Why don't Intel Laptops & Imacs seem fast?

[GanleyBurger]

I've been trying out new MACs at Apple Stores. I want a 17" macbook pro LAPTOP or a top of the line Imac for music recording (Ableton Live / Mbox 2 / nothing too huge, mostly 8 to ten vurtual instrument tracks).

My in-store test was to open GarageBand on various models (lots of wavefiles, loops, etc.)

It seemed to take forever to open Garageband... and browse wavefile loops, even on a the 17" MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33 with 2Gigs of Ram and a 256 graphics card.

Am I crazy? Why don't Macs seem "Zippy?" Is it because the ones in the stores are conected to the internet?

Honestly, I just sold my 20" Imac with 2.0 Core Duo and 2 gigs Ram because of that very thing... solid, but hardly fast.

Don't be haters... I just thought that the latest Macs would FLY, lightning fast!!! Ever try a PC with a high-end AMD processor? Whoosh.... Watch how fast Windows XP is on Parallels on the Mac... and that's with OSX in the background.

I'm not going back to PC... I just don't get it...

My Post #55: I don't know... I guess that it just comes down to the fact that I am discouraged with today's technology... that anything should lag or hesitate at all. Hello... it's 2007 now...

Look at Japan: While Steve Jobs boasts in SF that the new iphone will have a 2.0 megapixel camera, the Japanese are cracking up! They have cell phones with 5 and 6 megapixel cameras. Or consider concept cars at big auto shows. We want those styles now, not ten years from now. Give us what we want!!!

If Intel makes a Quad chip (which I know has already been tested in a MAC PRO and seems to work fine - do a search on it), then dammit... give it to us!!! Give the people what they want!!!

Mac and Intel started making faster chips..... then they make more graphics-sucking applications, bells and whistles. It's like they are going back in time. I would rather have a faster computer than all of the cool graphics and crap. Can I get a witness?????

 

[CanadaRAM]

Opening a program has nothing to do with video card, relatively little to do with the CPU speed, and lots to do with the Hard drive speed and the size of the Data. Remember, the standard installation of GarageBand is over 1.3 Gb.

 

[Eidorian]

I believe that the bottleneck for Garageband at start up is the hard drive.

 

[suneohair]

Mine is zippy. 2.0 C2D Macbook 2GB. Plus I don't know how you can judge speed on program startup.

 

[livingfortoday]

Garageband ran fine on my Core Solo Mini with 1.5GB of RAM. As others have said, it's most likely the hard drive that's slowing it down. You'll probably wanna boot off of an external FW drive if you're really interested in speed there. Also, keep in mind that floor models take a lot of abuse, and aren't always the best representations of what a computer can do.

 

[GanleyBurger]

My Core Duo Imac had a 7200 RPM drive / 2 gigs ram. I was recording to a Glyph 400 FW drive. I launched RMX drums in Garageband... or Ableton Live... and it was taking about 5 seconds to launch the next new wave file previewed in the browser. Ugggghhhh.

So if your saying that Hardrive speed may be key, then the 17" laptop is only running at 5200 rpm with the 160 Hardrive could be even slower than the Imac with 7200 rpm... in theory.

So-many guys that I know record on old G4 laptops and say they have no problems. Shouldn't the newest technology screem in speed? OR is it the cooler graphics that wipe out the faster technology?

 

[GanleyBurger]

Thank you guys for responding...

Garageband ran fine on my Core Solo Mini with 1.5GB of RAM. As others have said, it's most likely the hard drive that's slowing it down. You'll probably wanna boot off of an external FW drive if you're really interested in speed there. Also, keep in mind that floor models take a lot of abuse, and aren't always the best representations of what a computer can do.

Isn't 7200 rpm Apple's fastest drive now?

Also, when you say "You'll probably wanna boot off of an external FW drive if you're really interested in speed there." what do you mean? Boot Garageband, boot wavefiles...

 

[GanleyBurger]

suneohair

Is your Laptop your primary computer? Are you doing audio recording?

 

[Eidorian]

Thank you guys for responding...




Isn't 7200 rpm Apple's fastest drive now?

Also, when you say "You'll probably wanna boot off of an external FW drive if you're really interested in speed there." what do you mean? Boot Garageband, boot wavefiles...

An internal or FW800 10,000/15,000 RPM hard drive would be faster.

 

[Scarlet Fever]

just wait till Leopard comes out. Tiger isn't that good (in terms of stability and speed) on the Intel macs

 

[Eidorian]

just wait till Leopard comes out. Tiger isn't that good (in terms of stability and speed) on the Intel macs

I haven't had any stability issues on Tiger.

 

[risc]

just wait till Leopard comes out. Tiger isn't that good (in terms of stability and speed) on the Intel macs

Wow that is the most retarded comment I have read here in a while. My iMac Core 2 Duo absolutely flogs my Power Mac Dual G5 for pretty much everything! It's also just as stable.

 

[AlBDamned]

Mine is zippy. 2.0 C2D Macbook 2GB. Plus I don't know how you can judge speed on program startup.

Suneohair> Did you get your MacBook back from UPS then?

 

[Nermal]

Wow that is the most retarded comment I have read here in a while. My iMac Core 2 Duo absolutely flogs my Power Mac Dual G5 for pretty much everything! It's also just as stable.

I disagree. I find my Intels to be slightly slower than my G5 at day-to-day tasks. Sure, the Intel systems encode video and play games faster, but for general apps I find that there's a bit of a "lag". Hopefully Leopard will indeed speed things up a bit.

 

[siurpeeman]

Wow that is the most retarded comment I have read here in a while. My iMac Core 2 Duo absolutely flogs my Power Mac Dual G5 for pretty much everything! It's also just as stable.

my macbook has little quirks here and there. nothing big, but it certainly doesn't compare to my dual g5 in terms of stability. that computer was rock solid.

 

[nazmac21]

My MacBook beats the crap out of my iBook G4 it terms in stability and speed.

 

[miniConvert]

Got a load of lightening fast iMac's here, CD and C2D.

And, FWIW, Intel's Core architecture stole the crown of zippy from AMD some time ago

 

[farqueue]

Macs are slow fullstop.
Dont get me wrong, i own a mac.

 

[miniConvert]

Macs are slow fullstop.
Dont get me wrong, i own a mac.

They're fast 'fullstop'. I own eleven.

Of course, it depends what you're using your Mac for. Windows is certainly better at plenty of things, but Macs themselves are plenty nippy. We could debate the pro's and con's, speed included, of OS X vs Windows though until the cows come home.

 

[xfiftyfour]

I disagree. I find my Intels to be slightly slower than my G5 at day-to-day tasks. Sure, the Intel systems encode video and play games faster, but for general apps I find that there's a bit of a "lag". Hopefully Leopard will indeed speed things up a bit.

I agree. I notice a bit of lag even coming from my old powerbook G4. Don't get me wrong, this MBP still flies, but there's definitely some lag where the G4 did not. I'm hoping leopard is better written to utilize intel machines, and that will speed things up (because the machine will be used more efficiently).

 

[zblaxberg]

Thank you guys for responding...




Isn't 7200 rpm Apple's fastest drive now?

Also, when you say "You'll probably wanna boot off of an external FW drive if you're really interested in speed there." what do you mean? Boot Garageband, boot wavefiles...

apple doesn't put 7200rpm drives in the macbook pros...they only go up to 5400

 

[davidjearly]

I agree. I notice a bit of lag even coming from my old powerbook G4. Don't get me wrong, this MBP still flies, but there's definitely some lag where the G4 did not. I'm hoping leopard is better written to utilize intel machines, and that will speed things up (because the machine will be used more efficiently).

This is just absolute BS. When the transition to Intel is annouced, Apple confirmed they had been running OS X on Intel processors since its first iteration 'just in case'.

So to say that the code in Tiger isn't fully optimised for Intel architecture is just absolute steaming poo. It's equally as optimised for Intel as it is for PPC. The only time it will feel more sluggish on Intel hardware is when using a non-universal app running in Rosetta.

FYI, I own Macs of both PPC and Intel era and have to say that iLife, CS3 Beta, and many many other universal programs run much faster on Intel than on PPC.

David

EDIT: BTW, it is iMac not Imac.

 

[jamdr]

This is just absolute BS. When the transition to Intel is annouced, Apple confirmed they had been running OS X on Intel processors since its first iteration 'just in case'.

So to say that the code in Tiger isn't fully optimised for Intel architecture is just absolute steaming poo. It's equally as optimised for Intel as it is for PPC. The only time it will feel more sluggish on Intel hardware is when using a non-universal app running in Rosetta.

I don't know about that. I mean in theory maybe you're right but I've been using an eMac and an iBook G4 for a number of years and recently got a MacBook Pro. Well, there definitely is lag where there wasn't on the PPC systems. It's very fast doing certain things, but it seems to take a while to get there. I'm also hoping for a more consistent, stable system when Leopard comes out but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

 

[BigPrince]

I just want to throw in that judging by forum posts in the past in various different topics and my friends personal experiences that the general impression I get is that OS X (Intel) is less stable then OS X (PPC).

It could be totally wrong, but thats definitely the impression I get.

 

[jamdr]

Yes, to be clear I think we are all comparing OS X (Intel) to OS X (PPC) and saying the former isn't quite there yet in terms of stability or speed.

But compared to Windows, any version of OS X far outpaces it in both respects. I have the unfortunate experience of using Windows on my Intel 4 machine at home and even though it's basically a clean install with only a couple applications installed, that thing is so laggy and crash-prone I shudder just thinking about it.