I'm considering upgrading my 2006 Mac Pro (2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon with 11 Gigs of RAM) to Lion, but I'm afraid of turning my Mac into a sluggish beast. Any input on how well Lion performs on a Mac of this vintage?
3GHz Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 12GB RAM
If you make a bootable clone of your Snow Leopard system disk drive prior to the upgrade with either CCC or SuperDuper, you can then install Lion and test it. If Lion turns your Mac Pro into a sluggish beast all you ha e to do is clone back to get back to Snow Leopard.
Allan
That is almost the same set up I have on my MacPro [2 x 3 GHz with 10 GB of RAM] and Lion runs fine. However I have found that Lion is a nightmare for comaptibily with my workflow. I would highly recomend that you do not put Lion on at this point in time. However I can say that it does run fine, but that might be down to the fact that I can not use it for much.
Best of luck.
-Bryce
Thanks for the suggestion, Allan. Sounds like a safe way to try it out.
Bryce, are you referring to Adobe products? As a web designer, I rely on Adobe Creative Suite and the reports I've read are that Lion and CS5 don't get along, and CS5.5 only partially get along. Frustrating, to say the least.
Your machine is too powerful to be afraid of Lion. do it.
I have found that Lion is a nightmare for comaptibily with my workflow.
That's an awfully broad brush to tar Lion with, Bryce.
At least you state that it's a nightmare for YOU, but you don't clarify what your issues are, what applications you use, what your machine's configuration is or, in fact, anything at all. So there's no way for anyone to know whether your issues are in any way relevant to what other people may experience. For all we know you're trying to run some antiquted piece of software designed for Mac OS 9.x. I doubt you are, but for all the details in your post you might as well be.
From my own experiences, although I don't have that specific model to test, I find that Lion's performance is at least on par with Snow Leopard - significantly better in some cases. There are some UI changes that take a little getting used to, and your mileage will vary depending on how quickly you can identify those changes that matter to you.
The overarching element, though, is memory. Lion like memory more than previous versions did. It's not that you absolutely need more, but you'll find things run so much better if you have more memory available. Memory is also a cheap upgrade nowadays, regardless of whether you take the plunge to Lion or not.
Yes trying it in your environment would be a good test to see if Lion meets your needs.
Also yes. My issues are with CS4 [I know it is not the newest version, but it is not that old either.] and some of my 3rd party plug ins [again I know that is is yet one more variable that could cause issue]. But the real problem is with Versions. I do a lot of document editing, and in that I like making versions of my own, and with Versions in Lion now it has made that quite different. While I must disclose it is still possible. Just not having the save as command can be a bit frustrating at times.
In addition to that the school district I work for is having issues integrating with Lion now. It turns out that the changes that were made to the system as intuitive as they can be; have actualy confused some of our older staff members. Now I know they must get with the times in some situations. While we could have kept them on Snow Leopard, moving to Lion was had GREAT [it is not that I hate or want to "tar" Lion] benifits with profile manager and the iPad MDM!
Raymond for you Lion might work great. I would encourage you highly to try it and see for yourself!
Cheers
-Bryce
Camelot.
I am sorry I did not provide that information. I was in between meetings, and I wanted to answer this question quickly. If the information I have provided to Raymond is not proficient enough please do let me know. Sharing information can always help problems like this.
Next time I post I will ensure I have ample time to give full details.
If you have any questions just ask.
Cheers.
-Bryce
I have a 2006 Mac Pro and Lion runs great on it, and in some ways seems zippier. But I have been running it on a spare test hard drive in my Mac Pro, keeping real production work on my rock solid Snow Leopard installation until I really need Lion for something. Originally this was due to Lion compatibility problems, but I think most of them are resolved now. I just haven't put in the time to find out if the whole workflow is safe on Lion yet, at every point. I'm still reading about people with Time Machine glitches for example.
But the one thing I've learned the most is that I haven't needed Lion for anything yet.
How Well Does Lion Perform on a 2006 Mac Pro?
