Performance Test – Windows 7 vs Snow Leopard – And The Winner Is?
Over at CNET, writer Dong Ngo has an interesting article in which he has made a comparison of Microsoft’s Windows 7 and Apple’s Snow Leopard. The writer states he used the same computer to run both operating systems individually, using the new Bootcamp version 3.0 which he states made Windows run even better on a Mac. He also went on the explain exactly what Bootcamp does, which I personally found interesting, since I know so little about Macs. He states the following:
Just to clarify, Boot Camp is not a virtual environment but simply a bundle of native Windows drivers–software that makes the OS work properly with hardware components. These drivers include chipset, video, networking, and so on. As a matter of fact, you can get most of these drivers from the components’ manufacturers (or via Windows update). However, Boot Camp also contains drivers for Apple’s proprietary hardware including the iSight Webcam, keyboard backlight, and multitouch mouse pad, and therefore it’s best to get this bundle instead of looking for drivers individually.
For the sake of transparency (I know a lot of you feel passionately about one operating system or the other), I will disclose how I conducted my testing so you can duplicate it if you want. There’s no rocket science involved here; all you need is a good stopwatch, a MacBook Pro, and a lot of time.
About the test system:
First off, the test machine is a 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro with a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT video card. This is the 2008 model of the computer that comes with a removable battery and doesn’t have the SD card slot. (This is not the latest 2009 model that comes with a nonremovable battery, which packs a lot more juice.)
He then used two identical hard disks, which he was able to swap out to do the testing. He basically used a stop watch to time the experiment and came up with some not so startling results. I believe that most of us are familiar with the assets and limitations of both operating systems and the tests tend to prove what we already know.
Here are some of the results condensed. You can read the entire article and see the charts at the link below.
Snow Leopard consistently beats Windows 7 in many general performance areas.
Windows 7 noticeably outdoes Snow Leopard in the 3D image rendering benchmark.
Windows 7 plays 3D games better than Snow Leopard.
Snow Leopard lasted significantly longer than Windows 7 on a single charge.
So there you have it. This experiment seems to me to be straightforward. What I would like to see is this same experiment done using Windows Vista. 
Comments welcome.
12 Comments
Denny
October 18th, 2009
at 6:01pm
..doesn’t sound like much to-me
If yur playin games you have a game ‘Puter.
Julian Pereira
October 18th, 2009
at 9:16pm
In general performance areas, Mac OS X will always beat Windows. However whenever it comes to gaming, the developer’s choice is always Windows and will find ways to take the max out of the directX software.
Mac OS X doesn’t have its own version of DirectX. I’m no programmer, so I don’t know it needs one in the first place. But seeing as how gaming is developed primarily for Windows, I see the reason developers are able to take the max performance.
If its one thing I know, don’t blame the OS primarily for failures. Blame the programmers who design the apps.
Aryeh Goretsky
October 18th, 2009
at 9:45pm
Hello,
Just to verify, you would want to repeat the test using Microsoft Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5, correct?
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Ron Schenone
October 19th, 2009
at 6:14am
Hi Aryeh,
Thanks for the correction. It would be interesting though I would suspect the results may be similar.
All the best, Ron
Jason Anderson
October 19th, 2009
at 8:35am
OS X favors OpenGL for gaming and pretty much everything in the OS that draws to the screen.
Levi
October 19th, 2009
at 10:22am
Yeah while this is all true it’s also somewhat misleading. “Beat” sounds like it did it better. But most of the tests demonstrated that there was only a few seconds difference in most areas. And considering that both systems have different concerns and ways of addressing the systems it’s not an accurate test of anything.
At most this test showed that Mac SL and Windows 7 were pretty on par as far as necessary speed and requirements.
Matt
October 19th, 2009
at 7:38pm
I think you should conduct some speed tests without Apple programs. It’s easy to say it doesn’t make a difference but why would you design a test that leaves it open for interpretation? Try the same tests with some Adobe products and perhaps something involving Windows 7 not run on a Macbook but with similar specs.
Patrick OConnell
October 19th, 2009
at 8:51pm
A serious bug is keeping many Mac people from changing from Leopard to Snow Leopard, including my wife.
I’m a Vista person, but probably won’t change to Windows 7 until people have worked with it for awhile to fix the worst of the bugs (which always appear in new versions).
Speed isn’t near as important as software correctness. We’ll wait.
Justin G.
October 21st, 2009
at 6:59pm
Most users will know about increased performance in a few general areas. The lack of a driver/registry boot method already makes a considerable difference here and most power users accept this with a grain of salt because the differences would be marginal and easily overshadowed by the basic capabilities of the platform. For me the freedom of improvement is more than enough because a PC user can always compensate performance with better custom parts that will in most cases work splendidly.
In short, why be grounded. If I can build or buy the equivalent system with Windows and save a few hundred dollars in the process, whats to stop me from buying upgraded hardware with the money saved, completely overshadowing the equivalent Mac at the same price to the point that Windows’ slightly less officiant API’s no longer exist as an issue.
GoingPostal
November 1st, 2009
at 2:51pm
I have snow leopard and just installed windows 7. So far, both perform about the same. Snow Leopard started up much faster. I’m sure once service pack 1 comes out for windows 7 it’s performance will suffer. I didn’t install virus software on my PC so it think the test was fair. Most people will have virus software and that may hog up system resources. I still love the user experience with my mac. I don’t notice much change in user experience between vista and windows 7.
Ron Schenone
November 1st, 2009
at 2:56pm
Thanks GP for sharing your experience with us. It is appreciated.
Regards, Ron
glasseffects
November 5th, 2009
at 11:00am
Vista is over (in fact it was when it rolled out). Why? I don’t understand someone would go as far a wasting precious moments of life with Vista.
Windows 7 which some may regard as an upgrade to Vista (like Snow to Leopard), it simply is a matter of ease and how a user is accustomed to a system. System speed is not the only benchmark (and please.. multimedia/games. This is not what we call benchmark. What about some serious benchmark software?) is not the deciding factor. A mac would not support the code written for Tiger, but windows 7 still has support for 16 bit dos applications. No I’m not hailing a Mac-Win war, but such crude benchmarking standards simply do not yield anything substantial. Why at all Cnet allowed that article to be published on their site, since it sounds more of a preference game by the author than a ‘benchmark’ if that’s what you wish to call it.