Test Shows Snow Leopard is Faster Than Win 7

[jimmysmitty]

So I guess the guy who did these tests was not exactally bright. Windows 7 + emulation = slower (anything emulated runs slower). Much like XP Mode in 7 will be slower than normal XP.

So instead of just getting a PC balsed laptop with the same components,t ehy emulate it.

No offense, but with Windows 7 coming out soon it seems that Apple fans are grasping at straws...

 

[rooseveltdon]

lol i kinda figured that this article was written by marcus yam he is a major apple fan boy

 

[buwish]

Not exactly a scientific test of sorts. Never the less, it would appear from everything else that I have read that the OS's seem more than capable.

 

[dannyaa]

Mac vs PC shouldn't be about price/performance ratio. Just like a car, that's only one area to evaluate. To group everything else into "shiny for dummies" is not only naive, but it doesn't make you look smart, it just makes you look nerdy.

Hear me out, I'm a Windows guy but I'm tired of the Mac flame wars...

Things like laptop build quality, the Operating System and Software, product support, things such as mag safe power cord and the trackpad gestures and excellent screens on all models, a 5 hour battery, etc. etc. These and many other items, but most notably the software (as this story shows), are important selling points.

How many normal computer consumers actually care about overclocking? Running CAD? How many need 17% faster encoding or 10fps more in Crysis? The point is, when you are doing iTunes, Web, iPhoto, and iChat for 90% of your computer needs, you don't really need a quad core processor and 8gb of RAM for the same price. It's not that much faster for those tasks, and many people would rather put their money towards the more user friendly software that does 110% of everything they could ever hope and dream for.

For us nerds who want to tweak or systems and need all these obscure 3rd party programs that don't exist on Mac (which is becoming increasingly rare), or just love building or systems, etc. etc. - great! I am stoked for Windows 7 and have 2 copies pre-ordered.

But the Apple bashing is obnoxious. There's a lot of things they do right.

 

[ossie]

What? The gamer/drm o$ is slower than a rotten fruit?
You must be kidding yummy boy... the m$ fankiddies will lynch you for this blasphemy in the windblows church (TH).

 

[Guest]

A fair test would be to set up two different machines with the same configuration. Using windows tools on one side and apple's tools on the other side. As this was a OS enviroment speed test? Windows users have their own tools. Or you could spend the same ammount of money on two machines and do the tests again

Who in their right mind would ever buy a mac anyway. It's the same hardware at a higher cost on every part you want to use on the machine. They just don't know to do better. Unenlightened poor folk. I declare the flame-wars open.

 

[Guest]

this is the MOST ridiculous article i have ever seen on tom's hardware!

look at this article again:
"with native drivers from Boot Camp 3.0"!!!!!!!????
and
"Apple is also behind the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers, which can also be a source for conspiracy theories."
wtf?!! i cant believe my eyes!
what is happenning to tom's hardware???
im done with this stupid site.

 

[eodeo]

- Snow Leopard booted and shut down around six seconds faster than Windows 7.
Respectable. Seeing how XP does the same thing with 20sec faster than 7, its not that big of a shock. Still a valid win.

(see the end)

- Snow Leopard took 149.9 seconds to convert 17 songs from the MP3 format to the AAC format. Windows needed 12 seconds more for the same job.

I'd like to know what programs were used for this, but as it is - a valid win.

- Snow Leopard took 444.3 seconds vs. Windows 7's 723 seconds to convert a movie file from the MP4 format into the iPod format while having iTunes converting songs in the background the job (versions of QuickTime were different, however).

Silly test, with no bearable impact whatsoever.

Why would anyone in their right mind want to use QT for anything... at all, is beyond me. There are plenty of programs that allow this and dont suck as much as the QT port for windows.

- In a battery test, Windows 7 lasted 78 minutes, while Snow Leopard managed to stay on for 111 minutes.

Valid win.

(see the end for more)

- Windows 7's Cinebench R10 score was 5,777 vs. 5,437 for the OS X.

First actual apples to apples CPU vs CPU on a different OS.

Valid

- Windows 7 in Call of Duty 4 scored 26.3 frames per second while Snow Leopard got only 21.2 fps.

I cant believe that Leopard scored so high. Nicely done Apple!
(im not being sarcastic here, mac's are known for poor implementation of even poorer opengl. windows owners be happy - very happy for directx)

--- the end ---

once each OS starts, amount of things you can do, is very different.
one can run 95% of the software available, while the other can run about 15%. I wont call Mac a console, but its as close as you can get without needing special hardware.

---the real end---
I think more tests should be done. as close to apples per apples as they can get. using mac drivers for windows... is clearly not the best idea ever.

 

[Regulas]

[citation][nom]Dyseman[/nom]There's GOT to be a way to Filter out Mac stuff on this sight.MacOS won't play mah games. MacOS won't let me run my own Motherboard and equipment. Screw MacOS already. Jeeebus.Can it play Crysis...or about 10,000 other games / software w/o having some slowed down windows emulator.Look, Macs or ok if you are in the Printing / Music / Graphics industry or didn't know any better because Apple donated Thousands of computers to schools to brainwash kids into wanting them... but dumbfounded when the kids played PC's at home and chose PC's overall.[/citation]
You may be right about the bigger game selection most people don't buy a Mac for games. OS X is a much nicer OS than Windows any day. You Mac haters make me laugh at your ignorance. I have Windows on my big rig for just that, games but I use Linux on my laptop for all my other computing needs because I don't to use the Swiss Cheese OS knows as Windows for anything else.

 

[tlmck]

[citation][nom]Euphoria_MK[/nom]No offense but it is you that is the amateur. Boot camp does absolutely nothing to slow down Win 7. All it does is help you repartition the HardDrive and install Win 7 directly from Mac OS X without loosing your current OS. Performance wise it will be the same as reformatting the whole hard drive and doing a clean install of only Win 7.I can clearly say that you've never used BootCamp, but if you want to find out more about it before making such statements you can use google and research. There is plenty of info on the net of how bootcamp works.Cheers[/citation]

Had the author bothered to run a comparison test of Win 7 running natively on a similarly configured PC laptop, then the results could have been validated or invalidated. Had they been validated, then the title of the article would be plausible.

The other issue besides Boot Camp(which I have used) is that Win 7 was installed after OSX, and thus on a higher sector of the hard drive which affects performance as well. While only measured in milliseconds, it is still a performance hit. In case you are wondering it has to do with the Laws of Physics.

I have indeed been an amateur computer user/builder/hobbyist of all computers since 1981. However, I am also a degreed electronics engineer, and as such, a professional tester. If myself or any of my fellow engineers had turned in such a test report, we would have been told to not let the door hit us in the ass on the way out.

Or if you prefer legalese, right now all the author has is an assumption based on facts on facts not already in evidence.

 

[matt87_50]

[citation][nom]Dyseman[/nom]Look, Macs or ok if you are in the Printing / Music / Graphics industry or didn't know any better because Apple donated Thousands of computers to schools to brainwash kids into wanting them...[/citation]

hehehe, I used Macs throughout all of my schooling. didn't use any windows seriously until halfway through high school. then i was free from the macs through a few years at uni, untill now, at work, I have to use a mac to iphone Dev. and all I can say is:

Mac's were slow, unstable, and would freeze all the time (and this was brand new dual cpu mac pros, not weaklings). windows has similar problems sometimes, ESPECIALLY when its doing anything file sharing related, but its alot more fluid and stable than the Macs ever were! and now, after the countless updates, that on windows would have been called service packs and given away for free, are called different versions on Mac and YOU HAVE TO PAY MONEY FOR! macs may be alot more stable than they were, but after using windows, they just seem alot more clumsy, and painful to use!

sure they have all these fancy desktop features, but they just seem to be there to counteract a much more complicated and painful desktop/window system. everything seems to be called something different than it is on windows JUST FOR THE SAKE OF BEING DIFFERENT! right down to the close/maximize/minimize buttons that are on the other side for some reason, even tho they were on the same side as windows in OS9.

So basically I don't care how much faster than windows it is.
If it could solve world hunger in 5 minuets, it's still gonna take 5 minuets longer that I could stand working with a Mac!

 

[z3r0day]

Why don't the author run a test with 3rd party softwares instead of using iTunes? And its also not a good idea to compare the two systems when windows 7 is running on Boot Camp which decreases Windows performance....

 

[jjchmiel78]

Euphoria_MK Hard drive usage makes a lot bigger difference than you think. During these conversions using Apple software no less, there is read and write access times. Apple OSX gets the best area while boot camp partition gets the worse. If it was 2 different drive of the same make and model on the same computer, fine valid test despite using apple software. A lot of windows users do use itunes since they like the player but can not afford the computer. A personal test to show how much drive access makes a difference between my 2 computers. Desktop = Core2duo 6750 at 2.66Ghz 4GB DDR2 Ram at 1066mhz Raptor 10,000 Rpm 74GB Hard drive and Nvidia 7600Gt 256mb Ram. Laptop = Core2duo at 1.5Ghz 2GB ram at 667mhz Super Talent Ultra Drive 64GB(picked up used on ebay to try for myself)and ati 2300HD 256mb ram. Both running Vista 32bit, Both using Nero 9, both encoding the same avi file downloaded to DVD format for burning and playback on a standard DVD play. Both were set to the hard drive the Video_TS files. Video was 55minutes long and the laptop did the job 7 minutes faster than the desktop. Yes read and write access makes a HUGE difference when converting files. The slower machine won because it had better access. Granted the access would not be as large as the difference between mechanical and SSD but I can easily see it as much as 12 seconds across 17 songs. This is a crap test mac marketing lie crap that has no place on a site like this. I work in a print shop and we use both mac and PC. The only advantage the mac has for us is to handle files that are using mac fonts. Outside of the workplace where my friends have macs at home I like them, I don't have to go over there because they got a virus and it is running slow. But as soon as Mac crosses that 50% market share, I would bet my 401K mac users will have to start fighting virus problems like Windows.

 

[Santimun]

Isnt this set up kinda biased though? Why not have two systems set up, with equal parts inside (cpu, ram, storage, gfx card, etc) and have one with Snow Leopard and one with Win7 and THEN do some test comparisons???

 

[Guest]

even though windows 7 can run native on a mac its still not a fair test. mac still tweaks their hardware to maximize performance on their specific hardware. only way to do a fair test is to get 2 separate machines, one built for windows and one built for mac with the same hardware, then run the tests again.

 

[hhb6]

It's a shame what Bestofmedia did to toms across all o their sites they have these apple and windows articles as if the only way to get people attention is to provoke them
eh oh well

 

[codeman03xx]

tmike: You are the biggest Mac OS X fan boy ever. Windows simply can't make optimized drivers for everything it would be impossible. Apples have proprietary hardware so I would consider it lazy on Apples part not being able to stomp windows on speed. However the point still stands Apple you paying for the name and your getting ripped off majorly. Plus for those that said ALUMINUM CASE WOOOOOOOOOO BIG FLIPPING DROP DROP YOU DAMN $1699 LAPTOP. SO HERE IS MY TAKE HOME POINT BUY A PC LAPTOP SPEND AS MUCH AS A APPLE GET 10X the performance.

 

[sanien]

This is soo bias as shit can be! Of course Snow Leopard runs faster than win 7 on a Mac!! Especially when win 7 runs from Boot Camp damit! Take a random laptop and run the tests...win 7 will have drivers support for the hardware but will OSX - thats not granted!

Besides as many have said already Mac is so much more expensive for the same hardware! Screw the design and image shit! I can live with a not having an apple on my laptop. There is many other manufactures out there that makes good looking laptops as well!

Bang for the buck go win 7!

 

[tipoo]

Identical MAC hardware, if you compare computers of equivalent PRICE the windows PC would stomp all over that MBP.

 

[Euphoria_MK]

[citation][nom]tlmck[/nom] However, I am also a degreed electronics engineer, and as such, a professional tester. If myself or any of my fellow engineers had turned in such a test report, we would have been told to not let the door hit us in the ass on the way out.Or if you prefer legalese, right now all the author has is an assumption based on facts on facts not already in evidence.[/citation]

Apparently your degree has nothing to do with how much you know about Mac OS and Boot camp.
Your own statement does not make any sense. Except the keyboard and the touchpad there is nothing extraordinary on the macbook that cant be find on any other laptop, thus making it a regular PC.

Apparently you are not as familiar with PCs if you are to claim otherwise. There are a large number of people that have never worked with Macs but never the less keep writing their statements as absolute truth.
I chuckled at some statements above... I mean the drive works faster for Mac OS X "it's pure physics" lolol
Now I'll ask you this: have you ever benchmarked two OS's on the same drive, and installed on different partitions? DO you know how much of a difference will make if the OS is installed on the outer part of the Disk Drive, rather than on the part closer to the center.
Also do you know how the HD head reads the data of the drive? Do you know that the same mechanics used for BluRay, DVD and CD players do not apply when data is read/written on HD?
Now do some research on Google... and then come back ranting about stuff.
The biggest performance hit would be if the data on the 2nd partition is fragmented all over the HD and then it actually takes some extra time to read up the data. When the OS is freshly installed the fragmentation on the disk is minimal to no fragmentation.
I know that some of the people here have installed an OS by themselves and they've upgraded a hardware component in their PC, but that is far, far away from making you a PC tech guru.
Anyhow, I am done here.

Cheers

 

[BadKharmaCDN]

why use boot camp ? why not just replace the hard drive and then install 7 as a fresh install and then test. I can say that I am not a proponent of either OS but single fresh installs on same hardware might give more reliable results. ie -- all the same hardware , 2 identical hard drives with differant OS. surley that would not be very hard to accomplish.

 

[Yoder54]

[citation][nom]scorc25[/nom]I saw the Headline, and knew Mr Yam wrote this before I even read it.[/citation]

Guess what? You are wrong. The review article was written by Ngo at CNET. Yam merely reviewed an article and posted his review in the "news." Many around here don't seem to understand the concept of "news"...why else would people criticize the lack of hardware tests here if they understood what "news" was about?

Yam is probably assigned to the Apple beat and posts whatever significant news is out there pertaining to such. Give him a break, he is just doing his job and trying to make a honest buck.

 

[Ogdin]

It could be 10x faster,until there is more that 2 games for Macs i could care less.

 

[jjchmiel78]

Euphoria_MK you have just proven yourself to be a mac fan boy. Yes Yes Yes read write access is affected by where the information is located on the drive. This is why a 0% fragmented 75% full drive will perform slower accessing new data as one than 25% full (assuming same make and model and internal hardware). The fact they did not use separate drives shows they were trying to make the mac win in a bull test. We won't even go into using only apple software. These type of test should not be put on this site. It only serves to make PC fans support it more and think Macs are pieces of crap. Mac may still win the test if each OS was installed on its own identical drive but we will never know since mac fans are too afraid to test on a level playing field. I am not saying different computer or different software (lot of people use itunes and quicktime for that purpose)just it's own install on either seperate drives or a complete fresh install for each OS. Your continued support of such a bad test proves you are a mac fan. I am willing to let mac win if they could do a valid test. If Mac wants to show they are the more efficeint OS at the hardware level, they need to prove it on a much wider scale of uses and on a level field. Most home consumers I know would rather save $100 and in most cases 50% from a mac than worry about 12 seconds converting songs or 6 seconds on boot up and start up. The other win of the Mac which I admit has nothing to do with where the OS was installed is the battery test. (I find the test hard to believe since on my laptop with Vista I get 4 hours (easily) hard to believe either new OS and hardware would do worse)But for those that batter life is important, PC wins since mac were idiots and made the battery internally. On business trips, it is easier to put the laptop in hibernation (wait those extra 6 seconds the test says it takes) and swap batteries. This media crap article bought and paid for by apple is spun almost as well as Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"

 

[millerm84]

First and foremost I started reading Tom's a number of years ago because they tested and reported on hardware and software, and I could make buying decisions and professional recommendations based off of information I found on this site. Here of late there has been reporting on what another site has done without testing results, reporting on apple bloggers, and a lack of fact checking. Its a discredit to this site's reputation for factual information. I understand Yam is more then likely to be on the "Apple Beat" but get statements from Apple, do tests, hell cite press releases. I don't care if Tom's reports on Apple, I don't care if they have favourable reviews of Apple products, but have they need to make sure that their "reporters" are working and not just copying and pasting what ever they can find on a top 5 google searches.

Now on to the issues at hand, if bootcamp only creates separate partitions on the disk then why can't you do a clean windows install without it? If bootcamp's only function is to partition a hard drive while leaving the original data in tact why go through the messy process of installing two OSs on the same disk? Because you have to use Bootcamp to install windows, why I don't know, but to use MS on Apple you have to use bootcamp. That fact alone suggests that bootcamp does more then partition the hard drive.

Secondly using two apple programs when comparing an apple OS to a windows OS invalidates that data. It would be like testing IE (which was ported to apple at one point)on both systems to see which one surfed the web faster or using Office to test productivity.

To have a fair testing of the two OSs Tom's needs to purchase a copy of both, buy a Mac and build a PC with the exact same specs. Test Windows in it's native hardware, test Apple in it's native hardware, test Apple on the PC (hackintosh is like bootcamp to me don't care how it's done if it's done), and test Windows on the mac. Use software that is cross platform only, start/shutdown/sleep speeds, power consumption, productivity software (i'm guessing open office here), file conversion, and gaming speed. Compare overall scores. If apple is fast yea every one go buy a mac, if MS is faster yea every one go buy a PC. If apple runs faster on apple and windows on a pc then well buy which ever floats your boat.

But do not post test results that you didn't create and call it fact, do not pull data from bloggers and call it news, do not assume that keeping up with this crap will not lead to long time readers leaving your site for ones that are reporting facts and news.