Mavericks performance on late 2007 MBP?

[lschwarcz]

Hi everyone,

I searched around the forum so sorry if this is a repeat!

I have a late 2007 MBP with 4GB of RAM running Mountain Lion. Has anyone heard what I should expect in terms of speed if I upgrade to Mavericks?

Typically when updating to a newer OS you get new features but at the expense of performance. But, Apple is claiming many performance enhancements in Mavericks.

Has anyone installed Mavericks on an older MBP who can comment?

Thanks!
Larry.

 

[barnettgs]

I have a Mid-2007 MBP with Snow Leopard on it, I have installed Mavericks on a portable external harddrive to see how it goes.

Performance wise, I have to say I am impressed considering it is 3 versions up from SL and everything seems quick if not a bit slower than SL.

However, there is one issue that is bothering me a bit is that the SMC fans not kicking in even when the temperature raises and I also did SMC reset but it didn't made a difference. Some 2007 MBP owners didn't have this problem so I am thinking that it might have to do with Mavericks being installed on portable HDD drive instead of MBP's own drive.

See this thread: Mavericks on older Core 2 Duo CPUs

 

[Hepatical]

Keep in mind that this is entirely subjective and that not all computers are the same.

On my system Mavericks is running nice and smooth, better than ML and cooler, with less CPU usage. Graphics and animations/transitions are totally smooth.

I'm sorry barnettgs I can't help you with that fan problem. Have you tried temps around 80ºC ~ 176F ? It might take a lot of heat to kick in.

All I can tell you is that smcFanControl is fine and running on my system... if that's any way related.

 

[lschwarcz]

Keep in mind that this is entirely subjective and that not all computers are the same.

On my system Mavericks is running nice and smooth, better than ML and cooler, with less CPU usage. Graphics and animations/transitions are totally smooth.

I'm sorry barnettgs I can't help you with that fan problem. Have you tried temps around 80ºC ~ 176F ? It might take a lot of heat to kick in.

All I can tell you is that smcFanControl is fine and running on my system... if that's any way related.

Thank to both of you. But, I discovered that I'll have to wait a little while since I use SyncMate to keep my data, contacts and calendars sync'd between my Mac and my PC. It looks like SyncMate doesn't yet run on Mavericks. I heard they're working on an update and I've e-mailed them to see when they think they'll have a new version.

Thanks!
Larry.

 

[barnettgs]

I'm sorry barnettgs I can't help you with that fan problem. Have you tried temps around 80ºC ~ 176F ? It might take a lot of heat to kick in.

Not at all.

The fans do not kick in unless MBP runs constantly above 95 C . I don't know if that is part of Mavericks' power saving to prolong the battery life but a strange problem indeed.

 

[bobr1952]

Personally, I'm pretty impressed at how my 2008 iMac with 2GB of RAM runs on Mavericks. I was hesitant to install the latest OS, in fact until last week it still had Leopard installed. But the upgrade to Mavericks--after a brief stop at Snow Leopard--went very smoothly and the iMac runs better now than it did with the now poorly supported Leopard. It struggles with memory at times--but I use it mostly for iTunes--and I'm sure performance would be greatly improved if I wanted to install more RAM. Seems no reason not to install Mavericks on any older Macs that can support it.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

It's hard to measure. My 2008 Macbook Pro (the one with the NVidia 8600GT that supposedly were "all" bad and yet keeps running five years later with no glitches) appears to run pretty well by feel. If I run XBench (minus threads; yeah I know it's old, but I don't see a load of other choices out there that measure as many things), I consistently get a slightly slower overall rating than with Mountain Lion and Mountain Lion was a tad slower than Snow Leopard which itself was a bit slower than Leopard that it came with. Not every feature is slower, however. Of most concern is that Quartz 2D drawing has been getting slower in each version. And despite OpenGL 4.1, I get slower OpenGL ratings on both my MBP and my late 2012 Mac Mini. But given XBench's age, it simply may not reflect a modern use of the things in question. In any case, it doesn't feel significantly slower in day to day use. I've got 4GB ram on the 2008 MBP and 8GB on the late 2012 Mac Mini.