Is El Capitan faster than Mavericks?

[KALLT]

Based on my experience I am not certain how the most Core 2 Duo processor equipped Macs are going to fair with El Capitan, it was clearly slower than Mavericks (unsurprisingly Snow Leopard is much faster than both of them).

This my experience as well. I ditched El Capitan in favour of Mavericks, a step not taken lightly. El Capitan is better than Yosemite as far as system performance is concerned, at least for me. Snow Leopard is of course unparalleled and I am still not sure why the system performance got so bad with Lion and later. Animations are fluid, the MacBook runs cooler overall, applications start quickly. It is really strange how it got so bad. I can accept that programs will require more CPU and graphics performance, but the problems started with Lion and Yosemite just happened to take the flak more recently. Newer hardware can mask these problems, as older hardware is generally where performance degradation is the most noticeable.

 

[jblagden]

This my experience as well. I ditched El Capitan in favour of Mavericks, a step not taken lightly. El Capitan is better than Yosemite as far as system performance is concerned, at least for me. Snow Leopard is of course unparalleled and I am still not sure why the system performance got so bad with Lion and later. Animations are fluid, the MacBook runs cooler overall, applications start quickly. It is really strange how it got so bad. I can accept that programs will require more CPU and graphics performance, but the problems started with Lion and not with Yosemite. Newer hardware can mask these problems, as older hardware is generally where performance degradation is the most noticeable.

I considered going back to Mavericks, but I don't have a copy of it on an external drive and I couldn't find it in the Mac App Store.

 

[KALLT]

I considered going back to Mavericks, but I don't have a copy of it on an external drive and I couldn't find it in the Mac App Store.

You should contact Apple Support and see whether they can help you out. Mavericks is still officially supported. Just come up with a reason why you need Mavericks specifically.

 

[Ebenezum]

This my experience as well. I ditched El Capitan in favour of Mavericks, a step not taken lightly. El Capitan is better than Yosemite as far as system performance is concerned, at least for me. Snow Leopard is of course unparalleled and I am still not sure why the system performance got so bad with Lion and later. Animations are fluid, the MacBook runs cooler overall, applications start quickly. It is really strange how it got so bad. I can accept that programs will require more CPU and graphics performance, but the problems started with Lion and Yosemite just happened to take the flak more recently. Newer hardware can mask these problems, as older hardware is generally where performance degradation is the most noticeable.

I have wondered the same thing. I too got fed up with El Capitan and I'm using Mavericks and Snow Leopard on the iMac.

My guess is that after Snow Leopard new features are the focus and performance isn't getting as much attention for some reason.

I considered going back to Mavericks, but I don't have a copy of it on an external drive and I couldn't find it in the Mac App Store.

I agree with KALLT, as long as you have legitimate reason to use Mavericks Apple support should be able to help you.

 

[jktmagic]

I have an early 2008 imac with 3.06 Ghz core 2 duo and 6 GB ram( stock is 4 GB). Mavericks was mostly useable (yosemite was not) but I had frequent stuttering in my online classes (webex). Much improved in El Capitan, and it feels smoother and faster. It's very useable compared to the last 2. Seems similar to ML 10.8