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Mac OS X 10.6.8 benchmark reveals graphic speed improvement

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Mac OS X 10.6.8 benchmark reveals graphic speed improvement

macsonly1068speedtests.jpg

Sure, the (hopefully) last version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was released yesterday. Yes, it addressed a laundry list of improvements to both networking and Mac OS X Lion readiness. But did you know that installing Mac OS X 10.6.8 might also improve graphic performance on your Mac?

Bill Fox over at MacsOnly.com ran benchmarks on both a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. What he found was that the "newer graphics drivers in 10.6.8 not only eliminated any decline in speed from 10.6.5 through 10.6.7 but showed significantly improved OpenGL performance in Xbench and the game Halo for the ATI Radeon HD 5870 card" in the Mac Pro. His benchmarks also showed improved performance, although not as dramatic, with the Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics processor in the MacBook Pro.

We'd love to hear from any iMac, MacBook, MacBook Air, or Mac mini owners who are able to run the same benchmarks on their favorite computers before and after 10.6.8. Leave your results in the comments for other TUAW readers to see.

Mac OS X 10.6.8 benchmark reveals graphic speed improvement originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.




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I can confirm this. My OpenGL benchmark using XBench a couple months ago was 284.43. Today, since updating to 10.6.8, it's 314.31. I also tried running Starcraft II using "Ultra" settings. I haven't played it in some time but when I last did, using my native screen rez, "High" was the best it could handle smoothly. It was only the first mission, but it played flawlessly this time around with "Ultra". I wonder how the later missions will go now.
 

bobtomay

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Yep, same here. And this is on my '06 ATI X1600. Have a 10% speed bump in the OpenGL test from 205 to 226. I've never hit 210 on that test during the entire life of the machine before.

To those wondering why they should install this update, here's at least one very good reason.
 
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This updated is teh boringz!@!@!!!!!
 

bobtomay

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Any real FPS numbers? Also is the differences AMD only?
 

bobtomay

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Any real FPS numbers? Also is the differences AMD only?

If you read the original piece above and look at the chart, it has the nVidia 320M - also showing a 10% speed bump in OpenGL.
 
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Well I was playing the second level in SC2 and towards the end I got a pop-up notice to drop my settings down. The cut scenes were rendering a little choppy, so I guess the boost isn't quite good enough. Ah well.
 
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I love any kind of update that gives you a speed boost! Kudos to Apple!
 

robduckyworth


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Oh man, this has screwed up our bench threads.
 

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