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Thoughts on how Mountain Lion will run on 2010 MBAs?

S

saintforlife

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 25, 2011
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My 2010 13.3/1.86/4GB/128GB MBA has slowed down of late and it struggles especially while running videos (youtube, vimeo, yahoo, netflix etc.) where the fans turns on and runs so fast and loudly I can barely hear the audio in the video. I don't stream videos on my Air because of this reason.

Will doing a clean install of Mountain Lion help me? Or is the Core 2 Duo processor the problem here? Can ML bring back some of the old snappiness my MBA? Will it help with video playback?
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
saintforlife said:
My 2010 13.3/1.86/4GB/128GB MBA has slowed down of late and it struggles especially while running videos (youtube, vimeo, yahoo, netflix etc.) where the fans turns on and runs so fast and loudly I can barely hear the audio in the video. I don't stream videos on my Air because of this reason.
Click to expand...
This is likely more a Flash issue than an OS issue. For Flash-related issues:
  • Find your Flash version and make sure it's the latest version available. Never install or update Flash from a pop-up on a website. Always go to Adobe's site to get Flash or updates.
  • Install ClickToFlash (Safari), Flashblock (Firefox) or FlashBlock (Chrome) to control which Flash content plays on websites.
  • Try using the YouTube HTML5 Video Player to watch YouTube videos, when available. (May impact fullscreen viewing. See link for details.) As far as performance impact, YMMV.
 
w00t951

w00t951

macrumors 68000
Jan 6, 2009
1,834
53
Pittsburgh, PA
saintforlife said:
My 2010 13.3/1.86/4GB/128GB MBA has slowed down of late and it struggles especially while running videos (youtube, vimeo, yahoo, netflix etc.) where the fans turns on and runs so fast and loudly I can barely hear the audio in the video. I don't stream videos on my Air because of this reason.

Will doing a clean install of Mountain Lion help me? Or is the Core 2 Duo processor the problem here? Can ML bring back some of the old snappiness my MBA? Will it help with video playback?
Click to expand...

My 2010 Air is nearly identical, except it has a 256GB SSD instead of the 128. Anyway, ML is kinda slow on it - I blame the GPU. The CPU is sometimes choking on multiple webpages or playing 1080p MKV files, but the GPU has trouble with even the most basic OS animations.
 
S

saintforlife

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 25, 2011
1,045
329
w00t951 said:
My 2010 Air is nearly identical, except it has a 256GB SSD instead of the 128. Anyway, ML is kinda slow on it - I blame the GPU. The CPU is sometimes choking on multiple webpages or playing 1080p MKV files, but the GPU has trouble with even the most basic OS animations.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the input. I will now think twice before deciding to upgrade.
 
D

dmelgar

macrumors 68000
Apr 29, 2005
1,587
160
w00t951 said:
My 2010 Air is nearly identical, except it has a 256GB SSD instead of the 128. Anyway, ML is kinda slow on it - I blame the GPU. The CPU is sometimes choking on multiple webpages or playing 1080p MKV files, but the GPU has trouble with even the most basic OS animations.
Click to expand...

I have a 2010 ultimate MBA, I haven't noticed any issues with ML. What should I try as a test?
 
D

dmelgar

macrumors 68000
Apr 29, 2005
1,587
160
w00t951 said:
My 2010 Air is nearly identical, except it has a 256GB SSD instead of the 128. Anyway, ML is kinda slow on it - I blame the GPU. The CPU is sometimes choking on multiple webpages or playing 1080p MKV files, but the GPU has trouble with even the most basic OS animations.
Click to expand...

I just did some tests on ML on my 2010 11" ultimate.

Runs fine. Runs very well. Runs at least as well as on Lion if not better. Animations are very smooth with no sign of stuttering. Watching 1080p movie in Quicktime looks perfect, framerate stuck at 23.98 never flinching. This is an h264 which the GPU handles. Other formats may require CPU decoding which the 2010 isn't great at. Note the even the latest Flash level supports GPU decoding and runs pretty smooth on Lion/ML.

This is on the MBA's display, not external.

Not sure why yours is choking. Maybe you have something else going on, maybe a background task running, spotlight indexing?

The GPU in the 2010 MBA is very powerful NVIDIA vs. the integrated Intel graphics of the 2011 and 2012. Its not until the 2012 that the GPU catches up to the NVIDIA GPU.

Mountain Lion is supposed to make more use of the GPU. Animating between desktops is perfect, much smoother than it looks on the rMBP in Lion.
 
w00t951

w00t951

macrumors 68000
Jan 6, 2009
1,834
53
Pittsburgh, PA
dmelgar said:
I just did some tests on ML on my 2010 11" ultimate.

Runs fine. Runs very well. Runs at least as well as on Lion if not better. Animations are very smooth with no sign of stuttering. Watching 1080p movie in Quicktime looks perfect, framerate stuck at 23.98 never flinching. This is an h264 which the GPU handles. Other formats may require CPU decoding which the 2010 isn't great at. Note the even the latest Flash level supports GPU decoding and runs pretty smooth on Lion/ML.

This is on the MBA's display, not external.

Not sure why yours is choking. Maybe you have something else going on, maybe a background task running, spotlight indexing?

The GPU in the 2010 MBA is very powerful NVIDIA vs. the integrated Intel graphics of the 2011 and 2012. Its not until the 2012 that the GPU catches up to the NVIDIA GPU.

Mountain Lion is supposed to make more use of the GPU. Animating between desktops is perfect, much smoother than it looks on the rMBP in Lion.
Click to expand...

Umm... the NVIDIA 320m is still an integrated card. Not as fast as the Intel HD3000 in the 2011 model, and it is utterly crushed by the Intel HD4000 in the 2012 model.
 
J

jksu

macrumors regular
Nov 26, 2009
244
68
saintforlife said:
My 2010 13.3/1.86/4GB/128GB MBA has slowed down of late and it struggles especially while running videos (youtube, vimeo, yahoo, netflix etc.) where the fans turns on and runs so fast and loudly I can barely hear the audio in the video. I don't stream videos on my Air because of this reason.

Will doing a clean install of Mountain Lion help me? Or is the Core 2 Duo processor the problem here? Can ML bring back some of the old snappiness my MBA? Will it help with video playback?
Click to expand...

how much space is left on your SSD?

i noticed slowdowns when my SSD was getting full -- the videos take up a lot of RAM so when it's tasked, it will page out and if the SSD is close to capacity, you will get a lot of slow down.

i moved the majority of my itunes folder to external and used a program (blanking on the name) to shrink my iphoto library and regained 20gigs on my 128gig drive. i think keeping 20% free is important for speedy performance.
 
D

dmelgar

macrumors 68000
Apr 29, 2005
1,587
160
w00t951 said:
Umm... the NVIDIA 320m is still an integrated card. Not as fast as the Intel HD3000 in the 2011 model, and it is utterly crushed by the Intel HD4000 in the 2012 model.
Click to expand...

I'm not the only one who doesn't agree w you. The new Anandtech review makes the comment that the 2012 has finally caught up to the 2010 GPU.
 
S

saintforlife

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 25, 2011
1,045
329
jksu said:
how much space is left on your SSD?

i noticed slowdowns when my SSD was getting full -- the videos take up a lot of RAM so when it's tasked, it will page out and if the SSD is close to capacity, you will get a lot of slow down.

i moved the majority of my itunes folder to external and used a program (blanking on the name) to shrink my iphoto library and regained 20gigs on my 128gig drive. i think keeping 20% free is important for speedy performance.
Click to expand...

I have over 50 GB of free space on my Air. I have installed less than 10 programs on it and mostly babied it. I don't have any programs that run in the background. The only thing that could be bogging it down is multiple tabs of Chrome that I have open sometimes. Other than that I am not really sure why it struggles with streaming video.
 
M

MacBird

macrumors 65816
Apr 1, 2010
1,300
1,665
Do you use Flash HTML 5 for youtube? The newer flash versions seem to be easier on the CPU.
 
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