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fisherking

macrumors G4
Jul 16, 2010
11,252
5,562
ny somewhere
2016 12"MB, m3. i ran el cap for 2 days before upgrading to sierra... which i love (even tho i don't use most of it's new 'features'). on my 13" pro, sierra seems... a little faster, and more stable. am happy with it.
 

loby

macrumors 68000
Jul 1, 2010
1,880
1,509
Sierra seems good on my MacBook air 2013 and...my mac pro 2013. Sierra seem to fix many of the issues with my mac pro 2013. I am hoping the next few updates will resolve everything! Keep it coming Apple!
 

gustavopi

macrumors regular
Oct 29, 2008
166
30
Brazil
I'd read this thread to decide to upgrade from El Capitan or not with my MacBook mid 2012. It seams, for all I did read, will be ok. Apple is already killing El Capitan, Xcode needs Sierra etc., Apple is being Apple by forcing us to upgrade the system. But there is some issues worth to mention here:

I didn't find a deep complete analysis about Sierra in comparison with older OS, what I found is about new features (that most of us will never use) and feedbacks like "I am using and it's ok". Very different from hardware upgrade that I found detailed information easily. If you wish to contribute, please share some links about.

The guy ask for a Sierra upgrade and the answer is Windows 10... I must say I like Windows 10, unlike most of my friends and the bizarre true seams to be is a system that please Mac users. As long all of this is off topic, I will not run away. Windows 10 got a cool design, run smooth overall and nice performance, but there is a big difference, an exclusive feature: it is made to fail. It is not an opinion, it is just the way it works. Windows 10 got a lot of process running in background installing things, working on drivers, only advanced users will keep it working for long time.

That said, I will upgrade to Sierra this weekend, let's find out about this ugly system, if at list will work fine.
 

gustavopi

macrumors regular
Oct 29, 2008
166
30
Brazil
I am back (who cares...) I have upgraded from El Capitan to Sierra. I tuck usual precautions, El Capitan install were very traumatic, so I did clone the main disk and did a bootable pendrive. But wasn't necessary for me this time. The Sierra install was faster than El Capitan, no freezing and there was a status message - so good when you know it is still working.

Sierra is now working nicely, seams even faster and it is occupying less space than El Capitan. Of course I might have some surprises ahead (the surprise will be no surprises at all) but so far I can tell it worth the upgrade, I do recommend. But do the backup or clone and bootable install pendrive anyway, who knows...
 

Retromac2008

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 9, 2015
209
36
I am back (who cares...) I have upgraded from El Capitan to Sierra. I tuck usual precautions, El Capitan install were very traumatic, so I did clone the main disk and did a bootable pendrive. But wasn't necessary for me this time. The Sierra install was faster than El Capitan, no freezing and there was a status message - so good when you know it is still working.

Sierra is now working nicely, seams even faster and it is occupying less space than El Capitan. Of course I might have some surprises ahead (the surprise will be no surprises at all) but so far I can tell it worth the upgrade, I do recommend. But do the backup or clone and bootable install pendrive anyway, who knows...

Hello!
I care, i did the same and i m looking for other people's opinions too!
Sierra is faster than El Capitan on my macbook Air too!
 
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h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
Hello!
I care, i did the same and i m looking for other people's opinions too!
Sierra is faster than El Capitan on my macbook Air too!

Sierra perform generally better than El Capitan on my cMP as well. Less small annoying bug (long shutdown time, ITunes memory leak, Safari micro freeze, Finder crash, etc). Don't get me wrong, El Capitan is not that bad. It's definitely OK for daily ops, just far from flawless.

On the other side, Sierra is much more solid, not totally bug free of course. But much less annoying stuff. However, it's also harder to get Handoff work properly in Sierra, that's the biggest downside I experience so far. But since that's my own hardware upgrade, not something that cMP officially supported. So, I won't blame Sierra on this matter.
 

saudor

macrumors 68000
Jul 18, 2011
1,511
2,114
I have both installed and I find El Capitan to be smoother/less glitchy on both systems. Yes sierra is faster in some areas (I.e safari) but the general performance overall is better in el cap for me (both were clean installs). On my MacBook, sierra uses 10 watts at idle, and on el cap, this drops to 7 watts (according to coconutbattery)

Plus the mission control in el cap can be made very fast.
 

gustavopi

macrumors regular
Oct 29, 2008
166
30
Brazil
I had a bad experience with El Capitan. I was still with the original 5300 rpm HDD and there was some unbelievable flaws. When you open the Mac, the screen is show for a long time before to close and ask for a password - so if you like to watch some porn and don't want your mom discover, don't count on El Capitan! Of course with SSD things got better, but not as Sierra. But the worst thing was to hang during an upgrade. I tried twice, the only way to go from 10.11.0 to 10.11.1 was by clean install. I don't recall about this kind of trouble since Leopard, I hope Apple realize they actually improved the OS and keep like this for a while.

Anyway, both El Capitan and Sierra have much better experience than iOS 8 or 9 in old devices. You know, my iPhone don't even seams to be manufactured by the same company as my MacBook.
 

Mac Hammer Fan

macrumors 65816
Jul 13, 2004
1,326
498
We need benchmarks. We don't have a good point of comparison without them.

I just did some tests using GeekBench 4.1.3 to compare El Capitan vs Sierra on my Mac Pro 5,1 2009.
This Mac had a Geforce 980 card in slot 1.
64 bit single 2956 vs 3063 (Sierra is 4% faster)
64 bit multi 13961 vs 14220 (Sierra is 2% faster)
cuda 124617 vs 124438 (approximate the same)
metal 49390 vs 54193 (Sierra is 10% faster)
opencl 96996 vs 114385 (Sierra is 18 % faster)
some other tests:
opencl cinebench 61,5 FPS vs 55-62 FPS (results in Sierra vary)
Heaven preset Extreme quality Ultra resolution 1600 x 900: both 67 FS.
 
Last edited:

Retromac2008

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 9, 2015
209
36
I just did some tests using GeekBench 4.1.3 to compare El Capitan vs Sierra on my Mac Pro 5,1 2009.
This Mac had a Geforce 980 card in slot 1.
64 bit single 2956 vs 3063 (Sierra is 4% faster)
64 bit multi 13961 vs 14220 (Sierra is 2% faster)
cuda 124617 vs 124438 (approximate the same)
metal 49390 vs 54193 (Sierra is 10% faster)
opengl 96996 vs 114385 (Sierra is 18 % faster)
some other tests:
opengl cinebench 61,5 FPS vs 55-61,5 FPS (results in Sierra vary)
Heaven preset Extreme quality Ultra resolution 1600 x 900: both 67 FS.

thanks!

actually now we re on High Sierra and Metal 2 should help in benchmarks.
(but my macs are performing a little worst to be sincere)(in gpu intensive works too)
 

MacForScience

macrumors 6502
Sep 7, 2010
481
5
USA
It all depends on the computer you use. If you have new gear that is reasonably powerful–then no real difference; just more features you may or may not care about. If your computer is at the bottom of the list for sierra support I would stay away.

Cheers
 

Retromac2008

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 9, 2015
209
36
It all depends on the computer you use. If you have new gear that is reasonably powerful–then no real difference; just more features you may or may not care about. If your computer is at the bottom of the list for sierra support I would stay away.

Cheers

While I don't have numbers for Sierra, my UI benchmarking suggests High Sierra is 4x slower than El Cap. I'll post that info as thread in the HS forum.
ty! :)

i ll check it!
 

Lenny69

macrumors newbie
Dec 16, 2017
1
0
Yes. macOS Sierra is more optimized for modern Macs, than previous versions. OS X El Capitan included, for example Haswell-specific optimizations (system libraries) which are not available on older processor architectures.


Good idea!

Hello!
How can I check that which OS optimized to Sandy Bridge?
 

Retromac2008

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 9, 2015
209
36
atm i find high sierra faster on all my macs with ssd. the old one too.
no reason to use an older os
 

Mac Hammer Fan

macrumors 65816
Jul 13, 2004
1,326
498
Geekbench Open CL score: Geforce 980 in MacPro 5,1
. El Capitan 96996
. Sierra 116974
Sierra is definitely faster.
Metal score is also 10% faster in Sierra than in El Capitan.
Cuda is approx. the same.
CPU 6 core 3,33 Ghz in Mac Pro 5,1
. El Capitan single 2956 / multi 13961
. Sierra single 3063 / multi 14220
 
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