Much Faster performance in XP vs. 10.5.5 (or any OS X)

[WardC]

I am running on a 3.0GHz Mac Pro here with 16GB of RAM. I felt like my machine was relatively fast, but after switching over and running in XP today via bootcamp, I saw that my overall "getting around" and web browsing was about 5x as fast. Booting apps, moving things, it was snappy and fast with no lag. With OS X 10.5, things just seem to drag along at a much slower pace. I am guessing it is due to the bulk of overhead or running a system with such a heavy GUI and set of code. Any suggestions. It's just not snappy. OS X is slower than Windows on this machine, which was actually designed to run the Mac OS. It is odd, right?

 

[Raid]

I am running on a 3.0GHz Mac Pro here with 16GB of RAM. I felt like my machine was relatively fast, but after switching over and running in XP today via bootcamp, I saw that my overall "getting around" and web browsing was about 5x as fast. Booting apps, moving things, it was snappy and fast with no lag. With OS X 10.5, things just seem to drag along at a much slower pace. I am guessing it is due to the bulk of overhead or running a system with such a heavy GUI and set of code. Any suggestions. It's just not snappy. OS X is slower than Windows on this machine, which was actually designed to run the Mac OS. It is odd, right?

That is a bit odd, I have the same setup (ok with only 3GB RAM) and I've only noticed the boot up is significantly slower in XP than for any version of OS X I've had on the machine. (Typically I estimate this time from entering my password as soon as possible till I get a web page up...) Do you have 64bit XP?, that could be the difference there, if you're using XP Pro(32bit) isn't their a RAM limit of 3-4GB?

 

[WardC]

That is a bit odd, I have the same setup (ok with only 3GB RAM) and I've only noticed the boot up is significantly slower in XP than for any version of OS X I've had on the machine. (Typically I estimate this time from entering my password as soon as possible till I get a web page up...) Do you have 64bit XP?, that could be the difference there, if you're using XP Pro(32bit) isn't their a RAM limit of 3-4GB?

Yes, my boot speed is slower (in XP). I am using 32-bit XP SP2 via Bootcamp on my Mac Pro, it is a dual procesor (quad) 3.0GHz with 16GB of RAM.

My Mac Portion is a dual 500GB (1TB) software RAID0 system, which should make it faster. The XP is installed sole on the stock 250GB drive.

Basically what I mean is OS X seems a bit sluggish and XP seems snappier. Apps take sometimes 7-10 seconds to load, but startup time is fast. I am considering installing a single Terabyte drive with a generous cache and rpm speed and tranferring my Mac partition to this.

A friend recommended to me than my Software RAID0 system may be crippling my performance instead of helping it out.

 

[Cantello]

Any suggestions. It's just not snappy. OS X is slower than Windows on this machine, which was actually designed to run the Mac OS. It is odd, right?

No suggestions here, I have experienced the exact same thing. I think "snappy" describes best the difference in GUI between XP & OSX. It takes some time getting used to this and I still wish that sometimes I had a Windows machine in front of me for certain tasks.

 

[WardC]

No suggestions here, I have experienced the exact same thing. I think "snappy" describes best the difference in GUI between XP & OSX. It takes some time getting used to this and I still wish that sometimes I had a Windows machine in front of me for certain tasks.

Well, browsing in FireFox on Mac OS X is still relatively fast. iTunes runs OK, everything seems fast basically except for GUI redraw and application boot (although faster than iMac) -- I am really not complaining much. I would still rather use Leopard than XP 1000 times over. I just keep a little XP install on my machine for the rare case that I would need to run a Windows program, major application, or some web based system that will only run under Microsoft. I've never had to do it, but it's there if I need it.

 

[pit29]

I saw that my overall "getting around" and web browsing was about 5x as fast. Booting apps, moving things, it was snappy and fast with no lag. With OS X 10.5, things just seem to drag along at a much slower pace.

I am not sure I understand you correctly. I think you are not speaking of the speed of calculation-intensive tasks (e.g., batch processing with Photoshop...), but rather of the responsiveness of the system? Because this has been around for a long time. Windows GUI is extremly "snappy", but that's at the expense of a clean and complete display of all things. OS X is somewhat slower, but graphics is beeing displayed perfectly everytime. Try, for example, changing the size of a window - it's contents will "flicker" with Windows, whereas it's updated less frequently with OS X...

 

[xgman]

Maybe you need to clean house a bit on the Mac side. Run a cleanup utility such as Yasu or leopard Cache Cleaner and then check in the preferences pane under user accounts to the startup/logon items list and see what is running.

 

[fromalk]

32 versions of windows (or any other app) can't address more then 2gb of RAM, so in your case, the other 14gb is totally unused. The strange thing however is that mac can address and therefor use all 16gb

Now I'm not an expert but this made me think that there might be an issue with your RAM or at least one of the DIM's (scince xp might not use the one that is broken it's not affected, but mac may have a problem with it)

This is just a speculation on m behalf, just seems to be a logical explanation for your problem

 

[osin]

I just wonder how the XP will perform after 4-6 months of average usage (after installing all updates and some applications). That's mostly what slows the system down. I loved XP for the first year after that it was sloooow...

 

[kalex]

XP always feels snappy when u just install it and gets slow with use. OSX tends to be much better keeping its snappiness with time.

 

[nick9191]

XP will be snappy on a Mac Pro. Its the best part of a decade old.

If you want features they come at a sacrifice

 

[ricardo1064]

I am running on a 3.0GHz Mac Pro here with 16GB of RAM. I felt like my machine was relatively fast, but after switching over and running in XP today via bootcamp, I saw that my overall "getting around" and web browsing was about 5x as fast. Booting apps, moving things, it was snappy and fast with no lag. With OS X 10.5, things just seem to drag along at a much slower pace. I am guessing it is due to the bulk of overhead or running a system with such a heavy GUI and set of code. Any suggestions. It's just not snappy. OS X is slower than Windows on this machine, which was actually designed to run the Mac OS. It is odd, right?

You are forgetting the most important thing about Microsoft products. When put in an environment where they react to hardware that has been engineered to work together in balance, it's an extremely fluid system.


While lacking features, and being a security nightmare isn't helping it's case much, it's still a great system. Big, bulky, slow aside, it served its purpose for years. Bill has made and will continue to make great products, Apple's are just simply better. It's what happens in business, Someone has to be number #1, but it doesn't mean their always going to be up there.

Look at this country's economic crisis for a current example.

 

[WardC]

Well I have news to report:

I was operating on a 2x500GB RAID array via Disk Utlity Software RAID.

Last night I mirrored all my RAID Array to an external FW drive, then deleted the array and reformatted the discs as individual 500GB HDs

I transferred my drive data back to a single 500GB disk.

I have been using my Mac Pro today with all my data on single disk versus the software RAID, and I can report that my Mac Pro is extremely snappy and responsive again. Perhaps running a RAID0 Software array is not faster for everything, only for mass copy maybe. The system does now seem much faster as a whole.