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krisjon

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 29, 2004
119
0
San Diego, CA
I have a new, pretty loaded PB17 that's a little over a week old. I just ran xbench on it and was shocked that it scored in the 85-86 range. I know I need to optimize my HD with Disk Warrior or something after installing all of my software/transferring files, but it seems a little ridiculous for this machine to be scoring lower than older PBs I've seen with far less than what I have. Any ideas on fine tuning this thing for better performance? Thanks!
 
virividox said:
cehck that ur energy settings are on highest

you may also be getting low scores due to the hd speed if its 4200

If you read his sig, it says that his HD is 5400RPM.

My advice is to disregard the xBench score IF you aren't noticing slowdowns anywhere else (all your programs respond fine).

If everything is noticeably slow, make sure you're using the latest updates, repair permissions, run the maintenance scripts, and then restart. Hopefully this will fix any issues.
 
wow, something must be up as I see scores for other 1.33 17" being up around 120-130. you sure that you're noth running other things when you run xbench? try running it right after a fresh boot.
 
As already said, open Energy Saver and select processor speed "Highest" on the options tab. Otherwise, XBench will be recording lower scores due to the fact your processor is not running at full power. For plugged-in settings, keep it on highest anyway - you'll notice the OS will be more silky in general.

Second point, I don't trust Xbench. It seems to give highly varaible scores on consecutive runs. On my PB the 4200rpm HD is the limiting factor which drags down my score, but yours should have far less of a problem. I remember seeing how PowerBook G5's Xbench score went throught the roof with his 15" 1.25 Albook due to his having the faster drive.

If it still messes up, try repairing permissions (Disc Utility) or even using MacJanitor as well to run your cron scripts. I really don't think you need to reinstall everything.
 
Thanks for the intial advice. I'm going to run Disk Warrior and defrag the drive (which I think it needs) and do a few other things. Overall, it's not running slow, but like I said, I figured the xbench would at least be in the triple digits. Strange. I'll get back to you guys when I'm done and ready for another test.
 
My 12" gives 104.75 score

My pb is the new (soon to be superceeded) 1ghz with 512 ram and the hitachi 7200rpm hdd all rest is standard stuff.
Also its running panther 10.3.2
your score does seem on the low side.
 
If yourte noticing slow down in copied over applications, I suggest reinstalling them completely. As far as Ive notices, applications copied over from a back up disk tend to run slower because they did not run though the optimization at the end.

Also be sure to check out Cocktail, which can run your system optimizing scripts (prebinding) and the maintenance cron scripts.
 
hotmaj said:
My pb is the new (soon to be superceeded) 1ghz with 512 ram and the hitachi 7200rpm hdd all rest is standard stuff.
Also its running panther 10.3.2
your score does seem on the low side.
My 12" gives 95 with 768 RAM, Panther 10.3.2 and the standard 4200 RPM drive. So the 7200 drives boosts it up to around 105. Great!
 
What the hell?

G5orbust said:
If yourte noticing slow down in copied over applications, I suggest reinstalling them completely. As far as Ive notices, applications copied over from a back up disk tend to run slower because they did not run though the optimization at the end.

Also be sure to check out Cocktail, which can run your system optimizing scripts (prebinding) and the maintenance cron scripts.

All of my software applications were installed.
I ran Disk Warrior and the HD is fully optimized.
Ran cocktail and prebound the entire system, cleared caches and ran all cron scripts. Still an Xbench of 85. I'm beginning to not trust these scores. My system is completely clean and tight. Anything else I'm missing?
 
krisjon said:
All of my software applications were installed.
I ran Disk Warrior and the HD is fully optimized.
Ran cocktail and prebound the entire system, cleared caches and ran all cron scripts. Still an Xbench of 85. I'm beginning to not trust these scores. My system is completely clean and tight. Anything else I'm missing?

Hate to say it but it doesnt look like youre missing anything. Id say that xBench is full of BS.
 
krisjon said:
Thanks for the intial advice. I'm going to run Disk Warrior and defrag the drive (which I think it needs) and do a few other things. Overall, it's not running slow, but like I said, I figured the xbench would at least be in the triple digits. Strange. I'll get back to you guys when I'm done and ready for another test.
DiskWarrior does NOT defrag your drives, it rebuilds the disk's directory. Defragging a Journaled drive with something other than the OS can cause some serious ****ups. That's why TechToolPro 4 doesn't defrag journaled hard drives.
 
Counterfit said:
DiskWarrior does NOT defrag your drives, it rebuilds the disk's directory. Defragging a Journaled drive with something other than the OS can cause some serious ****ups. That's why TechToolPro 4 doesn't defrag journaled hard drives.

My bad, a directory rebuild is what I really meant. Anyway, this thing is zipping along in Photoshop, etc. I think the xBench is inaccurate. It's a brand new, loaded PB with no problems. An 85? Whatever. Sure doesn't feel like it.
 
Some other test?

could you maybe try some other test? now having said that I wonder what sort of a test you could run...maybe something like seti@home and see what kind of performance it reports. i'm not being very helpful here, but certainly Xbench isn't the only way to benchmark your machine...

my personal guess, though, is that something's wrong with your system and not with Xbench. people are complaining that the software is not reliable, but you're getting consistent scores - they just happen to be consistently low. my 17" PB is (nearly) brand new, and I can imagine that if I were in your shoes I would want very badly for this to be some sort of problem with Xbench, but if the truth is that your machine is working at 70% of the norm, you've spent too much money to settle for a lemon...
 
Any insight into this?

gentryunderwood said:
could you maybe try some other test? now having said that I wonder what sort of a test you could run...maybe something like seti@home and see what kind of performance it reports. i'm not being very helpful here, but certainly Xbench isn't the only way to benchmark your machine...

my personal guess, though, is that something's wrong with your system and not with Xbench. people are complaining that the software is not reliable, but you're getting consistent scores - they just happen to be consistently low. my 17" PB is (nearly) brand new, and I can imagine that if I were in your shoes I would want very badly for this to be some sort of problem with Xbench, but if the truth is that your machine is working at 70% of the norm, you've spent too much money to settle for a lemon...

Well, I tried running it again, only this time I ran everything except the disk test. My Xbench was 143.95. My disk test score (run separately) was 66.75.
 
I have a 1.33GHz 17" PowerBook, 1GB RAM, 80GB 5400RPM HD. I just ran Xbench and here's my scores.

Overall w/ all tests: 117
Just Disk test: 63
Overall w/out Disk: 137.53

Keep in mind this is without a reboot or any other maintenance done just before running the test.
 
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