0

My MacBook Pro:
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53 GHz, Mid 2009)
Memory: 8 GB
Currently run Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and also in a partition I have 10.8.x installed.
The most of my work is being done in 10.6.8, which I feel, it performs faster overall.
I feel 10.8 to be a bit heavier in a bunch of operations..., so I haven't make the full switch to it.
But time has come and I started considering to fully migrate my working environment to a newer OS X version. The question is, will Mavericks operate faster than Mountain Lion on my MacBook ? Will my hardware be able to run 10.9 efficiently ?

Improve this question
1
  • Mavericks' memory management trumps all previous OS X versions, period.
    – Alexander
    Commented Apr 25, 2014 at 21:34

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

The question is, will Mavericks operate faster than Mountain Lion on my MacBook ? Will my hardware be able to run 10.9 efficiently ?

Yes. Mavericks has the same system requirements as Mountain Lion, but offers huge gains in energy efficiency, memory management, graphics performance, etc. And it's free!

If you're already in the process of moving over to Mountain Lion, I can't think of any reason not to jump directly to Mavericks instead.

Improve this answer
0

I am coming back to post my personal experiences, after having upgrade a bunch of macs (many 2008-2011 models) to mavericks and Yosemite.

It's true that both Mavericks and Yosemite are performing way better than the previous lions OS's.

Although I have heard people complain that after upgrading their mac became slow, I believe that this is not because the OS is not working well, but mostly on factors like lack of adequate Ram, Hard Disk slow performance or very heavy system caused by too many applications, files etc.

A few notes/tips:

1. Clean Install against Upgrade over old system.

In all the upgrades I did, I got better results when I installed Yosemite or Mavericks as a clean install on the hard disk. Whenever I was just upgrading over the previous OS, the installation itself was taking longer time to complete. Also the computer wasn't performing that fast with the whole old system/configuration been upgraded.
Generally I saw a lot better results when I was formatting the hard disk, re-installing only the applications needed, and only restored personal files/settings of the user - not the complete user library.

2. Ram

Also, in most cases 4GB of Ram seems to be sufficient, but wherever there is more, the computer can perform better with more apps/processes run at the same time.

I have noticed also that many people ignore the fact that their computer has specific memory installed and that when the computer uses it at full, then every process becomes slower. I have connect with teamviewer to so many macs that their owners said that they are slow and I was always seeing that they had many open apps, browsers with too many tabs etc and just a few MB of available ram in their system.

Although Yosemite and Mavericks are doing very good job in managing RAM and CPU, speed performance issues can still arise if what we are trying to do is more than what the computer is capable to offer. So using it wisely is important.

There are some apps in Appstore, that can automatically clear and free memory when there is none left available, so this may come in handy for many.

SSD

Last but not least, the BIGGEST PERFORMANCE GAME-CHANGER is to use a SSD drive. An SSD drive will boost your macs speed performance up to 10-15 times. I can say that my macbook pro, is running faster than ever before.

MacBook Pro 15-inch, 2.53 GHz, Mid 2009. Memory: 8 GB 500GB SSD Yosemite

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .