Is Metal actually hurting more than it's helping?

[XTheLancerX]

I know this sounds weird, but I feel that this is at least somewhat true. Since the public beta first came out, I have only used iOS 9 on A7 and above devices (iPad mini 2 and iPhone 6), obviously, the devices that have Metal support. iOS 9, as we all know, was touted as an at least somewhat performance-based release. And we all also know that it has not lived up to that. Well, for me at least.

Now, yesterday, I updated a family member's iPhone 5 to iOS 9 (I advised them that it was kinda sluggish but they were quite interested in the update) and much to my surprise, it works better than my iPhone 6 in some areas. Control Center is pretty much a full 60FPS just like before, even when being used over the App Switcher! On my iPhone 6, this will all be 30-50FPS and it feels generally less pleasant. I did a fresh DFU restore for my iPhone 6, and theirs was a regular iTunes install. Old backup that's been being used since iOS 6.

Maybe the use of Metal just hasn't been fully... Optimized yet? Maybe it has to do with the 64-bit architecture of A7 chips and RAM constraints? I don't really know what I'm talking about, but these are just my best guesses.

Anyone have a similar experience? Thoughts?

 

[AustinIllini]

Ultimately, it will help. You may see slight differences, but as Apple improves it, metal will be a better solution.

 

[XTheLancerX]

Ultimately, it will help. You may see slight differences, but as Apple improves it, metal will be a better solution.

Well, let's hope Apple improves it a whole lot more because right now many users as well as I have seen nothing but a decrease in performance.

 

[AustinIllini]

Well, let's hope Apple improves it a whole lot more because right now many users as well as I have seen nothing but a decrease in performance.

I'll wait for real performance numbers before I take your word for it.

 

[Jayson A]

Well, let's hope Apple improves it a whole lot more because right now many users as well as I have seen nothing but a decrease in performance.

I'm with you man.

 

[mpavilion]

Raising control center over the app switcher in my 5c (iOS 9) reveals a level of FPS jank that I have never before seen on an iOS device!

 

[matrix07]

Raising control center over the app switcher in my 5c (iOS 9) reveals a level of FPS jank that I have never before seen on an iOS device!

Really not my case at all.

 

[XTheLancerX]

I'll wait for real performance numbers before I take your word for it.

What kind of "real performance numbers" are you looking for? Because you aren't going to get straight up statistics with iOS since you can't get an actual frame rate counter or anything. Sorry. It's just estimates and general experiences as far as I know.

Raising control center over the app switcher in my 5c (iOS 9) reveals a level of FPS jank that I have never before seen on an iOS device!

That's weird, like I said, the iPhone 5 I worked with had better performance than my iPhone 6, it was pretty much a solid 60FPS even over the app switcher which causes even more issues on my iPhone 6

Really not my case at all.

Same, it's worse on my iPhone 6 though which is weird.

 

[liteshow]

I don't get the FPS slowness, but I jusy notice I am not able to swipe up the control center with one swipe over the app switcher. Tried many times but CC consistently needs more than one swipe over task switcher. CC swipes without fail over the home or another app.

Raising control center over the app switcher in my 5c (iOS 9) reveals a level of FPS jank that I have never before seen on an iOS device!

 

[Salvor Hardin]

The notification center has far more going on yet bringing it down is far smoother than the control center even with a bunch of widgets on. This indicates to me that it's simply just poorly optimized and nobody cares about fixing it, the weather app dropped frames like crazy across all devices while changing cities until 9.
The talk of Metal increasing performance might be overstated, when GFXBench was updated for Metal it only delivered a few extra FPS over OpenGL.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9223/gfxbench-3-metal-ios
Metal's main advantage is maintaining performance while also increasing the level of graphical effects over what was possible with OpenGL, the scene in Epic's Zen Garden demo with thousands of butterflies would have tanked the framerate if it was running on OpenGL

It's also still possible that Apple still hasn't actually rolled out Metal into it's core graphics yet perhaps waiting until 9.1 that would explain the claims of it being smoother.