Mac OS X 10.8 vs. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Performance

The DES performance with John The Ripper was the same between the four tested operating systems.

For the MD5 and Blowfish workloads with John The Ripper, Ubuntu on the mid-2011 Mac Mini was faster.

Apple seems to have an advantage at the moment when it comes to the OpenGL performance and their in-house graphics stack for the Intel Sandy Bridge hardware. However, on the Linux side there still are some performance improvements coming via the RC6 enabling by default and various other optimizations that Intel OTC developers have planned. In other areas, the computational performance is close for some workloads between Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Mac OS X 10.8 while in a number of cases the penguin OS jumps higher. Stay tuned for more extensive testing to come when Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Mac OS X 10.8 are both formally released.