Level 1

0 points

Snow Leopard performance slow...

Hi all...

I have a MacBook Pro and installed Snow Leopard over Leopard just yesterday. While the install ran fine and I have had no major issues, I have noticed a substantial slowing of my computer's performance. It's as if the processor is busy or memory is full. Everything happens as it should, but just a lot slower than before. For example, I have expose set to occur when I move the mouse to the upper-left corner of the screen. Before, expose occurred immediately. Now, it will occur after a 0.5-2.0 second lag. Many other apps are slower, such as Firefox, MS Excel, and MS Entourage. Adium also took about 2-3 times as long to launch, though I run it continuously and have had no further problems. In general, I get the pinwheel a lot more, as well as the ticking watch.

I was under the impression that Snow Leopard would improve performance, not slow it. Has anyone else had these issues as well? If so, did you find any way to resolve it?

- Jason

Owner of MacBook Pro, 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3 GB RAM. I have other macs but I'm going to wait to upgrade the OS to Snow Leopard.

MacBook Pro 17", 2.33 GHz, Intel, Mac OS X (10.6), 3 MB RAM

Posted on Aug 30, 2009 6:47 PM

113 replies

Sep 8, 2009 10:16 AM in response to Jensen Gelfond

I tired repairing the disk permissions, but that didn't really fix the problem. I wish I could pin it to one program or one task, but it seems like there's actually an all around problem with the OS.

Sep 8, 2009 11:08 AM in response to Thinkbiz

Alrighty, It feels like I'm having a big slow down too. I didn't do benchmarks or anything before I installed SL... So I guess I don't have hard numbers. I'm going to try reinstalling snow leopard and see if that does anything.
Maybe apple will fix this in a subsequent update?

Sep 8, 2009 11:31 AM in response to JasonWDC

I just read what you all said and I have to say that since I have updated to Snow Leopard, the system seems to be slower than Leopard.
Expose is having some lag and overall, the experience of Snow Leopard is pretty much the contrary of what Apple has advertised with this SL.

I'm pretty sure there are still some optimisations to be done and lots of bugs to be corrected hopefully soon…

Sep 8, 2009 5:09 PM in response to Shi'an

Excellent! I removed the offending file on my MacBook Pro and rebooted. I'm now at super Snow Leopard speed. This suggestions should be posted high and an alert sent out. I have assisted four colleagues who had the same problem with painfully sluggish and slow performance. Every aspect was affected: QT took ten minutes to open and load a 50 mb file. Mail took 15 minutes to open. Even opening a folder took up to a minute. The color wheel got a work-out until this file was trashed. Thanks for the powerful -- and I do mean powerful -- advice.

P.S. I don't think the computer model makes much difference; mine is different from the Core2 Duo iMac, my colleagues all have different machines. So this is pervasive advice!

Sep 8, 2009 5:11 PM in response to Guttiwuts

Delete: System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist to correct the affects of Slow Leopard.

Jalpuna

Level 1

55 points

Sep 8, 2009 9:38 PM in response to Carolyn Samit

Oh geez. The problem isn't a lack of HD space. I've got 56 gigs open on my 120 gig drive and my Mac is crawling since I upgraded to SL.

Scratch that. I have 63 gigs open! That's more than half of the drive.

Sep 9, 2009 8:52 AM in response to Guttiwuts

Doesn't deleting the coreaudio file you suggest turn off the ability of the system to make system sounds? Certainly my performance is not so poor that I want to start lopping off parts of the system. Correct me if I'm wrong. .

Sep 16, 2009 10:50 AM in response to JasonWDC

I have been having similar issues. My MBP has been acting extremely sluggish with tasks that used to fly in Leopard, since I "upgraded" to SL.

I checked out my coreaudio, and nothing is really draining my system of resources. At the very least, nothing has changed in my habits and/or programs than I was running before.

One thing that has helped me a bit so far is forcing SL to boot in 64-bit mode. My MBP is actually running a bit cooler for some reason and is more responsive, but still not 100%. But it has helped a great deal. You can perform this by restarting and holding the 6 and 4 keys down (ironically).

One issue this may cause though, would be drivers for things like printers. So, depending on your setup, this could cause just as many issues as it fixes. Just something to think on.

Regards,
Dave

Jalpuna

Level 1

55 points

Sep 16, 2009 11:01 AM in response to DaveInDetail

I have a theory that Rosetta is the cause of SL slowdowns. I seem to have these issues after launching Photoshop Elements 3.

Sep 16, 2009 11:21 AM in response to JasonWDC

I think I found my bottleneck: RAM. For me, Snow Leopard was simply consuming more RAM. I didn't expect this because it was touted as less intensive than 10.5, but really what was touted was that it took less hard drive space, not less RAM. I had 2 GB of RAM in my Macbook black 2.2GHZ Core 2 Duo. Upgrading to 4GB drastically enhanced performance, and now things are zippy. I was able to initially diagnose this through Activity Monitor, as I saw that upon upgrading I had even less "free" and "inactive" memory than ever.

So, Snow Leopard is just like most major OS upgrades in that it requires more resources to run, at least in terms of RAM. Don't listen to Apple's hype. But for me, the ending is happy, as upgrading to 4GB was pretty cheap ($80 from the reliable Other World Computing), and now I'm zipping along happily with 15-20 apps open in my dock at any given moment.

ebayzing

Level 1

0 points

Sep 18, 2009 5:14 PM in response to Doctor_X

Wow! I was skeptical at first, but after deleting that file. No more lag. Everything is fast again. Thanks! Do I need that file at all for any programs?

Sep 18, 2009 7:03 PM in response to ebayzing

hi:
i am having the same problem. before and after i upgraded to sl i repaired permissions, i ran disk warrior before upgrade and made a clone.
right now i am working from the clone. that is how bad it has become. i don't seen to have the file that seems to be causing so much trouble, but safari seems to be particularly slow. i had a few "safari unexpectedly quit" messages.
i read that maybe it was a bad install so i tried re installing 10.6 and then downloading 10.6.1 directly from the apple website. the beech ball still rules. slower than slow leopard.
on the plus side: i have no problem printing.

Sep 18, 2009 7:56 PM in response to JasonWDC

I also have slow video it seems to stop after 3 -4 seconds after every video and continues throug out video, especially on YOU TUBE.
Any ideas anyone??
thxs.
matt

Sep 21, 2009 5:50 PM in response to JasonWDC

I face slow performance almost all the time since the install and sometimes the iMac just freezes.
Old Leopard was fine, really fine.
I hope not, but snow leopard seems to be kind of Apple's Vista.
Is it possible a downgrade without reformat?

Sep 22, 2009 5:28 PM in response to Guttiwuts

My friend and I ordered our MBP's at the same time, same specs, same amount of RAM and pretty much the same software, at least initially. He is having severe sluggishness issues in 10.6.1. I am not. We deleted the audio pref file as suggested but it didn't change anything. Will do a wipe and clean install tomorrow to see if that changes anything.

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Snow Leopard performance slow...