Will upgrading to Snow Leopard do anything for my aging MacBookPro?

As the title suggest, I have an aging MacBookPro (5-6 yrs old) that I am running Aperture 3 on, and needless to say, it is painfully slow to do any editing on. I don't have all the technical specs on it currently, but am wondering if upgrading my OS to Snow Leopard will give any type of (even slight) performance boost?

I'd love to be able to just upgrade to a new MBP, but I'm afraid that's not in the budget in the near future, so I'm trying to limp along for a bit longer.

Any advice is appreciated!

I didn't notice much difference going to Snow Leopard from my 2008 MBP, however you may want to consider downloading monolingual to free up space on your HD and strip old code out of applications (Pre-intel etc) all little things.

Hope this helps a little!

changing your hard this to a solid state disk helps too.

Good tips! Monolingual looks interesting and I had never even considered that, so I will take a look. SSD is probably not in the cards as I just replaced my hard drive a couple months ago.

I'll probably upgrade to Snow Leopard regardless as its cheap, and a good time to back things ups and do a fresh install.

Any other advice...keep it coming!

No, SL will not do anything for performance.

I would recommend getting a newer used Macbook Pro. I got a 2 year old MBP for $480 or so. I downloaded the Aperture 3 trial on it and loved the experience will be gettting the hard copy this Sunday. Like you, I had a 6 year old MBP. I tried installing Aperture 3 on it, and the Mac version I had simply was not compatible with Aperture 3. Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

kyle_4375 wrote in post #11639814
As the title suggest, I have an aging MacBookPro (5-6 yrs old) that I am running Aperture 3 on, and needless to say, it is painfully slow to do any editing on.

It's slow because of your gpu. That's something you can't replace on a laptop.

Tony-S wrote in post #11647445
It's slow because of your gpu. That's something you can't replace on a laptop.

I don't get this. Photo editing has basically nothing to do with the GPU.

Sp1207 wrote in post #11647454
I don't get this. Photo editing has basically nothing to do with the GPU.

Aperture, Pixelmator, OS X and other software now take advantage to the GPU/VRAM in Snow Leopard. AKA OpenCL Adobe products also leverage the GPU, just not so heavily. Adobe will be leveraging the GPU and multi-core CPU's more in the future (which is long overdue IMO).

kyle_4375 wrote in post #11640621
Good tips! Monolingual looks interesting and I had never even considered that, so I will take a look. SSD is probably not in the cards as I just replaced my hard drive a couple months ago.

I'll probably upgrade to Snow Leopard regardless as its cheap, and a good time to back things ups and do a fresh install.

Any other advice...keep it coming!

There are more benefits than just speed in SL, though I think you'll see slight improvements in bootup, shutdown and OS actions (Finder particularly). It will not make other software more responsive - only hardware upgrades will help you there. SL is also slimmed down, both in code and in HDD requirements. You'll also get better 64bit support from the OS (kernel). SL is not a new OS, but a refined and streamlined version of Leopard.

CPU, RAM, HDD and GPU are the most important things to consider when you want more speed. You cannot upgrade the CPU or GPU - you said you already bought a new HDD, so that leaves RAM. Max it out with the fastest RAM you can afford. Going from 2 to 4+ is a game changer for anyone that multitasks or edits photos. You'll easily see a 10-15% speed improvement due to the OS not having to always go back to virtual memory for data. Personally, I would consider popping Seagate's new hybrid HDD into that computer and using the one you got as an external Time Machine or photo drive (with FW enclosure). A fresh install will help, but OS X is already extremely well optimized, so even that won't get you much.

As one poster already mentioned, maybe it's time to upgrade. Perhaps, instead of sinking more money into this computer, you start saving up for a newer machine. You can even get a few hundred bucks for that one on eBay. Mac's retain a lot of their value for a lot longer than PC's. You'd be surprised how many people are looking for parts for their own little computers out there.

Tony-S wrote in post #11647445
It's slow because of your gpu. That's something you can't replace on a laptop.

The fact that it will be running an early core 2 duo and have only 1-2GB ram won't be a factor either?


Any 5-6 year old laptop is now 4-5 generations out of date and is going to struggle with pictures from current and even last generation cameras.

Sadly, because of the way laptops are engineered, there is very little you can do to upgrade them. Your limited to increasing the ram and replacing the HDD, neither of which will make a considerable difference if the rest of the unit is also badly out dated.

Sp1207 wrote in post #11647454
I don't get this. Photo editing has basically nothing to do with the GPU.

In this case, it does.

Moppie wrote in post #11647569
The fact that it will be running an early core 2 duo and have only 1-2GB ram won't be a factor either?

I'm sure there's a hit, but my cpu percentages only ramp up in Aperture 3 during file exports (40-55% or so). There are blips during some of the manipulations, but they rarely exceed 5%. My gpu, on the other hand will hit 256 mb of vRAM use and 60% (112 core 9800GTX+) with my 5Dii files. When I edit my 6x7cm scans (2400 dpi) those really put pressure on the vRAM and gpu.

Tony-S wrote in post #11647679
In this case, it does.

I'm sure there's a hit, but my cpu percentages only ramp up in Aperture 3 during file exports (40-55% or so). There are blips during some of the manipulations, but they rarely exceed 5%. My gpu, on the other hand will hit 256 mb of vRAM use and 60% (112 core 9800GTX+) with my 5Dii files. When I edit my 6x7cm scans (2400 dpi) those really put pressure on the vRAM and gpu.

From what I've read the GPU only helps in previews/rendering jpeg work images as you work on the image and pan/zoom around. I don't know if it's an OSX only thing but I can do that smoothly on a Phenom X6 and integrated graphics with ~1% GPU usage and 3% CPU usage.

In my opinion upgrade to a Sandy Bridge based system with an SSD and fly.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I def want to upgrade in the coming year. Would love to know where SkyBaby got a 2 yr old MBP for <$500!!???