Sluggish Yosemite performance on rMBP

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tardtasticx

3075 posts

Uber Geek

#160029 20-Dec-2014 23:16

As the title says, performance on my 2013 Retina MacBook Pro is less than optimal.

Specs:
Late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro
Intel Core i5 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 128SSD
Resolution set to "best for display" but doesn't appear to help much

I've recently purchased this because the processor was a huge step up to what my MacBook Air (2013 also) had and assumed performance would skyrocket as a result. Well nope. It was so snappy on Mavericks (pre-installed) but seems to drag its feet with most things I want to do, and I haven't installed much other than Spotify and Flash.

What would y'all suggest for something like this? I've never troubleshooted OS X before and I've only been taught Windows at Uni. I don't know if OS X has the power settings like windows does where CPU is clocked down when battery is low (But it definitely bloody feels like it. Youtube is unusable when I have <5% battery).

Would a complete reinstall help at all?

Appreciate any help in advance!

-Sam

JamesL

956 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1201301 21-Dec-2014 00:23

Is firevault currently in the process of encrypting the drive?

You should also change the resolution to scaled -> looks like 1440x900. The whole point of the retina display is to make use of it

tardtasticx

3075 posts

Uber Geek

#1201302 21-Dec-2014 00:24

JamesL: Is firevault currently in the process of encrypting the drive?

Nope, not activated. Never have purely because I don't know enough about it.

JamesL

956 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1201303 21-Dec-2014 00:26

There's not much too it, it's drive encryption. There's minimal impact due to the built in crypto on the haswell cpu's

spazz

266 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1203949 26-Dec-2014 10:33

I had this exact problem. I did a bit of googling, and found that many people fixed it by "resetting the PRAM". I didn't know what that meant, so I googled it, and it totally sorted the sluggishness - my rMBP has been running smoothly ever since :)

tardtasticx

3075 posts

Uber Geek

#1204047 26-Dec-2014 14:20

spazz: I had this exact problem. I did a bit of googling, and found that many people fixed it by "resetting the PRAM". I didn't know what that meant, so I googled it, and it totally sorted the sluggishness - my rMBP has been running smoothly ever since :)

Cheers will give it a go now :D

Dairyxox

1594 posts

Uber Geek

#1204072 26-Dec-2014 15:38

The SSD isn't full? Performance degrades when they're full.

alexx

867 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1211284 9-Jan-2015 17:09

Disabling Transparency (a.k.a. Translucency) appears to help a lot of people.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/os-x-yosemite-turn-translucency-off-or-on
http://osxdaily.com/2014/10/24/speed-up-os-x-yosemite-mac/

Some people have also been having wifi problems with Yosemite.

Perhaps it's time I installed on a spare drive and had a look for myself.
It's often better waiting for 10.x.3 or 10.x.4.

#include <standard.disclaimer>

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mruane

420 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1218362 20-Jan-2015 15:21

I had a very sluggish iMac which seemed to be related to Parallels. Searching on Google I found a reference to setting OS X Yosemite to boot in Debug mode and that resolved all of the sluggishness. If memory serves this involved issuing the following command in terminal

sudo nvram boot-args="debug=0x10"

It certainly fixed my sluggish iMac and might help with your box. You can refer to the link here: http://kb.parallels.com/122767

Cheers Mike