# Will OSX ever be as fast as XP?



## glbronze (Jun 23, 2002)

I'm no Windows, PC guy, but I use Windows XP quite a bit, and on my own computer I use OS X (10.1.5), and Windows XP is faster in pretty much every area.
Mac: PowerBook G4 (550)/Radeon
PC: Pentium 3 (700)/Geforce 2

That PC is in no way a superior machine to my Mac, but it sure runs its OS like it is.  Scrolling is faster (this is a biggie), Window dragging resizing is faster, OS launch time is faster, Application launch time is faster, the GUI is faster.

I know Jaguar promises greater speeds, but will it be enough to be as fast as Win XP?


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## phatsharpie (Jun 23, 2002)

Yes.


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## Koelling (Jun 23, 2002)

I'm going to forgive you because it's your first post but honestly, I was about to snap seeing another post with OS X and XP in the title. Every thread comes to one conclusion: you can't really compare. I would consider my 266 iMac faster than XP because I'm more productive on it. Other people would say that Macintosh is slow because they play games that only play at 65 fps rather than 100 (The eye sees at 24? 32?).


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## rowcroft (Jun 23, 2002)

A lot of the speed differences could be related to hardware, not the OS.  If you are running a laptop, hard drive speed is a big factor.  If it's the original hdd for the pbook, it's 4200rpm, the PC is most likely a 7200rpm but at least a 5400rpm if it is a tower (I am assuming it is).  Also, RAM is another factor in gaging speed.  I am a primary XP Pro user and it is fairly fast, but I find myself more productive in OS X.  Hope that helps.

Rowcroft


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## azosx (Jun 23, 2002)

I think this is a fair enough thread and a legitimate question.  

Before I got a Cube, my only experience with a Mac was the ones setup at CompUSA or Frys, we didn't have a local Apple Store then.  I'd pass them, play around with them for a bit and came to the conclusion that with OS X, they were tediously slow.  The Dock would catch/freeze, windows would resize terribly slow and sporadically, applications would take what seemed forever to launch, loading and scrolling web pages with IE was a joke and the viewing PDF files was next to impossible.  Now this is when OS X first came out and as much as I wanted to love it, I just couldn't.  It was beautiful but severely flawed in my opinion.  

Keep in mind spending 10 minutes with a machine that feels terribly slow compared to Windows performance wise is no measure of  the productivity value between the two.  That in which I believe OS X wins hands down.

Those who stuck with OS X in it's early days are truly the loyalist of Mac users.  I know though many didn't, and even when the new Macs shipped with X, many would never boot into it.  So it wasn't just the opinion of Windows users that OS X was some what unuseable.

OS X.1  has improved leaps and bounds over X.  Everything has been speed up ten fold but even with newer hardware such as my PB 667 DVI, it still feels as if I'm fighting the GUI at times.  Window resizing is still a little jerky and browsing PDF files is not exactly quick.  

With Jaguar's Quartz Extreme hardware acceleration, I think a lot of speed issues concerning Aqua will be coming to an end.  From what I've heard, even those without 3D accelerated video cards will benefit greatly over X.1.  

Is OS X as fast as Windows on comparable hardware?  No, not even close.  Does it hold potential to be as fast as Windows or other GUIs?  Absolutely.

As for the human eye not being able to perceive more than 24-30 FPS, that is a misconception.  It is believed the human eye can see some where around 200 FPS.  The misconception lies in that  theatre movies are displayed at 24 FPS and TV at 30.  The reason this seems normal is due to motion blur.  It gives the effect that the picture is moving faster and more fluidly than it actually is.  Computer  video games can not reproduce that affect.  That's why 24 FPS seems slow and fragmented compared to 60 or 100.


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## Javintosh (Jun 23, 2002)

24fps?!?!  

I hate to break the news, but...
Charlie Chaplin is dead.  
They have this new movies called "talkies." You should check them out...  
and oh yeah, 24 fps has been dead for a loong time....  

I think movies display at 60 fps, but I am not sure.


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## toast (Jun 23, 2002)

I'm more productive on OS9.22 than my friends on XP .

PS: using PS7 AI10 Quark 5 ATMD Distiller 4.


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## phatsharpie (Jun 23, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Javintosh _
> *24fps?!?!
> 
> I hate to break the news, but...
> ...



Umm... Nope. Film projections are still at 24fps. At 24fps, our brain can merge all the indvidual frames and give us the perception of fluid motion. When the "talkies" were introduces, the film speed didn't change. The only thing that changed is that part of the film stock has either embedded mangetic strip or circles that carry the sound information.

The 60fps reference is probably about television. NTSC tv signals are broadcasted at 29.97 frames per second and displayed at twice of that in terms of fields per second (interlacing). For convenience sake, it's just referred to as 60 field per second.


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## Javintosh (Jun 23, 2002)

at least Charlie Chaplin *is* dead.


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## gibbs (Jun 23, 2002)

gl- I've tried a preliminary jaguar build and I believe it shows promise and will actually take advantage of our current hardware a lot better than 10.1 and below currently do. It also seems to add a lot of UI improvements and hooks into the underlying BSD subsystem that went un-used before [unless you went into terminal]

As far as my personal opinion on XP, I agree about its speed. But I will take an OS X that is slightly slower than XP anyday, we all just hope that the speed comes up from where it is now. Apple, [to me] show every indication that they are working on this problem with jaguar and beyond. 

Look at all the posts on this forum. What is one of the major discussions, with any new programs [web browsers] etc? Its always "it scrolls faster" or "its less sluggish than the last build". Do you typically see this on windows forums? No, because the GUI is optimized to a point where people dont really notice minute speed differences anymore [in most cases]. I think OS X has been through an awkward period that we see ending with 10.1, but hopefully even forgotten as we move to 10.2 and beyond.

I see people defending OS X in here and how much they like it, how much they can multi-task etc, and then flame other people for bringing up speed issues, as if they've uncovered an ugly scar on a beautiful woman. Leave these people alone, because their bitching is only making it all the more apparent and urgent to apple. Picking out flaws, or asking questions about them, is what helps them get fixed.  Thats what a discussion forum is for.

I think most of us want the "productivity gains" of OS X without the "performance losses". Somewhat of a performance hit is inevitable no matter how much you optimize the OS, just because of the added eye candy. 

But I think that the hit will be softened dramatically ..and hopefully pretty soon.

Hope that wasnt too wordy.


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## glbronze (Jun 24, 2002)

gibbs- the Windows XP UI was also made a little bit more "eye candyish", but it seemed not to slow.  I truly think that Jaguar will finally put OSX where it should be speed-wise.  I read some other forums of people using Jaguar and they said that the speed in Jaguar was greater than OS9.  If that's the case, great!  Can't wait.


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## wdw_ (Jun 24, 2002)

I never understood the need for having more than 40 fps on a game. The eye sees about 30-40 fps, when we get scared or something happens to us (like falling down the stairs) more fps, so things seem to slow down. The only reasons more than 30-40 fps on a game is that the game is if so scary that it causes you to see more fps, or just for the bragging rights.


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## gibbs (Jun 24, 2002)

I havent been this "excited" about an OS release since...well.....win95! [flame shield on]


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## rharder (Jun 24, 2002)

I think I saw Charlie Chaplain in an unreleased Apple Switch ad. He didn't have much to say.

-Rob


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Jun 24, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Koelling _
> *(The eye sees at 24? 32?). *



The eyes don't see at a specific FPS -- they don't work the same as a movie or a monitor.  The eyes see constant motion at an infinite amount of FPS, in a way.

At any rate, the only thing that's limiting the amount of FPS you see on-screen is the refresh rate of your screen.  At 1024x768 @ 85Hz, the MAXIMUM FPS you'll be able to see is 85.  At 100Hz, 100 FPS is all you get.  Your computer may be crunching more frames than that, and reporting something like 150 FPS, but you'll only see the effect of 100 FPS since at 100Hz, your monitor is refreshing the on-screen images 100 times a second.

24 FPS is just an understood minimum amount of FPS to produce a "fluid motion" effect on a projected image.


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## fryke (Jun 24, 2002)

Okay, back on topic, please. 

Will Mac OS X ever be as fast as Windows XP? Like always, the question is kinda ... wrong. An operating system contains many, many parts that can be fast or slow. There are parts that you perceive (like the speed of window dragging or scaling) and others, that you don't or rarely do in a modern system (like memory management or I/O services). Another example of things you *do* perceive is the launch-time of applications or the OS itself.

In my view, Mac OS X is a very fast operating system. Also productivity has been brought up, which also lets me feel the 'speed' of the OS. However, like said before, this can't be experienced in a computer shop.


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## glbronze (Jun 24, 2002)

I didn't really intend this to be a "how many frames per second can the eye see/brain comprehend" forum; but I guess if you want it that way I can't stop you.


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## azosx (Jun 24, 2002)

> In my view, Mac OS X is a very fast operating system. Also productivity has been brought up, which also lets me feel the 'speed' of the OS. However, like said before, this can't be experienced in a computer shop.



I've had the oppourtunity to use many Unix based operating systems extensively over the years.  Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and BeOS just to name a few.

Of all of them I can honestly say OS X has the poorest memory management.  Perhaps it has something to do with the swap file being on the root partition, I don't know, next time I reinstall I'm making a swap partition so we'll see, but that intermittent lag you get when closing large applications or move huge files around, is something you don't typically see in a modern Unix based OS.

I've never felt like Aqua and Darwin were truely intergrated as well.  To me it's like comparing Windows running on top of DOS, it feels to me like they are fighting against eachother..

Apple has this wonderful base, Darwin, and needs to tap into it fully, not just run a pretty face, Aqua, on top of it.


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## bigbadbill (Jun 24, 2002)

Sorry I know this is off the subject but I gotta chime in on this one:



> I never understood the need for having more than 40 fps on a game. The eye sees about 30-40 fps, when we get scared or something happens to us (like falling down the stairs) more fps, so things seem to slow down. The only reasons more than 30-40 fps on a game is that the game is if so scary that it causes you to see more fps, or just for the bragging rights.


Is more than 30 fps useless ? 

Well no... the important words in the conclusion is : ...see the difference between... The human eye can not see the difference, this means that if you display 60 different frames per second you can only see the difference between half of them. You can understand it like this : the first image is written to the monitor. Now our eyes and brain start to study that image... But the new image appears way to fast for our brain... the result is that this second image is combined with the first one. You could say that the first two frames are blended together by our brain. The third and fourth image are also blended together and so on. Now the effect of this is similar to what we know as motion blur : when you quickly move your hand in front of your eyes it looks like several copies of your hand are chasing each other. The effect is the same : your hand moves so fast that our brain can not follow it : so while interpreting one frame (position of the hand) a new one is physically created... so what does the brain do : it mixes the various positions and the results is several positions of your hand blurred together. Important to know is that the eye and brain are not scan line based, so our brain doesn't start at the top left and moves zigzag to the bottom like a television or monitor (motion of the electron beam)... if the brain would work like that we would suffer from tearing  ( Tearing is when only part of the image is updated ) How eyes and brain actually work together... well bit of a mystery.. lets say : it just works ... 

So when your game is running at 60 fps or more you will get some kind of limited motion blur effect through several frames that are blended together by our brain. This effect is very similar to what happens in nature and that is why so many people claim that a game running at 60 fps looks/feels better than that same game running at just 30 fps.


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## Koelling (Jun 24, 2002)

I too had no intention to divert this tread into a fps tread. I just wanted to point out that speed is generally irrelevant as long as the things you feel are important are productive.


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## macxonly (Jun 25, 2002)

My Ti-book (400mhz, 256, 20 gig) runs comparably to my dad's Celeron (433, 312, 100gig-7200rpm).  I am not impressed with the performance of XP, and I am not impressed with the performance of X (I even have XP's cache file on another hd!!).  XP maybe faster resizing windows, but it still feels very slow.  It is nothing compared to win 98 in speed.  That said though, X is nothing like 7.0 or 8.1.  I have been using computers for 11 years now.  I have lived with Win 3.11, system 7.5 (bleh), and now X and XP.  There have been brighter days when it comes to RAW OS speed, but now we finally have stability.  Things will pick up, push push push for better hardware!


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## phatsharpie (Jun 25, 2002)

Also, keep in mind that OS X's display layer (Quartz) is a completely new display engine. It's nothing like QuickDraw or Display PostScript. So it's pretty understandable that there are still some performance issues that needs to be worked out.

I have high hopes on OS X's future repsonsiveness. With every small update the UI has been getting more responsive, and with 10.2 that should really be noticeable.

Also, I do find that I am more productive in OS X because of its rock solid stability.

Can't wait for Jaguar, it's gonna be something amazing.


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## fryke (Jun 25, 2002)

About Quartz being completely new and Display PostScript...

Yes, it is new, yes it sure has quirks to be solved. But afaik one of the great things about using Display PDF (Quartz) instead of PostScript was that things would be faster (in general), because PDF uses less space than PostScript and is already optimized for screen (in opposition to PostScript). My guess is that Apple got a bit over board about all those fancy things one can do with Quartz: And they did them all somewhere in OSX.


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## gopher (Jun 26, 2002)

OS X can be as fast and even faster than XP.  Just update your prebinding everytime you install new applications.  Use the freeware Pacifist to do this:

http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=12743&db=mac

If you let the energy saver on overnight you will also need Macjanitor to do the system cleanup tasks that are done at 3:30 AM: http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=10491&db=mac

OS X can be dog using the GUI version of SETI, though at least you can install the Darwin version with SETI Dockling: http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=10528&db=mac

Oh and Mac OS X 10.1.5 at long last supports many of the older G3 graphics cards that weren't supported before.   

10.1.5 update to 10.1.3 or 10.1.4: 
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=122010 

10.1.5 update to 10.1, 10.1.1, 10.1.2 
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=122011


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## PhilH (Jun 28, 2002)

Sorry to keep this OT, but nobody's mentioned persistence of vision, yet.

Stare at your monitor, then quickly close your eyes. You'll notice that the image fades, rather than instaneously disappearing. This effect means that 24fps is enough to give the illusion of smooth motion.

Eyes don't work in terms of fps, they accept continuous input. Persistence of vision is merely a feature of the eye that made Walt Disney's job a little easier! 

(1,000,000 fps? He'd still be working on Snow White...  )


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## azosx (Jun 28, 2002)

What you fail to realize is that that has nothing to do with a moving image on your computer screen.

Your monitor does not have the ability to simulate motion blur due to restrictions in design and refresh rate.  

LCD displays are even worse.  Games and movies can look terribly choppy even at a high FPS rate.

The only way games can compensate for the short comings of TVs and monitors is to pump up the FPS.  What's even worse is that they are fighting against a CPU and GPU while trying to do this.  When the FPS drop from 60 to 24, it is terribly noticeable.

Anyway, thanks for the example but that would only apply to looking at the fan, not a computer screen.


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## deagle five o (Jun 29, 2002)

i own both a P4 with 512 of ram running XP, and I also own a G4 with 512 running OS X 10.1.5... in my opinion...xp is slow as dog shit, comparred to OS X.


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## chemistry_geek (Jun 29, 2002)

> _Originally posted by PhilH _
> *Sorry to keep this OT, but nobody's mentioned persistence of vision, yet.
> 
> Stare at your monitor, then quickly close your eyes. You'll notice that the image fades, rather than instaneously disappearing. This effect means that 24fps is enough to give the illusion of smooth motion.
> ...



This phenomenon is not really associated with the eyes so much as the brain.  The brain's visual processing neurons get fatiged, this is why you syill see the image when you close your eyes.


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## nichrome (Jun 29, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Koelling _
> *Other people would say that Macintosh is slow because they play games that only play at 65 fps rather than 100 (The eye sees at 24? 32?). *


Cough. Not exactly.


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## ZnU (Jun 29, 2002)

Jaguar has hardware accelerated scrolling, even on systems that don't support Quartz Extreme. Scrolling is every bit as smooth as in OS 9.


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## changomarcelo (Jun 29, 2002)

sincerely, my Windows XP PC runs faster than Mac OS X. 
OS X always have been slow, I don't know why.
Many Mac fans blindly defend Apple products but I think they should know much more about what they are talking.
Mac OS X is a very good OS, I think it's the best OS ever made for home computers, but Apple has to do something with the performance of this system.


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## xaqintosh (Jun 29, 2002)

technically, OS X is slower, but not for long, we're just waiting for Jaguar


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## vanguard (Jun 30, 2002)

I wonder how fast XP would look if we had it running on 500 mhz G3s without DDRAM?

The GUI is a little slow because it lacks hardware acceleration.  However, let's not forget the fact that the hardware is at least a year behind what the x86 crowd offers.


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## azosx (Jun 30, 2002)

> However, let's not forget the fact that the hardware is at least a year behind what the x86 crowd offers.



Try more like 3 years.

If OS X did have some decent hardware to run on, it probably would shine a lot brighter.

Unfortunately, Apple decided long ago that a polished case is worth more than what's inside.


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## mdnky (Jun 30, 2002)

I disagree that Windoze is faster...here's the syatems where I base my arguments from:

300 G3 DT Mac w/768mb ram, 30 gb drive.

1.6gig P4 Dell w/512mb ram, 30 & 20 gb drives.


XP seems to have problems loading the application windows at times, and is extremely slow on a 1.6 P4.  Not to mention constant freezes and related issues.

OSX runs actually quite well when you figure in the nonexistant video card (2mb) and speed of the machine.  I'm running 10.1.5 and when all things are considered, it runs circles around XP.


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## ~~NeYo~~ (Jun 30, 2002)

hmmmm... Well, i've NOT used "X" on an optimal machine as such, only my iBook, and even then, i didn't find X "that slow". Anyhow, i use XP Day in day out (obviously not with Luna! lol) 

But i don't think Luna is that Fast! My Computer went totally Crazy, and i couldn't get DSL 2 authenticate on XP, so i began using 98 (Dual Boot)! Anyhow, it taught me 2 things ...

how S**T Win 9x is! lol
But how FAST it is too! The Classic GUI was so so Fast, and it made Such a Difference on Web Page Rendering! it was as though i had a faster connection (and i am on 512k DSL! lol) in comparison to XP! 

But now i have both OS's back, reinstalled and fresh, and XP hacked to Death once more, its faster and all, but with all the "crap" running 2 "aquafy" it, its not all that fast! ...but i couldn't stick looking At "classic" again, even if i could do things twice as fast! lol

I'd Definately like to see X, as fast as "Classic Windows", as for Luna, i don't think its that far Behind! 

NeYo

i can only speak, on behalf on my XP machine (Below) ...And mu 500Mhz iBook


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## glbronze (Jun 30, 2002)

good news regarding performance, thinksecret has commented on the latest build, and they report that speed is "excellent, astounding".

Here, take a look:
http://www.thinksecret.com/features/jaguarnewupdates/

I think Jaguar will solve the performance issue.  Thanks for everyone's input.  I must also say the FPS talk is interesting too.


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## Koelling (Jul 1, 2002)

I find it funny that *NIX people cheer the speed of their OS and condemn macintosh because it's so slow. What most people (read: consumer people) talk about their operating system they are talking about the part that *nix people would call the window manager. 

As a novice Darwin user, I realize that it is soooo much faster to shut down Aqua and run off of the console or in XWindows. But if I start a window manager that even comes close to the beauty and functionality of Aqua it is dirt slow. There is one called Enlightenment which is as close as a window manager gets to being as beautiful as Aqua but is much slower than Aqua in all the tasks that people worry about, window resizing, scrolling, ect. TWM or windowmaker are window managers that make it fast but you loose some features that make people productive.

I guess that was kinda off topic but the point is that the speed of the OS is based on the speed of the User Interface. I personally am happy with the speed, but we have the choice of a trimmed down gui just like any linux person does.


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## chemistry_geek (Jul 1, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Koelling _
> *I find it funny that *NIX people cheer the speed of their OS and condemn macintosh because it's so slow. What most people (read: consumer people) talk about their operating system they are talking about the part that *nix people would call the window manager.
> 
> As a novice Darwin user, I realize that it is soooo much faster to shut down Aqua and run off of the console or in XWindows. But if I start a window manager that even comes close to the beauty and functionality of Aqua it is dirt slow. There is one called Enlightenment which is as close as a window manager gets to being as beautiful as Aqua but is much slower than Aqua in all the tasks that people worry about, window resizing, scrolling, ect. TWM or windowmaker are window managers that make it fast but you loose some features that make people productive.
> ...



FYI:  Gnome 2.0 was recently released (http://www.gnome.org) that has anti-aliased text (Checkout the screenshots).  Now that looks pretty sweet.  I wouldn't mine installing that to run on OroborOSX/XDarwin.  Also, KDE 3.0 was recently released as well.


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