how are the performance on c2d mbp?

[Delighted]

obvious if u have a better processor it would run better. i dont expect it to be faster or as fast as SL(currently on all my machines) but is it usable? does shutting down still take forever on ML? I have tried upgrading to Lion several time(hoping the patches would improve it) but had to go back to SL.

ADDITIONAL OPTIONAL QUESTION: My friend actually bought a mbp in 2011 with Lion preinstalled. My mbp running SL launches, boots, and shuts down faster than his i5 processor. He would like to know if this is normal? and would upgrading his machine to ML improve his time.

 

[fb0r]

I'm running Mountain Lion on one of my secondary computers, a 13" MacBook Pro (2010, baseline config with 2.4 GHz C2D, 4 GB RAM and 250 GB hard drive), and it performs reasonably well all things considered. It's obviously not as nimble as Snow Leopard was since it's a more complex OS but compared to Lion it's far, far, far more optimized. Lion really needed an SSD to perform well IMO. I'd say that memory handling is definitely the thing that has improved the most compared to OS X Lion as I get much less swapping to disk even though I'm on only 4 GB RAM. It does eat way more RAM than Snow Leopard though (about the same as Lion)...

Boot time has improved from Lion (I'd subjectively say around 20% faster boot times) and I haven't had any problems with long shutdown times after the first few boot cycles. YMMV though.

Only major downside in my personal (short) experience of Mountain Lion on my MBP 13 is that the graphics drivers for ML seem to need a bit more work. Certain UI animations, such as swiping between desktops, are decidedly more choppy in ML than they were in Lion and Snow Leopard. Hopefully there will be a patch tweaking the graphics drivers and OS GUI coding so that slightly older graphics hardware will perform just as well as on Lion/SL.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, fb0r

 

[Delighted]

I'm running Mountain Lion on one of my secondary computers, a 13" MacBook Pro (2010, baseline config with 2.4 GHz C2D, 4 GB RAM and 250 GB hard drive), and it performs reasonably well all things considered. It's obviously not as nimble as Snow Leopard was since it's a more complex OS but compared to Lion it's far, far, far more optimized. Lion really needed an SSD to perform well IMO. I'd say that memory handling is definitely the thing that has improved the most compared to OS X Lion as I get much less swapping to disk even though I'm on only 4 GB RAM. It does eat way more RAM than Snow Leopard though (about the same as Lion)...

Boot time has improved from Lion (I'd subjectively say around 20% faster boot times) and I haven't had any problems with long shutdown times after the first few boot cycles. YMMV though.

Only major downside in my personal (short) experience of Mountain Lion on my MBP 13 is that the graphics drivers for ML seem to need a bit more work. Certain UI animations, such as swiping between desktops, are decidedly more choppy in ML than they were in Lion and Snow Leopard. Hopefully there will be a patch tweaking the graphics drivers and OS GUI coding so that slightly older graphics hardware will perform just as well as on Lion/SL.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, fb0r

thank you, this is very informative.

 

[MacSquirrel]

I have a 2010 13" MacBook Pro 2.4 GHZ Core 2 Duo with 8GB of Ram and a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid Hard Drive, Performance is rather good in my opinion, Seems much more polished than Lion and I'm loving the iCloud integration.

 

[gr8tfly]

Running great on Early 2009 UB MBP 2.66, 8GB RAM. Faster, smoother animations (especially on Safari scrolling, but Misson Control space changes smoother and quicker). That's on the integrated GPU, too. Lion was always a bit rough zooming in and out of MC on integrated. In ML, it seems almost as if I'm on the discrete GPU.

Finder seems faster too. Launch times also seem improved.

 

[sshhoott]

Only major downside in my personal (short) experience of Mountain Lion on my MBP 13 is that the graphics drivers for ML seem to need a bit more work. Certain UI animations, such as swiping between desktops, are decidedly more choppy in ML than they were in Lion and Snow Leopard. Hopefully there will be a patch tweaking the graphics drivers and OS GUI coding so that slightly older graphics hardware will perform just as well as on Lion/SL.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, fb0r

Fbor, I have the same machine and I was confused why others with the MBP 13" 2010 model are saying that the graphics are rather smooth.

This makes me think, did you do a clean install?

 

[fb0r]

Fbor, I have the same machine and I was confused why others with the MBP 13" 2010 model are saying that the graphics are rather smooth.

This makes me think, did you do a clean install?

Nope. I did the upgrade but everything has worked well and I haven't had any other problems. Since the upgrade I've repaired my permissions, did a PRAM reset, SMC reset etc (just to make sure that all internal system settings are factory default) but still get choppiness in certain parts of the GUI. I've traced the choppy transitions between desktops down to the dock which, when visible and in my particular configuration, seems to affect the smoothness of desktop switching. I do have a rather large amount of icons in my dock though but something about the dock is definitely dragging down FPS compared to Lion/Snow Leopard on this system.

FWIW I have the same experience with my 2010 MacBook Air 13, also with nVidia graphics, while my 2011 MacBook Air 11, with Intel HD3000 graphics, is perfectly smooth almost all around and a joy to use with ML. With the notable exception of the, compared to Lion, abnormally slow Calendar page animations which affects all my systems. Also keep in mind that the nVidia GeForce 320M graphics of the 2010 Air is effectively about as fast as the integrated Intel HD3000 graphics of the Sandy Bridge i5 and the mystery thickens...

Personally, I'm a bit confused myself about this since some people on the official Apple discussion forums report having done clean installs of Mountain Lion and they still get choppy desktop animations while others merely upgraded through the MAS and have a perfectly smooth experience. And this is on the same hardware! Experiences seem to be all over the place, it's all very odd and makes little sense.

Cheers, fb0r

 

[sshhoott]

Nope. I did the upgrade but everything has worked well and I haven't had any other problems. Since the upgrade I've repaired my permissions, did a PRAM reset, SMC reset etc (just to make sure that all internal system settings are factory default) but still get choppiness in certain parts of the GUI. I've traced the choppy transitions between desktops down to the dock which, when visible and in my particular configuration, seems to affect the smoothness of desktop switching. I do have a rather large amount of icons in my dock though but something about the dock is definitely dragging down FPS compared to Lion/Snow Leopard on this system.

FWIW I have the same experience with my 2010 MacBook Air 13, also with nVidia graphics, while my 2011 MacBook Air 11, with Intel HD3000 graphics, is perfectly smooth almost all around and a joy to use with ML. With the notable exception of the, compared to Lion, abnormally slow Calendar page animations which affects all my systems. Also keep in mind that the nVidia GeForce 320M graphics of the 2010 Air is effectively about as fast as the integrated Intel HD3000 graphics of the Sandy Bridge i5 and the mystery thickens...

Personally, I'm a bit confused myself about this since some people on the official Apple discussion forums report having done clean installs of Mountain Lion and they still get choppy desktop animations while others merely upgraded through the MAS and have a perfectly smooth experience. And this is on the same hardware! Experiences seem to be all over the place, it's all very odd and makes little sense.

Cheers, fb0r

@fb0r, thanks for pointing out the cause of choppy animations (the dock). It looks like indeed Nvidia drivers need some work for MBP 2010 13". I remember a year ago when I installed Lion, it had the same problem of choppy animations and I waited until 10.7.2 until I reverted back to SL. I sent Apple Feedback at least 3 times but that didn't work either.

So, digging deeper into the problem, I found out that choppy animations may not be much of a Nvidia drivers problem. There is something more to it. Looking at this video and following the directions, it solved my sometimes choppy expose problem in SL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmoWoeNrkOs

Going into the issue even deeper, I found out the main culprit was AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext. This is what the OS X uses to clock the GPU at 4 levels. When the Mac is idle, the GPU is clocked at 'level 1' which is the lowest clock speed (to save energy). However, when an app or OS X calls certain graphic intensive functions, then the GPU is triggered by the AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext to go to a higher level (such as level 4, which consumes more energy but gives really smooth animations).

I guess the problem with our Nvidia card is that the OS X is not kicking the card enough to go to the right level of performance when needed, which results in choppy animations. You can confirm this by following the youtube video I just linked. Some people comment that it not only solves the issue in SL and Lion, but also ML.

In response to your question, I saw someone's post in another thread that the dock results in choppy desktop changing animation in their 2011 Macbook Air as well

All in all, I think Apple should really work on optimizing the 2010 Mac Nvidia drivers, because a two year old computer is not the same as two year old phone.

 

[bushido]

i got a mid2009 c2d mbp and its running flawless, however i did upgrade it with an SSD and 8 GB Ram a while ago

havent noticed any sluggish animations

 

[meme1255]

Much faster than Lion... Nearly as fast as SL, but i had only 4GB RAM with SL

 

[murkymudkip]

On the MBP that I have, (mid-2010, stock 4gb RAM, 250 gb HDD, and nVidia 320m), there's absolutely no problem with ML. Animations are not sluggish or choppy at all. For me, this is just SL with more features.

Lion was slow and had issues with my nVidia, causing nasty-looking glitches. I was very happy that ML resolved those issues.

 

[sshhoott]

On the MBP that I have, (mid-2010, stock 4gb RAM, 250 gb HDD, and nVidia 320m), there's absolutely no problem with ML. Animations are not sluggish or choppy at all. For me, this is just SL with more features.

Lion was slow and had issues with my nVidia, causing nasty-looking glitches. I was very happy that ML resolved those issues.

murkymudkip, that's good news to hear that your graphic issues went away with ML. For the time I had Lion installed on my MBP 13" 2010 (same machine as yours), I was plagued by choppy animations and I was just afraid if they exist in ML.

So, even with the dock visible and safari windows open, you have super smooth animation when using mission control, changing desktops, scrolling in apps, etc? (Smooth means as smooth as iPad 3 )

Also, how's the battery life compared to SL?

 

[Critterbug]

stock mid 2009

Does anyone have ML running on a MBP with the stock c2 duo w/2gb ram? I have the nvidia 9400 256 mb.
Right now I'm running Lion. It took a while, and a clean install to get it to work right. I'm wondering if it's worth it to move to ML?
Would love iWork in the cloud!

 

[Ledgem]

ADDITIONAL OPTIONAL QUESTION: My friend actually bought a mbp in 2011 with Lion preinstalled. My mbp running SL launches, boots, and shuts down faster than his i5 processor. He would like to know if this is normal? and would upgrading his machine to ML improve his time.

I don't know about booting, but Snow Leopard shut down insanely fast. Lion brought back lengthier shutdown times (although I don't think it's the longest I've ever experienced).

A lot of the times that you mentioned have nothing to do with the processor. If you have a solid state drive or a 7200 RPM drive and your friend is running a 5400 RPM drive, or if your drive is less fragmented than his, your system will be faster.

I'm running on an early 2008 Macbook Pro, 2.4 GHz with 6 GB of RAM and an nVidia 8600M GT with 256 MB of RAM. I haven't noticed a performance hit compared to Lion, and it's been long enough since I've used Snow Leopard or Leopard on this machine that I can't make a valid comparison. Mountain Lion definitely has a faster shutdown time with Lion (although not quite as fast as Snow Leopard), and I think the bootup time is faster, too. I wouldn't be surprised if it's faster than Lion in some ways, but I can't say I've felt that there was a major difference. Nothing has slowed down, though, that's for sure.

 

[jozeppy26]

Hopefully this helps

Works pretty well. Here's a screenshot of all I have running and the activity monitor.

 

[flopperr999]

I'm posting from 13' MBP that I bought early 2010 running ML. My guess is this is the mid-2009 model.

In my opinion ML is running just as fast as SL did for me, Lion was the slowest of the three OS's I've had on this machine. Animations are fluid, performance is good. No problems to complain about whatsoever. Dictation as well as Notification Center working just fine. Launchpad too..

I'd like to stipulate however that this machine has had a HD upgrade (160GB 5400rpm to a 750GB 7200rpm) as well as a RAM increase from 4GB to 8GB.

 

[Critterbug]

stock mid 2009

I'm posting from 13' MBP that I bought early 2010 running ML. My guess is this is the mid-2009 model.

In my opinion ML is running just as fast as SL did for me, Lion was the slowest of the three OS's I've had on this machine. Animations are fluid, performance is good. No problems to complain about whatsoever. Dictation as well as Notification Center working just fine. Launchpad too..

I'd like to stipulate however that this machine has had a HD upgrade (160GB 5400rpm to a 750GB 7200rpm) as well as a RAM increase from 4GB to 8GB.

If you open System Information in About This Mac under the apple, it'll tell you which cycle and year it was built.

 

[The Economist]

murkymudkip, that's good news to hear that your graphic issues went away with ML. For the time I had Lion installed on my MBP 13" 2010 (same machine as yours), I was plagued by choppy animations and I was just afraid if they exist in ML.

So, even with the dock visible and safari windows open, you have super smooth animation when using mission control, changing desktops, scrolling in apps, etc? (Smooth means as smooth as iPad 3 )

Also, how's the battery life compared to SL?

I have the same computer, stock 13–inch mid 2010, and OS 10.8 runs way better, faster and smoother than Lion. I have a couple of problems when running certain games, but other than that everything is okay.

 

[fb0r]

@fb0r, thanks for pointing out the cause of choppy animations (the dock). It looks like indeed Nvidia drivers need some work for MBP 2010 13". I remember a year ago when I installed Lion, it had the same problem of choppy animations and I waited until 10.7.2 until I reverted back to SL. I sent Apple Feedback at least 3 times but that didn't work either.

So, digging deeper into the problem, I found out that choppy animations may not be much of a Nvidia drivers problem. There is something more to it. Looking at this video and following the directions, it solved my sometimes choppy expose problem in SL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmoWoeNrkOs

Going into the issue even deeper, I found out the main culprit was AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext. This is what the OS X uses to clock the GPU at 4 levels. When the Mac is idle, the GPU is clocked at 'level 1' which is the lowest clock speed (to save energy). However, when an app or OS X calls certain graphic intensive functions, then the GPU is triggered by the AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext to go to a higher level (such as level 4, which consumes more energy but gives really smooth animations).

I guess the problem with our Nvidia card is that the OS X is not kicking the card enough to go to the right level of performance when needed, which results in choppy animations. You can confirm this by following the youtube video I just linked. Some people comment that it not only solves the issue in SL and Lion, but also ML.

In response to your question, I saw someone's post in another thread that the dock results in choppy desktop changing animation in their 2011 Macbook Air as well

All in all, I think Apple should really work on optimizing the 2010 Mac Nvidia drivers, because a two year old computer is not the same as two year old phone.

Thanks for the link. Will check it out later. Sounds like a plausible theory.

As for the choppy desktop animations, strangely, I've found that ML on the Pro and 2010 Air can be smooth as butter for a while and then all of a sudden some GUI animations (in particular when the dock is shown) start to lag and stutter again. There are no other appreciable signs of slowdowns though. In fact, when it comes to all around performance (i.e. opening apps, booting etc), ML screams compared to Lion and I'm definitely not running out of RAM so something to do with the graphics on my two nVidia equipped macs is definitely acting up. Might experiment with a clean install later if I find the time for it.

Again it's very strange that the issue seems to appear so inconsistently and apparently affects only a small subset of ML users...

Edit: FWIW I've also reported my issue using Apple's OS X feedback form on their website and suggest the unlucky few who have this strange issue to do the same.

Cheers, fb0r

 

[krspkbl]

My MacBooks specs are:

13" Aluminium Unibody MacBook (Late 2008), 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo/8GB RAM/256GB SSD/Nvidia 9400M.

I can't remember what it was like to use Snow Leopard but I can't recall any problems. Mountain Lion is amazing on my machine. I have had no problems with it so far *touch wood*. Nothing lags as it's very fast and smooth performance. My MacBook runs a lot cooler and quieter than it did with Lion. The fans are silent majority of the time and the machine it self is always cool. Lion always had the fans spinning and it was quite warm a lot of the time.

It has really improved my battery. Had this machine for almost 4 years and it has gone through 1400 cycles and is at 89% health. I was getting 2.5hrs MAX on Lion but now I can get anywhere between 3-4hrs.

I'm sure some of this is thanks to the SSD though. I think if I still had my stock 250GB (5400rpm) HD inside then, of course, it would be slower but I still think there would be a significant performance improvement.

For £13.99/$19.99 it really is a steal! I'd recommend everyone upgrade to it if possible. I really don't have a bad thing to say about it.

 

[murkymudkip]

murkymudkip, that's good news to hear that your graphic issues went away with ML. For the time I had Lion installed on my MBP 13" 2010 (same machine as yours), I was plagued by choppy animations and I was just afraid if they exist in ML.

So, even with the dock visible and safari windows open, you have super smooth animation when using mission control, changing desktops, scrolling in apps, etc? (Smooth means as smooth as iPad 3 )

Also, how's the battery life compared to SL?

Mission control and switching desktops are a little choppy, but I'd say it's a real issue only when there are more than 10 windows open. Scrolling is choppy for only a rare instant. Other than that, its just like an iPad 3

The battery life hasn't changed a bit, compared to SL.