 
10.9.5 is much more snappy on my mac than Yosemite beta 5.
I think Mavericks may well be Apples best so far, completely redoing the theme will take some time untill it's good.
 
OK an update - have been in tonight doing various things and I have to give Apple top marks for preserving the 2009 Mini on Yosemite. I'm driving two 1920x1200 monitors as well. Everything so far is rock solid and stable - no broken apps and excellent performance. Safari and Mail a great improvement over Mavericks. Video such as BBC iPlayer is flying - Ballotelli has just missed a sitter.

This old Mini really is a remarkable machine but Apple has obviously done a lot of work under the software hood.

M.
 
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