Panther and Tiger Benchmarks
After running Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger benchmarks, we received a few requests to run the same inane benchmarks on something other than a Power Mac G5 (since Tiger runs in 64-bit mode on the G5). So, we ran Xbench under Panther and Tiger on a PowerBook with the following configuration:
- PowerBook G4 1.25GHz
- 1.25GB DDR333 RAM
- ATi Mobility Radeon 9600 w 64MB
- Mac OS X 10.3.4 (7H63), or Mac OS X 10.4 (8A162)
- Xbench 1.1.3
Again, we ran Xbench three times under both Panther and Tiger three times, and computed the average score of the three runs. We’ve also computed Tiger’s score expressed as a percentage of Panther’s score. As always, higher is better.
| Test | Panther | Tiger |
|---|---|---|
| Overall | 97 | 83 (86%) |
| CPU | 95 | 128 (135%) |
| Thread | 87 | 97 (112%) |
| Memory | 117 | 135 (115%) |
| Quartz | 135 | 134 (99%) |
| OpenGL | 94 | 55 (59%) |
| UI | 184 | 147 (80%) |
| Disk | 56 | 41 (74%) |
Looking at the results, it looks like Tiger currently doesn’t run as well on the PowerBook G4 as it does on the PowerMac G5. In some cases, performance is better under Tiger, while in other cases performance is better under Panther. At this stage, it’s hard to say where the performance problems lie, and whether they’ll be fixed in time for Tiger’s release. However, given that Tiger will be released in six to twelve months, Apple hopefully has more than enough time to address and fix these issues. That, or release a PowerBook G5 that runs Tiger properly!
Do the words “pre-release software” mean anything? Of course its slower! Panther was in development for much longer, not to mention there have been intermediate builds refining the OS’ speed and capabilities. Tiger isn’t a public beta, its a developer’s beta, and it’s closed for a reason.
I agree with Steve. However, what I would like to see is you running the same tests over time as new releases (the ones that make sense) of the pre-release version of Tiger are introduced. What I mean by “the ones that make sense” is that some releases are targeted to a very limited fix. For example, they may release a version targeted specifically at a particular version of the Apache web server. This will doubtfully affect your benchmarks so would not be worth running them on. However, general release benchmarks could provide some reader interest.
No. There’s no “or” here. They’d better have better performance on the “old” stuff as well. My “old” Powerbook G4 1.5GHz says just that.
Not that I’m the least worried though. Nice to see the fat processor/memory-boost. The rest will come as well. Be sure.
PS. Please add some code-availability to the comments. The quotes look terrible without it.
With the development process for Mac OS X, I don’t even understand why people would even consider this a “Beta” build.
I see the Tiger Dev Preview as nothing more than an Alpha, if you can even call it that.
In no way are all features implemented. Apple slapped the 10.4 core and some of the new features onto a CD for developers to work with. Some people would even have problems with calling it an “Alpha” release.
By calling it a “Beta”, you are implying that the featureset is frozen and there is very very little wiggle room for change, when the truth is quite the opposite.
Yes, I could never understand how someone could be bored enough to benchmark Alpha software against gold master software. It’s a waste of time. Besides in Tiger, Safari crashes all the time, Connect to Server doesn’t work, 3rd party apps crash, Automater features are broken, etc. It’s not even usable on a day to day basis.
looks like they haven’t optimized opengl yet. don’t know what’s up with that disk score. or why i bothered reading this. or posting. or waking up today. time for a nap.
Tiger is probably a development build right now so it’s full of debugging code and not really optimize. I guess in a year from now it’s going to be as fast as Panther if not faster.
I can’t wait
The Disk score isn’t surprising—keeping everything indexed for Spotlight is going to slow disk ops down a bit. I’ll be very disappointed if the OpenGL scores stay so low in the final release, but I doubt they will. I’d expect many apps to be updated to utilize the CoreGraphics APIs, probably resulting in a much smoother GUI (read: window resizing) experience for the end user.
If Spotlight is going to slow down disk-access quite a bit – and I would be surprised if it didn’t – then I hope they at least give us audio pro’s (surely others would want it too) a chance to turn it off, or at least to choose which drives (or even folders) that we want indexed.
I don’t want, or need, my samples-drive indexed. Nor my scratch-drive for Photoshop or FCPro. Heck, I might even want to make a work-account where all the Spotlight stuff are turned off completely, to up the performance.
You really should mention the build number of Tiger you tested in the table because when readers will see the results in a few months’ time they might consider this “current results”.
I know you mentioned the build numbers in the text just above, but some people tend to got “straight to the point”, bypassing some relevant info in the process…
Have you noticed any programs resulting in errors? I have run into a couple issues with a couple of programs running on the 10.4 (8A162) build and wondering if it was just on my end. I have a 17” G4 laptop 1.33 w/2gig Ram and did and upgrade from 10.3.4 instead of an erase and install. Most of my pro level apps work (Adobe/Macromedia) but some of others type’s aren’t (BHD & Mouseworks)… just curious. Would love a troubleshooting forum on this! -abz.
I can’t even get it to install on my power book G4 1.25Ghz
it keeps giving me Kernel Panics.
How did you get by the No driver found error and get it to install?
I’m having the same problem as the guy above…kernel panics…it doesnt recognize the hardware version “Powerbook (5,2)” for some reason. Is there anything that you did special to get Tiger up and running. Please email me, thanks.
so is there any consensus about powerbooks and tiger? the guy above appears to have it working… HOW?
Go to this thread for instructions on bypassing the panic:
http://freaky.staticusers.net/ugboard/viewtopic.php?t=12705&start=0
But I still wanna know if I do this, will it work on my powerbook and is there any other trick. I have a 1ghz powerbook 17” with 1gb ram. Don’t wanna go to all the hassle of installing use the method in that thread i pasted in, only to find it panicking on startup anyway…!!
I’m just browsing around your site for the first time, interesting read