Two Identical Setups - Two Way Different Benchmarks

[jsmacpro]

Hi Guys,

I attached a copy to this post of the detailed benchmark reports. A side by side comparison.

So I gave my girlfriends late 2008 mac book pro an overhaul. Replaced the lower case, cleaned everything, re-applied thermal paste, installed 750 Gb HD, installed 4gb (2x2gb) OWC 667 Mhz ram, updated to lion for now. Her benchmark score total is (1864).

Now I have the exact same 2008 mac book pro. I also have the same 750 Gb HD, I also have 4gb (2x2gb) of CRUCIAL 667 Mhz Ram (as opposed to hers which is OWC), im running same OS (lion). So as far as I can tell our computers are identical in terms of hardware/software just different brand for RAM. My benchmark score is consistently near (3379).

Do you guys have any idea why such similar machine set ups would be scoring SO differently? Am I missing something? Something I should try? Any ideas? Would this difference be because apparently the CRUCIAL RAM is better quality?!

I was thinking of swapping ram from one laptop into the other and vise versa to see if the scores reflect the change of manufacturer of ram, but I figured I would see what you guys thought. I did try resetting the SMC and PRAM no difference.

Let me know what you think.

Jack

 

[Orlandoech]

Thats odd.

To ensure better accuracy I would backup both HDDs, then wipe, partition, format, blah, then reinstall OS X cleanly and rerun test.

Make sure they both are running in x86 aka 32-bit mode.

 

[jsmacpro]

I just tested in terminal to see because I didn't even really know - but both computers are defaulting to 64 bit. I assume that is ok though?

I looked at my HD specs and hers - I don't seem to have a "Recovery HD Partition" but hers does. I installed her Lion update from a usb flash drive. Mine was done at my college - preloaded with music apps - so maybe that explains no Recovery HD.

Under RAM specs hers looks like this:

Manufacturer: 0x0000000000000000
Part Number: 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000
Serial Number: 0x00000000

Where as mine for manufacturer is like: Ox7F7F7F7F7FF9B0000

etc.

I don't really want to wipe them clean unless it's easy to move the backed-up data back onto them. I just use time machine as backup but I'm not very familiar with it just use it incase of disaster you know. Any other thoughts man? Really annoying me that my computer is performing so much quicker when there set up basically the same!

Jack