Mid 2007 MacBook Pro working uber slow with any OS X

[bozhidar]

Hello, I bought this MacBook as a very cheap transition from PC to MAC. Having used Mac before I was expecting a great productivity, even with such an old model. It is customized mid 2007 Mac Book Pro, 2.6 Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Ram, 8600M GT.

I tried Lion, even scrolling a webpage in Safari was laggy, playing a video on YouTube was only possible in 240/360p, can't even imagine 720... I am working a lot on Photoshop/Lightroom, main reason to move to Mac, the application also run veeery slow. I can't play an HD video, it drops frame like crazy, almost freezes actually.

I installed Snow Leopard after reading a lot of thread where people have the same problem, but here it is even worse. Veery slow performance, far worse than my PC with less hardware..

Can you tell me where the main problem maybe ? What am I missing in this ?

With this configuration I have to be able to watch and do the mentioned things above without any problems ?

 

[igroucho]

First - if you haven't - from Disk Utility repair permissions + check hard drive.
Try start in safe boot mode and see if problem still's there.
You will definitely benefit from upgrading RAM to minimum 8GB.
(You cannot run Mac OS on a full HD since the system needs space for swap files - how much free space do you have?)

 

[bozhidar]

Disk Utility, first thing I have done, and did it a couple of more times after new OSX reinstall.

Safe Boot Mode is the same.

I can't upgrade to more with this model ( I think I can go most up to 6 ) But I think 4 GB is enough..

I have only the OSX on the hard drive, so free space is enough.

 

[igroucho]

4 GB! ... time flies. Yes you should be able to up it to 6 whatever difference it will do.
Suggest you test hardware with something like TechTools - graphics card??

 

[niteflyr]

The infamous 8600M video card is probably the issue.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/515067/

 

[peglegjack]

First off, that model goes to Mountain Lion. Secondly, you shouldn't be be having any of those problems, as the specs are more than enough. Maybe it's the video card like others are saying.

 

[bozhidar]

So I should try installing Mountain Lion, I though it would make it worse...

If its the video card, I cant do much I guess... how can I test exactly if this is the problem

 

[kant]

So I should try installing Mountain Lion, I though it would make it worse...

If its the video card, I cant do much I guess... how can I test exactly if this is the problem

Do you have access to another intel mac? If you do there is an easy way to check.

Put yours in Target mode. (Just hold the T key down as it starts.) That turns your system into a external firewire drive. Connect it to the other mac. Open system prefs -> startup disk. Yours should show up. Boot to it.

You'll be using your hard drive with its OS to run the other system's hardware.

 

[bozhidar]

No, I don't currently have access...

Well I ran a benchmark on the machine and comparing it to there results from the same configuration, I scored around 400, while other are going far more than this, most of the people have above 1500. This is overall test, CPU HDD GPU etc, so I believe it may not be caused by the Video Card, but still can't figure out from what...