Performance Issues 3TB Fusion iMac Beta 1

[skwood]

Just posting this as a warning from my experience with this first beta. Before anyone has a go, I know it is a beta. My advice is to wait for Beta 2.

Release notes state some iMacs with 3TB Fusion drives will not work with this seed. Mine works but has slowed to a crawl. As I've converted to APFS I can't go back easily so I'll update this if future betas improve performance.

 

[bbfc]

It's horrendous on my MacBook Pro. Takes forever to do anything. Regret updating now. Back to Sierra I go.

 

[skwood]

It's horrendous on my MacBook Pro. Takes forever to do anything. Regret updating now. Back to Sierra I go.

Yep I'll just about be able to load beta 2 through it, it's actually the worst performance I've seen in a long time on any machine and this is on an i7 2013 machine, well within the minimum specs.

 

[dogslobber]

They've got debug switched on so it won't be optimized for performance. Don't use it for anything except testing the software you're developing for it.

 

[bbfc]

They've got debug switched on so it won't be optimized for performance. Don't use it for anything except testing the software you're developing for it.

Can’t use it for anything!

 

[skwood]

They've got debug switched on so it won't be optimized for performance. Don't use it for anything except testing the software you're developing for it.

Yeah this isn't the kind of performance drop difference with debug on/off - this is bad and I hope it will be resolved in beta 2. This is my development machine but as bbfc says, it's unusable for that!

EDIT: For the record on my MBA 2013 this runs perfectly.

 

[xflashx]

I installed and used every beta since Mountain Lion, but this beta is the worst I've ever seen. The OS takes forever to boot up, and after you logged in it even has to load the task bar for a good 15 seconds. Everything is just s l o w.
Back to El Capitan.

 

[dogslobber]

Yeah this isn't the kind of performance drop difference with debug on/off - this is bad and I hope it will be resolved in beta 2. This is my development machine but as bbfc says, it's unusable for that!

This is exactly how Sierra early development builds were. Lots of debug, no optimizations, etc., so that they have thoroughly detailed spindumps.

 

[skwood]

This is exactly how Sierra early development builds were. Lots of debug, no optimizations, etc., so that they have thoroughly detailed spindumps.

Just confusing because my MBA runs it smoothly. I don't doubt you are right though, I look forward to providing them lots of lovely data so it can speed up later.

 

[dogslobber]

I installed and used every beta since Mountain Lion, but this beta is the worst I've ever seen. The OS takes forever to boot up, and after you logged in it even has to load the task bar for a good 15 seconds. Everything is just s l o w.
Back to El Capitan.

I left El Cap once 10.12.4 hit me between the legs. The early pain of Sierra is mostly gone.
[doublepost=1496762483][/doublepost]

Just confusing because my MBA runs it smoothly. I don't doubt you are right though, I look forward to providing them lots of lovely data so it can speed up later.

My 2010 MBA creeks along with it which is why I say it reminds me of Sierra as I used this same machine to test out Sierra alphas.

 

[Strelok]

Running it on a late 2013 13" MBPr and it installed fine, runs perfectly smooth. It might be that older Macs are getting a bit old at this point and aren't really optimized for anymore. SSD's also seem to be a big factor, since most people who are having issues have HDD's or Fusion drives.

 

[bbfc]

This is exactly how Sierra early development builds were. Lots of debug, no optimizations, etc., so that they have thoroughly detailed spindumps.

The first Sierra beta wasn't like this on my 2011 MBP. High Sierra is something else - the only thing 'high' about it is my memory pressure graph!
[doublepost=1496765638][/doublepost]

Running it on a late 2013 13" MBPr and it installed fine, runs perfectly smooth. It might be that older Macs are getting a bit old at this point and aren't really optimized for anymore. SSD's also seem to be a big factor, since most people who are having issues have HDD's or Fusion drives.

There is no reason it shouldn't run fine on non-SSD Macs. Sierra runs fine, as it did during its development betas. I just don't understand what is happening and why its so unresponsive. Hoping beta 2 will resolve this.

 

[fanfzero]

I'm using it on my 2014 MBA, worse than Sierra, but still usable, applications take more time to boot and there are some lags on preferences menu.

 

[gsmornot]

Using 10.13 at the moment and its fine. I didn't even think about my Fusion drive until now. I'm on a 2011 Mini with a "homemade" Fusion drive setup. Anything I should check to make sure its fine other than to say everything seems ok? I wonder if there is a way at this point to split the drives, run 10.13 on just my SSD and keep the spinning drive internal for a second disk. I dont need but half of my SSD space at the moment with most things in the cloud.

 

[xgman]

They do this every year. They finally get the bugs out of the current OS and things start running smoothly. Then BAM, they start over from scratch it seems and introduce a million problems and a sluggish system. WHY? Why not take the now polished Sierra and simply keep improving it? Even with the new file system. They already do that with the point releases. I could maybe understand if they completely rewrote the OS and it was a major revamping, but this? It's not logical and it simply causes many more problems than it ever solves, at least through the first few final revs. sigh...

 

[LewisChapman]

They do this every year. They finally get the bugs out of the current OS and things start running smoothly. Then BAM, they start over from scratch it seems and introduce a million problems and a sluggish system. WHY? Why not take the now polished Sierra and simply keep improving it? Even with the new file system. They already do that with the point releases. I could maybe understand if they completely rewrote the OS and it was a major revamping, but this? It's not logical and it simply causes many more problems than it ever solves, at least through the first few final revs. sigh...

I believe it’s just to do with the basic fundamentals of code and software. Dependencies exist across software so when features are added other code breaks or needs to be adapted to work with the new code and features.

Maybe a bit like having a swimming pool installed in your back garden - there’s going to be some mud and bit of mess during the installation because a lot of soil and garden features need to be moved about.

I guess the idea is that to the casual user who doesn’t have interest in betas and DP’s, they get new final release software in the Fall which does exactly what you say, adds new stable features to their already stable OS.

 

[bbfc]

They do this every year. They finally get the bugs out of the current OS and things start running smoothly. Then BAM, they start over from scratch it seems and introduce a million problems and a sluggish system. WHY? Why not take the now polished Sierra and simply keep improving it? Even with the new file system. They already do that with the point releases. I could maybe understand if they completely rewrote the OS and it was a major revamping, but this? It's not logical and it simply causes many more problems than it ever solves, at least through the first few final revs. sigh...

Because this is why we have development and public betas. So these bugs are found and squashed before the public release.

 

[skwood]

FYI: I had my user account totally disappear during a session. Woke the iMac and there was no account there to login to. Persisted after reboot. Had to reboot into single user mode, delete the first setup check file, reboot and re-run the initial setup. I used the same short username as before so got my files and settings back.

Since this ironically, the performance has improved vastly.

 

[cpenner]

The performance on my late 2012 iMac has been pretty bad. I think it's the new file system having some issues with the Fusion Drives. I can't save images off the internet as it says I'm out of disk space, which Finder clearly shows I'm not. Everything else is the slowest I've ever seen it. I updated an app from the Mac App Store today and it took 45 minutes to install roughly 300MB, and I've got a pretty quick machine and fast internet too. Trying to open new programs also brings the machine to its knees. Hopefully beta 2 comes out soon.

 

[gregsapphire]

Hopefully beta 2 will drop soon and it'll fix iMac fusion drive issues.

 

[cpenner]

Hopefully beta 2 will drop soon and it'll fix iMac fusion drive issues.

This is like the longest I can remember between beta 1 and beta 2 for macOS or iOS. Usually the first few betas happen fairly quickly to address bugs...

 

[gregsapphire]

This is like the longest I can remember between beta 1 and beta 2 for macOS or iOS. Usually the first few betas happen fairly quickly to address bugs...

Of major iOS releases, iOS 10 beta 1 to beta 2 was 22 days. We are around 15 days now. http://www.thinkybits.com/blog/iOS-versions/

 

[ryxn]

Based on the general experiences of folks here, I would not recommend installing APFS on anyone using an apple-designed fusion drive. It seems people who have made their own fusion drive solutions have better results, but for those who purchased machines with fusion drives built-in, it either slows the machines or fails to install completely.

 

[cpenner]

Of major iOS releases, iOS 10 beta 1 to beta 2 was 22 days. We are around 15 days now. http://www.thinkybits.com/blog/iOS-versions/

Well, I’m wrong again it seems. Haha I need to stop going with “feelings” and actually look for hard dates next time

 

[grahamperrin]

… for those who purchased machines with fusion drives built-in, it either slows the machines or …

I don't have the resources (sorry) to test Apple Fusion Drive or comparable setups, but with hard disk drives on USB 2.0 I found that 17A264c boot times were more than twice as long with APFS than with HFS Plus.

So – boot times aside – I should not expect great performance from any rotational media that's given to APFS with 17A264c.