How much faster is MacOS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" in "real-world" tests compared to MacOS X 10.5 "Leopard"?

Apple advertises some modest speed "refinements" provided by MacOS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" -- 1.8 and 1.4 times faster refreshing PDF and JPG icons, up to 80% faster Time Machine backups, twice as fast and 1.8 times faster waking up and shutting down, for example -- but the company does not provide "real-world" performance details for additional operating system tasks or third-party applications.

However, a variety of websites have churned out benchmarks and performed "real-world" tests for MacOS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" compared to its predecessor.

For those interested in "raw" benchmarks, rather than real-world application tests, Primate Labs ran its own Geekbench benchmarking tool on a MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.4 15" (Unibody) with 2 GB of RAM and found:

While the performance improvement is small, it is there -- Geekbench runs between 2% and 3% faster under Snow Leopard than under Leopard. While this might not seem impressive at first keep in mind that Geekbench was slower under Leopard than Tiger. Having a new operating system improve performance, even if it's a small improvement, is still something to get excited about.

Although there may be some issues with methodology (the publication divided each Mac's hard drive into two partitions -- unlikely to be equal in speed -- running "Leopard" on one partition and "Snow Leopard" on the other), the industry-standard MacWorld tested an iMac "Core 2 Duo" 2.66 20" (Early 2009) with 2 GB of RAM, a custom-configured Mac Pro "Quad Core" 3.0 from 2007 with 4 GB of RAM and a MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.8 15" (SD) with 4 GB of RAM using their Speedmark 5 benchmark suite and reported:

Of the 16 tests we ran, eight were indeed faster under Snow Leopard compared to Leopard. . . Of the other eight tests that we ran, two showed virtually no performance difference between the two operating systems, and two tests actually ran faster under Leopard.

We saw very little change in the time it took to start up our Mac Pro and MacBook Pro using either OS when connected to our local wired network. The iMac was a little faster starting up in Snow Leopard, but only by a couple of seconds. Similarly, our Photoshop test suite times were unchanged on our iMac and Mac Pro, while the MacBook Pro finished just 2 seconds faster when running Snow Leopard.

The two tests that ran consistently faster under Leopard were our Finder duplication of a 1 GB file [this could be related to the hard drive testing configuration], which took 2 to 3 seconds longer when running Snow Leopard, and a wake from sleep and connect to the network test that took 1 to 3 seconds longer to finish on Snow Leopard.

Interestingly, C|Net found "Snow Leopard" to be slower overall than "Leopard" on a MacBook Pro "Core Duo" 2.0 15" with 2 GB of RAM and a MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.53 15" (Unibody) with 4 GB of RAM, noting:

In our anecdotal tests of performance within the Snow Leopard user interface (UI), the operating system seems faster and more responsive than with Leopard. Finder, Stacks, Expose, launching apps, and other everyday processes feel snappy. We didn't, however, notice any improvement in application performance.

Overall, we saw only a 2.5 percent slowdown in application performance from Leopard to Snow Leopard on our more processor-intensive performance tests, including our multimedia multitasking test, in which we measure the time for QuickTime to finish converting a short movie while iTunes is performing its own conversion of MP3 into AAC format in the background simultaneously. As this falls within our typical margin of error (5 percent), we saw no significant difference with application performance when moving from Leopard to Snow Leopard.

In a series of third-party application tests -- covering Photoshop CS4, Lightroom, Aperture, and more -- MacPerformanceGuide concluded:

Snow Leopard booted into the 32-bit kernel is always faster than Leopard, with fair to substantial gains, depending on the application.

But Snow Leopard booted into the 64-bit kernel shows a consistent performance advantage over Leopard, and even more advantage over 32-bit Snow Leopard as well. Performance gains of up to 30% were observed, making Snow Leopard by far the best value for the money in a long, long time.

Ultimately, MacOS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" is a bit slower in some tasks, a bit faster in others, and significantly faster in a few, balancing out for a modest performance improvement overall for most users. However, as more developers begin to take advantage of 64-bit computing, OpenCL, and Grand Central Dispatch, performance will continue to increase. For most users, and particularly the performance-minded -- assuming all needed software and hardware is compatible -- the speed boost is well worth the US$29 upgrade price alone.

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