Illustrator CS3 test file and video proof of Lag in Osx86

[kle500]

Hi everybody.

During my experience with my Hack, i have not so good thoughts on my system.

Although i hear so many people having such great experience using Osx86 compared to XP, i couldn't feel the same, and i wanted to show all of you what i mean.

 

I am a graphics designer (in press) and Dvd Authorer, so i heavily use, Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign in the graphics part of my work.

 

From the first time i made my system, i felt it not so responsive as my XP.

 

Oh, i must tell you that my system has 2 HDD's, one with Osx86 (10.4.10) and the other has Xp.

Although the Osx86 has better HDD (WD5000AAKS) and the XP has (Samsung Spinpoint 500g), there is difference between them.

So everything on my machine is the same for both Os's.

 

In the past i felt that the onboard Graphics (GMA950) couldn't cope and that's why i had this lag on my system.

So i picked up a 7600GS, to see the difference, but i didn't.

I have changed so many distro's and versions and always had the same feeling, that the Xp feels snappier.

 

What i am thinking lately, is if real mac's have the same feeling like my Hack, which i can't believe.

So i made a test file in Illustrator and a video, showing exactly what i get from my system.

 

You can freely download it (test) and see if you have the same behavior like i do.

Also in the video, there are notes that tell you exactly what you see (forgive me for the quality)

 

 

Some word on the test illustartor file and how you can repeat what i did.

 

Open Illustrator CS3 and open the file test.ai

 

Now, zoom at 400%, (it's good to have the circle in the middle of the screen) pick the hand tool and place it in the center of the white circle.

Now, having your left button clicked, move your mouse (it actually pans the whole page), left - right - up - down fast.

Do what i do in the video, and tell me if you have the same behavior.

 

In my hack, whatever i do, the hand always moves first and the circle follows later (delay).

On the XP on same machine, there is no delay at all, the hand is almost locked to the circle.

 

Also you can browse to the sample art folder and see for yourself (look at my video).

 

I really like to hear from anyone.

 

Here are 2 places where you can download the video i made.

 

http://www.filefactory.com/file/cb161b/

http://rapidshare.com/files/59257700/test2.wmv

test.rar

[kle500]

Here is another video (high quality), that illustrates my problem.

Can anyone please test and reply, cause i feel i am the only one having this behavior.

 

Regards

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/59474142/video.mov

[kimnicebutdim]

Hi there, I watched your video and downloaded the test file. I have a near identical system to yours (but with E6600 and X1950Pro), running Uphuck 1.3 10.4.9. I repeated all the behaviour shown in your video with pretty much the same response from my system. I don't have CS3 on an XP system to test against so I can't vouch for the responsiveness of Illustrator.

 

I don't spend large amounts of time with Illustrator or Photoshop and I can see why your system response could be annoying if you do, as clearly illustrated by your panning tests. In my experience I have found my Hack to be far more responsive than XP, if "responsive" is used in an overall sense (i.e. all aspects of an OS: network access, managing open applications, stability, loading programs etc.).

 

So you're not on your own in terms of your system response/performance to the tests described above. It would be interesting to hear from owners of real Macs whether they experience the same kind of results.

[Proteo]

I see the same behavior on my rig. However, I couldn't say if it's Adobe's or Apple's fault. Even when Photoshop runs like a champ in my system, I can't say the same for the rest of the suite. Dreamweaver is really buggy and laggy (to the point that I had to dump it, it's just not suitable for intensive use). And I had this experience. Even when in my Hacky the overall performance of the suite isn't certainly the same than its Windows' counterpart, using it with an old iMac G5 (2 Ghz, 1.5 GB of RAM) just "feels" better. My guess is that Adobe simply didn't do their homework properly when porting their code to the new architecture.

[kle500]

Thank you people for preventing me from buying new M/B.

The funny think is that i remember when the CS3 suite came out, the advertising video from adobe, showed illustrator CS3 in iMac and the performance was great.

 

That's why i really like someone with a real Mac and a hack (or only a mac) to make that test and let us all know.

Cause in a real life's work, this behavior equals less productivity.

 

Several months ago a had made another test in photoshop CS3, showing something similar.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...c=46961&hl=

 

Take a look at it too.

 

Come on people, let's clear this out and see if Hack's have the same behavior as real Mac's

 

P.S. My M/B doesn't allow me to use SATA as AHCI.

Does this have an impact of the ovelall performance?

[BJMoose]

Hi, now I understand what you are talking about. I tried this test on both my Hack and my Mac Pro. There is what I would describe as 'minor lag' on both (and I can't tell the difference between the two), but to be honest, it does not appear to be quite as much as shown in your .mov video. That could be due to the video itself, the difference in our processors or the difference in our gfx cards. I doubt if a new motherboard, without any other upgrades, is going to make a visible difference.

[kle500]

@BJMoose

I really appreciate your reply my friend, as you are among the people who have both, MacPro and Hack.

 

Now, on to reality, assuming that on MacPro the behavior is quite the same, how and why Adobe made that mistake?

I grow up using Photoshop and Illustrator on Mac's and always felt better on Mac's.

 

So, why on the demo from adobe, they used the iMac as a representative?

My question maybe is irrelevant with the true behavior and i reply to my own question, saying that an iMac is more fancy to show off, and undoubtedly IntelMac's needed the CS3 update more than Win PC's.

 

Now, maybe there is also a little advantage from the 975 chipset, compared to 945.

Also, it's true, the graphics could make quite some difference, but i get almost the same behavior with GMA950 too.

As for the hard drives, i have bad results (overall Os feeling) from the "SAMSUNG HD501LJ 500GB", compared with the "WD5000AAKS 500GB".

 

I have tried Raptors too, and there is also quite a difference (better off course).

 

I don't think memory speed is different from mine, although i have bought Kingston Value Ram's "PC5300 667MHZ VALUE RAM"

Anyone believe there will be any difference if using higher quality or speed? For example 800MHZ modules.

 

As for the GFX Card, i maybe going to buy some 7950 one (now the prices for used are cheap), or should i get a 1950XT ?

 

That's all i had to say, and again thank's for your precious help.

 

Any more comments on this, are welcome.

 

Regards

Kle500

[BJMoose]

I know XBench isn't a reliable benchmark, but when comparing apples to apples (no pun intended) it might be. I have several of the Samsung 500gb hotpoint drives. They are extremely dependable, very quiet, but also very slow. They are fine for capturing to and editing and rendering. But as a system drive they really lag behind. I have a 10000rpm raptor (very loud) and a 7200rpm Maxtor (not so loud) that literally triple some of the results of the Samsungs in several of the disk scores in XBench.

[royco]

KLE500,

 

Sometimes I also doubt the Hackintosh when compared to the real mac. My friends mac with GMA950 seems smoother than my hack with 7900GS (altho his geekbench scores were way below mine). I also noticed that JAS 10.4.8 installs seems to be closer to the real macs smoothness compared to the newer releases. I tried Illustrator CS3 and did the same in the video and I do get some sort of delay but now like yours. If its any help, I moved to the NVinject drivers from Titan and Natit. It seems to work better. Read the install instructions well in case you wanna try that route, I got kernel panics the first time.

[kle500]

They are extremely dependable, very quiet, but also very slow. They are fine for capturing to and editing and rendering. But as a system drive they really lag behind. I have a 10000rpm raptor.

I couldn't agree more.

At first, when i installed Osx68 on my Samsung, i couldn't believe the lag the have.

 

 

KLE500,

 

Sometimes I also doubt the Hackintosh when compared to the real mac. My friends mac with GMA950 seems smoother than my hack with 7900GS (altho his geekbench scores were way below mine). I also noticed that JAS 10.4.8 installs seems to be closer to the real macs smoothness compared to the newer releases. I tried Illustrator CS3 and did the same in the video and I do get some sort of delay but now like yours. If its any help, I moved to the NVinject drivers from Titan and Natit. It seems to work better. Read the install instructions well in case you wanna try that route, I got kernel panics the first time.

The difference you get from my delay, it may be because of the resolution difference.

I am at 1920X1200, and if i lower the resolution, using my CRT, the delay is smaller.

As for NVinject, i am not quite sure what to delete in order for it to work.

 

It would be very very interesting to hear from more people on this.

 

Regards

[royco]

I used this link as guide.

 

http://forum.osx86scene.com/viewtopic.php?...0789958fe9deeb1

 

I basically deleted Titan.kext and Natit.kext, copied the NVinject.kext and typed in the required permission changes, they tell you to use the script to make the chmods but it kept crashing my mac so I copied the script and did it manually in terminal.

 

You might want to try it on a separate install, I have a test hard drive where I do all changes before doing it on my main hard drive.

[royco]

KLE500,

 

I made another install, using the same hardware but this time using JAS 10.4.8 PFF1 PFF2 and upgraded to 10.4.10 via kalyway update. Used NVinject and the UI seems smoother than my 10.4.10 XxX DVD install. I again tried your Illustrator test and there was very very little to no lag at all. If you are still getting that lag maybe there is something wrong with your board or something else. Try setting your Bios to its default just to make sure you are starting from fresh. Im very happy with my current install.