[tonywriter]

Jaguar is slow as molasses on my Pismo despite the 1GB RAM. Does anyone have a view about how Panther compares to Jaguar on a 500Mhz machine? Just that I'm reluctant to upgrade if it's any slower.

Thanks

[hardcat1970]

panther earlier build is running much faster on my pismo despite only having 384mb ram on it. I expect the final version will be the same.

[BurpetheadX]

It will be as fast as OS 9.

[tonywriter]

[jguidroz]

Jaguar Server runs fine on my Pismo 500, and Panther runs great on my B&W G3/300.

[danengel]

Looks like my 300 MHz iBook could be useful again. Won't outperform my Dual G4 though

[pat++]

Panther on my 500mhz iBook is super fast compared to Jaguar. Definitely a good speed boost. My iBook feels like a new machine *Much* more responsive. Everything feels smoother and faster.

[keston]

I agree, Panther on my Pismo 400Mhz w/ 512MB RAM feels alot faster. But to be real, i only have been using the apple supplied apps (mail, safari), and maybe watson. So it hasn't been put to the test of all those other heavier apps and additions i had with my 10.2 install, or drive usage and fragmentation over time to see how it will perform. A fresh install, with the bare minimum on it will always feel faster, regardless of the os version. So maybe the term should be seems more responsive, but not necessarily faster.

[damosan]

Originally posted by pat++:
Panther on my 500mhz iBook is super fast compared to Jaguar.

What about resizing windows...does it suck less or is it about the same?

[hardcat1970]

Originally posted by damosan:
What about resizing windows...does it suck less or is it about the same?

i am afraid that resizing windows will never be fast as os9, but what the heck, osx rocks.

[mikemako]

curious: if panther is installed on a partitian that is only 5GB, will it run slowly? Does it need to be on a 10GB or larger volume?? Thanks

[keston]

My 20GB Powerbook HD is partitioned into 5GB, and 13.5GB. Panther is installed on the 5GB partition. Runs just fine for me.

Originally posted by mikemako:
curious: if panther is installed on a partitian that is only 5GB, will it run slowly? Does it need to be on a 10GB or larger volume?? Thanks

[Rainy Day]

Originally posted by tonywriter:
Jaguar is slow as molasses on my Pismo despite the 1GB RAM. Does anyone have a view about how Panther compares to Jaguar on a 500Mhz machine? Just that I'm reluctant to upgrade if it's any slower.

Drop in a faster HD and you'll see a noticable improvement in performance even in Jaguar. When i put an IBM Travelstar drive into my Wallstreet, it felt like i had doubled the speed of its 266MHz G3. Jaguar's performance is acceptable on this machine.

[Mrjinglesusa]

500 MHz Pismo w/ 640 MB RAM

Panther (7B85 - GM) runs like a champ on this setup. I notice a significant speed increase with all apps I have run. I love it!

[SMacTech]

I concur with the post ^^
My pismo is just a low-end OS X test machine, but I can honestly say Panther makes it a whole new mac in regards to feeling responsive. And it only has 192mb of RAM.

[businezguy]

I *really* hope Panther offers a huge performance boost, as everybody is saying. I'm so looking forward to this update. I will definately be waiting in line at my local Apple Store on 10/24.

[mikemako]

It's not a huge performance boost. It's about the same as the performance improvement between 10.1 & 10.2.

This is with Panther clean installed on the 800MHz iBook w/640MB Memory (journaling disabled), and the 1.42GHz DP w/2GB Memory (journaling enabled).

I must consider, though, that the Powermac was already very responsive with Jaguar, that may be why I don't notice much of a speed increase. However, performance was only "good" on the iBook, though, so I expected a bit more from Panther. iBook has only a small improvment.

[DannyVTim]

Panther is the release where Apple really has worked out the responciveness as well as added speed to the system. specifically, menus and contextual menus are faster.

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by mikemako:
It's not a huge performance boost. It's about the same as the performance improvement between 10.1 & 10.2.

This is with Panther clean installed on the 800MHz iBook w/640MB Memory (journaling disabled), and the 1.42GHz DP w/2GB Memory (journaling enabled).

I must consider, though, that the Powermac was already very responsive with Jaguar, that may be why I don't notice much of a speed increase. However, performance was only "good" on the iBook, though, so I expected a bit more from Panther. iBook has only a small improvment.

My observations have been that it is noticeably faster on my iBook 800 w/640MB, but YMMV.

[ASIMO]

All things being relative, just how slow is molasses?

[iDaver]

Originally posted by ASIMO:
All things being relative, just how slow is molasses?

I only know that it's slower in January.

[ASIMO]

Originally posted by iDaver:
I only know that it's slower in January.

Does not apply to the bottom half of the world.

[BigYellowMonkey]

Does anyone know what exactly this journaling is all about? I've heard something about it resulting in an approximately 10% speed decrease, but it must do something good.

-Biggie!

[msuper69]

Originally posted by BigYellowMonkey:
Does anyone know what exactly this journaling is all about? I've heard something about it resulting in an approximately 10% speed decrease, but it must do something good.

-Biggie!

Read this thread

[mikemako]

OK.. I have no problem admitting when I'm wrong. I just installed Panther on a 3rd computer (so far its been on an 800MHz iBook and a 1.42GHz DP G4). This computer is a 1.2GHz (upgraded w/Gigadesigns card) G4 w/1.2GB Memory. Panther absolutely screams on this computer. I don't understand..

The differences between the computers are:

This one had the whole hard disk initialized before installaion. The other Powermac had only the partitian erased before the installation (there was another partitian w/Jaguar installed). The iBook had the whole hard disk erased before installation.

This computer's hard drive has 8MB Cache and the Powermac's only has 2MB. Not sure 'bout the iBook.

The other computers had some user settings carried over, and this one does not.

I cannot believe such little things could make such a big difference! I look forward to the mass release to see how the installation goes on various computers.

[tonywriter]

Just by way of a follow-up, I followed Rainy Day's advice and put in a faster hard drive (60 GB 7200) and then upgraded to Panther. The difference on my Pismo is astonishing. It truly feels like a new machine. OS 9 speed with OS X functionality...

[fisherKing]

on my pismo400 (768ram, 20Gibm 5400rpm hd), panther is significantly faster than jaguar.

10.2.x always felt sluggish to me (coming from 9.2.2);

10.3, especially finder stuff, reminds me of the os9 days.

PLUS the new things (sidebar, app switcher, expose...etc) are great.

in itunes, i get radio play immediately (where i used to wait a bit);

waking is faster; airport, everything seems to be working well.

apps lauch a little faster, everything feels...sleek, clean.

[stew]

Originally posted by BurpetheadX:
It will be as fast as OS 9.

They said that about 10.2 too.

[Targon]

installed panther on my pismo-it has 512meg and a 900mhz powerlogix bluechip upgrade. Since panther the performance is VERY dramatic MUCH more so then the difference between the 400 and the 900mhz CPU upgrade. This should give and idea of how this machine has responded to 10.3 Im truely amazed and i find this machine such a joy to use now. In pervious OS X versions it was down right annoying as hell.

Apple have redeemed themselves as far as im concerned.

EASILY worth the 129 $

I still want a AL 1.2ghz PB tho, b/c the screen res on the pismo being 1024x768 make EVERYTHING much too BIG..like size 14 system font...that annoys the piss out of me but im pleased to see the new PB's UI looks much smaller and usable....this is probably the only reason why id get a new book to be honest.

Laiterz

[Rainy Day]

Originally posted by tonywriter:
Just by way of a follow-up, I followed Rainy Day's advice and put in a faster hard drive (60 GB 7200) and then upgraded to Panther. The difference on my Pismo is astonishing. It truly feels like a new machine. OS 9 speed with OS X functionality...

Glad to hear you took my advice. It's amazing what a difference a fast HD can make, especially with a disk intensive OS like UNIX, er, MacOS X.

Originally posted by mikemako:
This computer's hard drive has 8MB Cache and the Powermac's only has 2MB. Not sure 'bout the iBook.

...I cannot believe such little things could make such a big difference!

I'll say it again: HD speed is critical to UNIX efficiency because UNIX is constantly opening and closing little files to do this, that or the other thing; it's a very disk intensive OS with tens of thousands of files.

So i have to wonder just how much of the perceived Panther (or Jaguar) "performance tweaks" were really due to people doing clean installs? Now i'm sure Apple did do some performance tweaks, but maybe not as many as we give them credit for. Have you ever noticed that each new release of MacOS X is always: 1) "a lot faster" than the previous, and 2) "almost as fast as OS 9"? Well if Jaguar was almost as fast as OS 9, and Panther is a lot faster than Jaguar, how is it that Panther isn't faster than OS 9? Maybe because, over time, Jaguar disks became fragmented, disk catalogs became inefficient, and Jaguar performance slowly and imperceptibly degraded? I'm sure that doesn't account for all the difference, but i'll bet it accounts for more than just a little. Btw, OS 9 isn't nearly as disk intensive of an OS as MacOS X. Disk fragmentation isn't going to slow OS 9 down as much as it will MacOS X.

Fragmentation will eventually take its toll on Panther too, so keep your disks defragged, and your catalog in good shape (with Disk Warrior).

Just my 2� worth.

[sniffer]

Waste of money in most cases if you ask me. HFS+ doesn't get much fragmentet unless your hardrive is full. Leave 20-15 % free at all times and spend the money on something else.

And yes, Panther have been a pleasant experience on my old iBook. I've maxed the ram and it also really helped a lot. Glad to see my hardware is up to handle OS X so nicely these days since "me = early adopter".

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by Rainy Day:


Fragmentation will eventually take its toll on Panther too, so keep your disks defragged, and your catalog in good shape (with Disk Warrior).

Just my 2� worth.

Panther automatically will defrag files that are less than 20mb when you open them.
No need for diskwarrior, except as a disk recovery or fix utility.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by stew:
They said that about 10.2 too.

and 10.1

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by SMacTech:
Panther automatically will defrag files that are less than 20mb when you open them.
No need for diskwarrior, except as a disk recovery or fix utility.

The machines are already beginning to take over. Watch my words: With the transition to IPv6 we're going to start giving everything from microwaves and refrigerators IPs... the world will be destroyed by an, as of yet, unborn enemy.

Ah!

[fisherKing]

Originally posted by Rainy Day:
So i have to wonder just how much of the perceived Panther (or Jaguar) "performance tweaks" were really due to people doing clean installs? Now i'm sure Apple did do some performance tweaks, but maybe not as many as we give them credit for. Have you ever noticed that each new release of MacOS X is always: 1) "a lot faster" than the previous, and 2) "almost as fast as OS 9"? Well if Jaguar was almost as fast as OS 9, and Panther is a lot faster than Jaguar, how is it that Panther isn't faster than OS 9? Maybe because, over time, Jaguar disks became fragmented, disk catalogs became inefficient, and Jaguar performance slowly and imperceptibly degraded? I'm sure that doesn't account for all the difference, but i'll bet it accounts for more than just a little. Btw, OS 9 isn't nearly as disk intensive of an OS as MacOS X. Disk fragmentation isn't going to slow OS 9 down as much as it will MacOS X.

Fragmentation will eventually take its toll on Panther too, so keep your disks defragged, and your catalog in good shape (with Disk Warrior).

Just my 2� worth.

i had to reinstall 10.2.x about a month before panther came out; did a clean install, left lots of space on my drive.

4 weeks later, i install 10.3 (an archive & install).

on my pismo/400, the speed differences are significant.

a few bugs, but panther rocks!

[Rainy Day]

Originally posted by SMacTech:
Panther automatically will defrag files that are less than 20mb when you open them.
No need for diskwarrior, except as a disk recovery or fix utility.

Just to be clear: DiskWarrior is not a defragger (although Alsoft, DiskWarrior's manufacturer, does offer one).

DiskWarrior will, however, rebuild and optimize the catalog. While DiskWarrior may be used strictly as a disaster recovery tool, running DiskWarrior from time to time as a preventative measure to rebuild and optimize the catalog is, in my opinion, a good idea.