The Poll: Is El Capitan Faster?

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

People are reporting slower OpenGL performance in certain apps.

For myself, I waited until Nvidia released Metal compatible drivers today before I could judge. The interface is speedy enough, but it seems that intensive OpenCL computations can cause Photoshop to crash.

Previously during the El Capitan beta phase with Nvidia beta drivers an image would turn black if it was resized significantly. Adobe says this error is occurring in an OpenCL computations and the solution was to disable OpenCL in Photoshop's prefs.

In the final version of El Capitan with the final version of Nvidia's web drivers the problem is worse - instead of the image turning black Photoshop will simply crash. So we need software updates from whoever is responsible for this bug, otherwise anyone using Photoshop for large prints cannot do any resizing.

I will be doing a full set of benchmarks of El Capitan Vs Yosemite Vs Windows 10 this weekend. Things are not looking good at the moment though - QuickLook, Finder, and Preview are slower with handling large images than during the beta phase.

 

[ehmr]

I'm curious about older macs. I have a late-10 i7 27" iMac, which lags when using Spaces, Launchpad, etc. I would always get a 2-3 second delay before they would work. Hopefully there is an improvement there, considering my OS is on an SSD, and I have 16gb of RAM installed.

I'm running a mid 2010 15" upgraded to a 1TB Samsung EVO 840 SSD. I have upgraded to every version of OS X since Snow Leopard. Yosemite was slow, especially anything graphical like animations (launch controle, exposé etc).

I was really happy to hear that El Capitan was going to improve performance across the board, and I'am even happier to be able to say it actually did!

I have only used El Cap half a day but so far I do feel that OS X is more snappy, animations are not laggy anymore and PDF opening is indeed faster.

I was planning on getting a Skylake 15" next year, mainly due to I'm getting tired of the sluggishness of this one. Now I feel I could actually continue using this one for a couple of years!

 

[c8rlo]

downloading now on my Mid-2011 13" MBA, fingers crossed...

 

[Dingerz]

I have a mid 2011 27" i7 core iMac. I installed El Capitain and it SCREECHES with speed. My machine is crazy faster. Photos and iTunes is so mch faster than with Yosemite. With Yosemite I started to feel like my computer was on the edge of getting old. Now I feel like I just brought it home.

 

[Rogzilla]

On my late 2012 Mac Mini base model, it used to take about 2-3 minutes to open Photoshop. It now takes around 30 seconds.

Yeah, I'd say its faster.

El Capitan did take a little bit to get its feet under it, so to speak, but once it did the change was noticable.

 

[IA64]

My iMac has a 775m and its very fluid. I can force minor lagginess but its nothing I'd normally encounter, for example split view 2 safari windows with HTML5 players in both then rapidly slide the divider back and forth. Even then its very minor.

When you mention Google tabs earlier what exactly were you referring too? I'm curious to try that but I'm not exactly sure how to test it.

Say you are on Google chrome and you have 15 tabs open, if you open a new one the tabs will resize but it's like jerky. If you close one tab the others will expand but the animation is slow.

Try to maximize resource monitor ( not full screen ) and see what I mean.

I don't know if I got used to the ultra fluid windows or it's just me...

 

[chevalier433]

On my late 2012 Mac Mini base model, it used to take about 2-3 minutes to open Photoshop. It now takes around 30 seconds.

Yeah, I'd say its faster.

El Capitan did take a little bit to get its feet under it, so to speak, but once it did the change was noticable.

How that can be?Photoshop or any Adobe app does not yet support metal api.

 

[andeify]

Just installed it on my MacBook Pro (sig) and I have to say that it just flies!! People complained that nothing was new, I prefer this (speedier under the hood improvements) over new features, but only because Yosemite was a bit stuttery.

 

[Rogzilla]

How that can be?Photoshop or any Adobe app does not yet support metal api.

1 - I'm only reporting a significant difference that I saw
2 - Metal is about graphics rendering, not app launching.

 

[vegetassj4]

It's so fast, it is already trying to update to 10.12 Sentinel

 

[malih]

Upgrade Install from Yosemite 10.10.5 on Late 2011 13" MBP, noticeably more responsive, especially top rows keyboard buttons (volume control, brightness etc.).

I decided to re-enable transparency, there's no noticeable lag, I'm satisfied. Definitely I'm keeping this MBP until they have USB-C MBP come out, upgrading my HDD to 480/512GB SSD this weekend.

 

[GlenK]

Yes, on my 2011 MBP it is a lot faster than Yosemite. Actually I'm surprised it's working this well this soon.

 

[oldmacs]

2012 cMBP i7 8GB ram and 1TB SSD - My Yosemite installation was terrible - it hung twice while downloading El Captain for example.. Mail was constantly locking up, it completely stuffed itself the other day when no apps would open. (This is on a 2 month old fresh install of Yosemite). El Capitan seems to have sped up EVERYTHING. I didn't have jittery animations on Yosemite , but some of them feel faster on El Capitan (They must have made them faster?).

Overall, don't want to curse myself, but its probably the most stable version OSX I've used in a while... (from my usage so far anyway),

 

[AleXXXa]

I use Mavericks on my old MBP (Core2Duo, 8GB RAM, SSD). Do you guys think ElCapitan will run just as good? I'm tempted to update, but i'm afraid it will make my laptop slower.

 

[sracer]

Faster? Faster than what?

I upgraded my iMac from Mavericks and so far it is NOT faster. There's quite a bit of hesitation in performing tasks. I'm chalking that up to the "new OS smell" and will wait another day or so before passing a final judgment.

 

[F1Mac]

1 - I'm only reporting a significant difference that I saw
2 - Metal is about graphics rendering, not app launching.

El Capitan performance improvements aren't just due to Metal. There's a noticeable difference when launching apps/opening documents on my 5,1 Mac Pro compared to Yosemite, and it has nothing to do with Metal.

 

[c8rlo]

install went smooth on my Mid-2011 MBA and currently updating my Mid-2010 MBP.

nothing to report so far, all the new features are working fine. no issues with BT or split view as some have encountered, gonna give it a thorough shellacking(haha) tomorrow while at work.

 

[LittleDavid]

Significantly faster and smoother for me vs. 10.10.4. The only thing unimproved is copying large chunks of midi data in Logic Pro X 10.2 - still torture. The "stuck gui" issue, where plugin parameters were jerky and imprecise, is gone at least. I'm really hoping the forthcoming point updates for both will solve the copy/scroll issue in the piano roll.

 

[cynics]

Say you are on Google chrome and you have 15 tabs open, if you open a new one the tabs will resize but it's like jerky. If you close one tab the others will expand but the animation is slow.

Try to maximize resource monitor ( not full screen ) and see what I mean.

I don't know if I got used to the ultra fluid windows or it's just me...

Yep, I can in fact recreate what you are talking about. This is kind of funny actually, if I open activity monitor then grab the lower right corner as if to resize the window and start making a circle motion I can watch CPU activity for Activity monitor spike. Plus the animation is slightly jerky.

Not something I would do on a normal basis but that is some weird lag.

 

[djshack]

Seriously the smoothest OS X since Snow Leopard, running on my 2014 MacBook Pro retina. I'm loving it.

 

[DavidInSydney]

Can I suggest you need a 4th option for the poll: "Don't know". You might find a lot of people are just not voting because they don't know. "Don't know" is a valid answer.

 

[kwokaaron]

I'm running Mavericks still but so far I'm seeing over all positive reviews of El Capitan. I'm still not sure I like the overall UI. I like certain things but hate others. I definitely don't like iTunes UI which is why I'm still on iTunes 11. But for me to upgrade my iPhone to iOS 9 I need iTunes 12. Kinda wish Apple would allow users to choose which UI they want. Either the Mavericks UI or the current UI. If I recall MS did it with Windows if you wanted XP or Vista to look like Win '98. Is El Capitan really worth the upgrade? I usually don't upgrade with a .0 release but wait for updates first.

Was in the same boat as you. I had the same dilemma about the iTunes as well since I also stayed on Mavericks. Stuck to iTunes 11.4 until iOS 9 came out. Updated to iTunes 12, which led me to update my OS as well so the UI was consistent.

My experience so far is that El Capitan is every so slightly smoother than Mavericks. It would probably be a more dramatic improvement for Yosemite users from what I've read online so far. Stability and performance wise I would say it's pretty damn stable for a .0 release. Haven't had any crashes so far or what-not. I would recommend doing a clean install if you do upgrade just so any leftover files in the system are cleared out.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

How that can be?Photoshop or any Adobe app does not yet support metal api.

It shouldn't have made a difference to launching a Photoshop unless something was messed up before.

 

[c8rlo]

finished the install on my Mid-2010 MBP, no issues. like my on MBA, all the new features are running with no problems. 1hr download with a 30 min. install. gonna put it through some testing to ensure all is well, hope everyone has luck with little or no issues after install...

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

Oddly enough, I seem to have the opposite effect. Yosemite was rock solid, actually worked fast and performed like a champ on my cMBP 2011.

El Cap, on the other hand, comes across as sluggish, a bit more choppy, and runs hotter. (Yes, indexing has completed - been more than 24 hours now.) Hoping this is just a victim of the .0 release mentality.