OS X 10.6 vs Mavericks performance?

Off-Topic
1

Hello.

I am thinking about upgrading to Mavericks (10.9) from OS X 10.6 but I’m wondering how well it runs on older macs?

You guys that have older macs 2008 / 2009 and have upgraded already have you noticed any slow down in performance?

I downloaded and installed mavericks on an external USB drive and it is slower but I’m wondering if that’s mainly due to it running via USB drive like I suspect.

Are you guys that were running 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 planning up upgrading to Mavericks or have you already done so?

Thanks.

2

I have a 2007 iMac (2.8 GHz C2D) with 4 GB RAM and 2 TB hard disk which runs Mavericks ok (didn’t want to put it on my main machine). Still will downgrade the iMac to Snow Leo as (a) I like it better (have it on my main Mac), (b) 4 GB seems a bit limiting in Mountain Lion and Mavericks, © it seems somewhat slower, (d) quite a few things don’t work anymore (like Perian -> can’t preview movies in Finder by hitting the space bar; EyeTV no longer records TV, etc).

3

[quote=42899:@User Unknown]Hello.

I am thinking about upgrading to Mavericks (10.9) from OS X 10.6 but I’m wondering how well it runs on older macs?

You guys that have older macs 2008 / 2009 and have upgraded already have you noticed any slow down in performance?

I downloaded and installed mavericks on an external USB drive and it is slower but I’m wondering if that’s mainly due to it running via USB drive like I suspect.

Are you guys that were running 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 planning up upgrading to Mavericks or have you already done so?

Thanks.[/quote]

I have an iMac 8,1 and it’s a huge performance increase from the Lion series. Not sure about the performance with 10.9 vs Snow Leopard though. However, it does feel roughly near Snow Leopard’s performance. For reference, the Lion series couldn’t run to many apps at the same time, meanwhile, with Mavericks, I can.

Also, running ANY OS from a USB Drive will cause slowdown problems.

4

I wonder too how it would compare to SL on my machine … i have a late 2009 27’ iMac11,1 and am now on 10.6.8

I don’t care for the iOSification of OS X, but sooner or later I will have to use a newer OS…

5

My main dev machine is a Mid 2010 17" MacBook Pro, 8GB of ram. I upgraded to Mavericks the day after it was released. I’ve noticed an increased battery life and snappier performance in some (though not all) areas.

I’ve also already swapped out the spinning HD for an SSD, so this machine is wicked fast. It’s perhaps not as old as the other systems mentioned, but Mavericks has been an overall upgrade. No problems with Xojo on it. (just wish it would load faster - Xojo is still the longest starting app I’ve got installed… no doubt because it loads the set of MBS plugins at startup… )

6

My oldest is an iMac (20-inch Early 2008)
2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
3 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

If it’s only speed you want, SL. Otherwise Mav. (Lion or ML = no)

7

I would expect so, was running the betas from an external HD and while it took ages to launch, it didn’t feel like a slouch when it was running. Now the GM is on the internal drive it boots up just as quick as ML.

[quote=42899:@User Unknown]Are you guys that were running 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 planning up upgrading to Mavericks or have you already done so?[/quote] I upgraded my main machine once the GM was ready, this is the last opportunity to test my apps with Mavericks before Apple release it.