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macbook 5,1 with lion performance

C

chinhiphone

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 29, 2009
118
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my sister has a macbook 5,1 2ghz core 2 duo, 4gb ddr and was wondering if anybody has the same but with lion installed?

if so how is the performance? ive been told lion is sluggish so one reason why ive never upgraded myself.

also would this mac be mountain lion compatible?


if lion doesnt perform well, i will prob upgrade her to SL
 
chinhiphone said:
my sister has a macbook 5,1 2ghz core 2 duo, 4gb ddr and was wondering if anybody has the same but with lion installed?

if so how is the performance? ive been told lion is sluggish so one reason why ive never upgraded myself.

also would this mac be mountain lion compatible?


if lion doesnt perform well, i will prob upgrade her to SL
Click to expand...

SL is definitely worth the upgrade. For Lion that MacBook might not be optimal, but would work for sure.

In any case, considering the currently low RAM prices, I'd advise you to upgrade the RAM to 8GB, which is the actual maximum supported by the 5,1 model.
This would also improve Lion's performance.
 
flatfoot said:
SL is definitely worth the upgrade. For Lion that MacBook might not be optimal, but would work for sure.

In any case, considering the currently low RAM prices, I'd advise you to upgrade the RAM to 8GB, which is the actual maximum supported by the 5,1 model.
This would also improve Lion's performance.
Click to expand...

if its not optimal w/o having to purchase additional hardware i think ill pass.

thanks for your insight
 
I have a slightly newer and faster 2009 uMB 2.4 with 4GB and Hybrid 500GB and Lion was not working well on this machine, so I am keeping it loaded with SL which works perfectly on there with no issues. Mine originally came with 10.5 L, but I upgraded several months later and SL is the perfect OS for machines around this time frame.
 
I have Macbook 5,1 with 2.4 GHz Processor. I run Lion for a while and find out that 8 GB is suitable for Lion. No more Beach ball!!
 
Keep it on Snow Leopard unless there's a pressing requirement to upgrade. Lion works best with 8GB of RAM+ in my experience.
 
chinhiphone said:
my sister has a macbook 5,1 2ghz core 2 duo, 4gb ddr and was wondering if anybody has the same but with lion installed?

if so how is the performance? ive been told lion is sluggish so one reason why ive never upgraded myself.

also would this mac be mountain lion compatible?


if lion doesnt perform well, i will prob upgrade her to SL
Click to expand...

I've heard that Lion works okay with 4GB of Ram but it works best with 8GB.. Lion still has some glitches that need to be worked on, so I'd say stay with SL until they all get worked out.
 
That machine will lose 256MB of RAM to the graphics frame buffer anyway, so its 3.75GB in reality.

Mine ran Lion OK, but it was more of a test install. When I was forced to go Lion on the replacement MBP performance was poor as typical RAM usage for the same workload was higher on Lion and it was paging quite extensively. Upgrade to 8GB sorted that out.
 
I have a 5,2 with 4gb and Lion was a mistake that I got tired of and downgraded.

Snow Leopard runs great.
 
I think people's results have been hit and miss.

I have a MacBook 2,1 with 2GB ram and 2.0 ghz Core2Duo processor.

It has no problems running Snow Leopard.

Out of curiosity, I installed Lion onto a 16GB thumb drive.
Lion runs quite well on my MacBook even off of the thumb drive.
I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.

But after playing with it, I decided I prefer Snow Leopard. I still have the thumb drive just in case I need it.
 
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