Comments on: Graphics improvements make OS X Mountain Lion snappy: More speed could come when Apple updates to OpenGL 4.2

By: Tessellator

Tessellator — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:05:35 +0000

Cinebench, though widely quoted, is not a good benchmark of graphics (nor OpenGL) performance or efficiency. It only predicts how well Maxon’s Cinema4D will run.
Unfortunately Cinema4D is well known to be optimized (very) specifically for MS’s openGL implementation (which is decidedly & intentionally nonstandard) so using it for a measuring stick for OSX, openGL updates is very likely complete folly.

By: dinjin201

dinjin201 — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 03:24:09 +0000

this should not be happening. Do a time machine backup of all your information, and then boot into recover mode. use disk utility to wipe your hard drive, then reinstall a clean copy of mountain lion.

Manually migrate all your information back to your system from your backups.

Your machine will feel amazingly snappy.

I actually had upgraded from Lion to ML, but because it felt so slow, I went ahead and did a wipe + clean install.

It was totally worth it

By: Derek Currie

Derek Currie — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 01:00:42 +0000

I’m either an optimist or a futurist, but I believe Apple is going to be paying extremely close attention to OpenGL in the future.

My reasoning is that there isn’t a lot of tweaking and tech integration for Apple to add to whatever will be the sequel to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, EXCEPT in 3D with regard to the GUI. Many of us have just about given up on seeing a decent user-friendly 3D GUI on modern computers. I suspect Apple is bashing away behind the scenes trying to hammer out some nice 3D GUI concepts that have the Apple feel of being intuitive. All the supporting technology is in place: Touch and gesture tech, hardware acceleration, fast GPUs with lots of cache, OpenGL software support…

Watch the rumor mill start to grind. Blame me.

By: silverhawk1

silverhawk1 — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:11:37 +0000

I’ll raise your antidisestablishmentarianism by two pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

By: Blort

Blort — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 02:23:51 +0000

You must have a very special prototype machine

By: shadowself

shadowself — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 01:26:57 +0000

I’ll believe OpenGL 4.2 support well after it actually happens. Apple has never supported the latest version of OpenGL often being one or two minor versions behind. OpenGL was ratified over a year ago (meaning all the participants, including Apple, had access to the draft spec months before that). OpenGL 4.1 was ratified over two years ago (again, Apple had access to that draft spec long before that). OpenGL 4.0 was ratified a few months before 4.1. Apple could have, and should have been working on 4.x three years ago. Hell, OpenGL 3.2 (the latest version Apple supports) was ratified three years ago!

As I said, I’ll believe OpenGL 4.2 support a while after it actually happens and people have tested it to see if it really does fully support the standard. At the rate Apple supports OpenGL I expect that to happen in about 2015 or when Open GL 5.3 is ratified, which ever comes later.

By: Alcancun

Alcancun — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 20:35:14 +0000

my 28 inch iMac used to kernel panic 3 to 4 times a day … More if I was using Safari to download something … Since installing Moutain Lion on release day … Not one kernal panic crash…

By: Thelonious Mac

Thelonious Mac — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:59:48 +0000

It is definitely snappier. I notice it on older Macs as well. It’s very noticeable. The only thing that bothers me so far about Mountain Lion is everything asking if it can use my contacts. Kinda unnerving.

By: maxclarke

maxclarke — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:50:53 +0000

I was reluctant to buy Mountain Lion, despite the low price, since Lion was a letdown.

Glad I did. Besides the new features, Apple fixed something under the hood. Safari launches and gets me websites in maybe 10 or 15 seconds. When I open Mail and Safari at the same time, the spinning beach ball is gone. Mail comes up fast, as does Text Edit.

And the Dictation app is still fun to play with. It even understood me when I gave it “antidisestablishmentarianism.” It was once regarded as the longest English word, aside from scientific/chemistry names.

By: Snapper

Snapper — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:10:07 +0000

Check out BareFeats for their comparison.
http://www.barefeats.com/mtlion.html

By: Saldin

Saldin — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:09:35 +0000

But as for “perceived speed”, it feels much slower for me: animations are dropping frames and screen tearing is noticeable. Ghosting and flickering is also very apparent in Safari.

By: Saldin

Saldin — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:05:48 +0000

One of the first things I did was to run Cinebench on both, the Intel HD 3000 and the Radeon 6750M. The performance was exactly the same as Lion.