MacBook Pro 13" - worse performance than 2 year old MBP - sth broken?

[melllvar]

Macbook Pro 13", 2,26 GHZ, 2GB Ram, 9400gm:

Performance is really bad, especially PS and Lightroom, but also Office (Powerpoint). on the 13 inch I'm using the latest Versions of all the Apps.

I can't run PS and LR side by side, nor can I surf the web while editing a 50megaby PSD.
I'm using SL, but the problem already occurred with leopard as well.


Comparing it to an "old" MBP (2,2GHZ,2GB,8600GM GT) Leopard, CS3 and PowerPC Office 2004:
Especially RAM behave strange.


Fresh Restart:

Free 1,66GB
Reserved: 135mb
Active 220mb
inactive: 10mb

MBP13":
Free 1,09GB
Reserved 424mb
Active 405
Inactive: 100mb

Photoshop and Lightroom open:
Old MBP:
Free 1,44GB
Reserved 135mb
Active 416mb

MBP13":
Free 70mb
Reserved 492,8MB
Active 1,03GB

 

[PCMacUser]

So let me get this straight: you're running new versions of all the apps on your new computer? ie, Office 2008, CS4, etc?

You can't benchmark performance between computers using a different operating system and different versions of the apps. If you want to compare them, then upgrade your old computer to the new OS and apps and see how much slower it becomes... Office 2008 alone is twice as slow as Office 2004.

As software versions evolve, they become larger, more memory and resource hungry, and yes, slower.

 

[NC MacGuy]

I'd suggest you get an extra 2GB of RAM before thinking it's broke. Remember the 9400 GPU in the 13" uses 256MB shared RAM for its memory. So you're starting with only 1.75GB RAM. Safari can easily bloat to over 400MB with a day of surfing.

RAM is rather cheap and for what you're running concurrently, I think 4GB is almost a necessity. If your computer can run the app.'s individually without issue - get RAM.

 

[melllvar]

Thanks for your help.

Before upgrading the memory I wanted to make sure everything else is fine.

My Macbook White 1,83GHZ Core Duo isn't much slower than this new Macbook - 3 years later. That's a bit odd to me.
I'm running the same configuration on that MacBook.

 

[PCMacUser]

Thanks for your help.

Before upgrading the memory I wanted to make sure everything else is fine.

My Macbook White 1,83GHZ Core Duo isn't much slower than this new Macbook - 3 years later. That's a bit odd to me.
I'm running the same configuration on that MacBook.

I understand your concern... perhaps you should run a CPU benchmark test to verify that the performance is up to standard? Someone else should be able to recommend one.