Upgraded from 2012 MBP to 2015 RMBP, questions

[waxonwaxoff]

Hi there everyone,

I just upgraded from a 2012 non retina mbp 2.6 GHz (which I custom upgraded to a 512gb ssd and installed 16 gb ram), to the new top tier 2015 15" retina MacBook Pro last night. This morning is the first chance I've had to play around with it. I think it's great, very happy with my purchase especially since I got a pretty hefty discount (online store screwed up my order of a 2.8 GHz refurb, but that's a story for another thread).

I used a time machine backup migrate to the new MacBook Pro and I am noticing one or two things that seem weird so I thought it might be a good idea to consult you all for unbiased advice:

1. The old upgraded 2012 Mbps had 16 gb ram, so does the new one. Right now though not doing anything hefty (infact doing nothing) the new mbp can never seem to get above 8 go of available ram. The old one on standby was usually around 11 - 12 GB ram. Lunching regular to mid load apps the new one goes down to 4gb ram, the old one would go down to 7 - 8 gb ram. Running heftier apps (cinema 4d, photoshop files with 100's of layers) old would go to 4 - 6 gb ram... I haven't really tried to stress the new one yet but I'm thinking it won't be good.
Anyway this is a brand new top tier mbp, and it's had exactly the same data migrated from the old one. would any of you have a marvellous explanation as to why tasks that barely troubled my 3 year old mbp would be far more taxing on the new?

2. The fan on the new mbp runs a lot.... And high for no reason, I am looking at gmail, the fan goes nuts. I go to a website on Safari I hope back the instinct to duck as I think an Apache helicopter is about to land. Is this normal? Suffice to say I rarely heard the fan on the old Mbp, sometimes when doing intensive stuff but not all the time like on the new one. Is this normal am I being overly sensitive because I just unpacked the new mbp?

3. My old mbp was 2.6 GHz the new one is 2.5 GHz, I was assured the new one would still be much faster (even though it has .1 less) is this true or was I being sold by Apple?

Any answers/advice you might have would be appreciated

Thanks.

 

[andreyush]

I can help you partially
3. At the CPU ...it doesn't matter always the frequency.... There are more involved carateristics and stuff xD...
In geebkench your CPU has 12210 score and macbook pro mid 2012 has 11321 score ( on multicore 32bit)... The score is not so high but this tell you that your CPU is more powerful..Also
take into consideration that the best macbook has 12883 score...so yours is just fine

2. Try to install Macsfan Control and see what temperatures you have in Idle and on surfing,gaming etc. Also see what apps do heavy work on CPU/GPU .

1. Try to install Memory clean from App Store ...See if it brings some help ...

 

[T5BRICK]

would any of you have a marvellous explanation as to why tasks that barely troubled my 3 year old mbp would be far more taxing on the new?

Is this normal am I being overly sensitive because I just unpacked the new mbp?

Spotlight may still be indexing? Are you running the same version of OS X on this new one?

3. My old mbp was 2.6 GHz the new one is 2.5 GHz, I was assured the new one would still be much faster (even though it has .1 less) is this true or was I being sold by Apple?

The CPU will be faster, but not by much. The GPU and SSD are MUCH faster though.

 

[snaky69]

Hi there everyone,

I just upgraded from a 2012 non retina mbp 2.6 GHz (which I custom upgraded to a 512gb ssd and installed 16 gb ram), to the new top tier 2015 15" retina MacBook Pro last night. This morning is the first chance I've had to play around with it. I think it's great, very happy with my purchase especially since I got a pretty hefty discount (online store screwed up my order of a 2.8 GHz refurb, but that's a story for another thread).

I used a time machine backup migrate to the new MacBook Pro and I am noticing one or two things that seem weird so I thought it might be a good idea to consult you all for unbiased advice:

1. The old upgraded 2012 Mbps had 16 gb ram, so does the new one. Right now though not doing anything hefty (infact doing nothing) the new mbp can never seem to get above 8 go of available ram. The old one on standby was usually around 11 - 12 GB ram. Lunching regular to mid load apps the new one goes down to 4gb ram, the old one would go down to 7 - 8 gb ram. Running heftier apps (cinema 4d, photoshop files with 100's of layers) old would go to 4 - 6 gb ram... I haven't really tried to stress the new one yet but I'm thinking it won't be good.
Anyway this is a brand new top tier mbp, and it's had exactly the same data migrated from the old one. would any of you have a marvellous explanation as to why tasks that barely troubled my 3 year old mbp would be far more taxing on the new?

2. The fan on the new mbp runs a lot.... And high for no reason, I am looking at gmail, the fan goes nuts. I go to a website on Safari I hope back the instinct to duck as I think an Apache helicopter is about to land. Is this normal? Suffice to say I rarely heard the fan on the old Mbp, sometimes when doing intensive stuff but not all the time like on the new one. Is this normal am I being overly sensitive because I just unpacked the new mbp?

3. My old mbp was 2.6 GHz the new one is 2.5 GHz, I was assured the new one would still be much faster (even though it has .1 less) is this true or was I being sold by Apple?

Any answers/advice you might have would be appreciated

Thanks.

1. Are you on the same OS version? I'd venture to say you're not. Available RAM is meaningless nowadays with RAM compression. If both computer's memory pressure graph are in the green doing the same things, you're good to go.

2. Can't speak as to that.

3. The days where you can compare CPUs directly by they clock speed (GHz) are long past. Long past as in: about a decade. The only time you can compare directly like that are two CPUs of the same generation, and same family (and even then, numbers can deceive). Remember old Pentium 4's? The last ones ran at 3.6GHz +. The current iPhone's processor would run circles around those and is clocked at what, 1.85GHz I believe, to give you an idea.

Architecture are instruction sets are more important and relevant to speed in CPU than actual clock. To reflect on what the poster above me said. You computer's CPU is roughly 8% faster in multi-core tasks, despite being clocked lower.

 

[Weaselboy]

1. I'm guessing you went from an older OS X version to El Capitan on the new machine. The newer versions of OS X are much more aggressive about pre-caching things and making use of all available memory and what you are seeing is normal. Just look in activity monitor at the bottom of the memory tab. If the memory pressure section there is in the green, you have plenty of memory. With 16GB I would be shocked if anything you did every put memory pressure out of the green.

2. If Spotlight indexing is complete, this is definitely not normal. I'm guessing you have some sort of driver or third party utility that got migrated over that is incompatible with El Capitan. To troubleshoot, hold the shifty key at startup to boot to safe mode. That is a test mode that stops all launch and startup items from running. If that fixes it, then we know you have a launch or startup item causing this problem. If safe mode fixes it, come back here and let me know then I'l explain some steps to help ID the problem.

3. snaky69 covered the CPU issue well I'd say.

 

[brentsg]

I've never understood why people want to make sure their RAM is unused. I want to make sure mine IS used.

New Mac computers need to index everything. The fan will settle. I had the same experience on a new Surface Pro 4, where the thing ran the fan like mad for the first day or two.

 

[Spudlicious]

1. I'm guessing you went from an older OS X version to El Capitan on the new machine. The newer versions of OS X are much more aggressive about pre-caching things and making use of all available memory and what you are seeing is normal. Just look in activity monitor at the bottom of the memory tab. If the memory pressure section there is in the green, you have plenty of memory. With 16GB I would be shocked if anything you did every put memory pressure out of the green.

2. If Spotlight indexing is complete, this is definitely not normal. I'm guessing you have some sort of driver or third party utility that got migrated over that is incompatible with El Capitan. To troubleshoot, hold the shifty key at startup to boot to safe mode. That is a test mode that stops all launch and startup items from running. If that fixes it, then we know you have a launch or startup item causing this problem. If safe mode fixes it, come back here and let me know then I'l explain some steps to help ID the problem.

3. snaky69 covered the CPU issue well I'd say.

1. The guy restored from Timemachine - he's got the same OS and all software.

 

[Weaselboy]

1. The guy restored from Timemachine - he's got the same OS and all software.

No he did not restore. He migrated (see quote below) which is not the same thing. A migration does not bring over the OS, it only brings over the apps and settings as well as the user account and personal data. So if you have apps and utilities on say a Yosemite Time Machine backup then migrate the to a new El Capitan install there is a potential for apps that worked fine on Yosemite to now not work on El Capitan and cause issues like OP is seeing.

Doing a safe mode boot like I described will stop all those apps and utilities from running and tell you if that is the problem.

I used a time machine backup migrate to the new MacBook Pro and I am noticing one or two things that seem weird so I thought it might be a good idea to consult you all for unbiased advice:

 

[waxonwaxoff]

Well I did say migrated but I migrated by restoring from a time machine backup. Maybe I mislead unintentionally. I got the new Mac started it up and then straight away restored from a TM backup that I had just got from the old mbp. So I had the old OS, settings, apps, etc etc

Anyway the fan has got a bit better but it still does its nut more often than on the old mbp. I went to the activity monitor as some of you suggested to check my RAM usage that graph at the bottom was green flat lining so that's a good sign; however I did run both the old mbp and the new side by side running the same apps opening the same photoshop, zbrush and c4d files and also just a standing review with nothing open and I did see that the old mbp ram usage for the same apps was always 1/3 to 1/2 lower. Standing test was 7gb ram Vs. 4gb ram so still not sure why Ram usage is so much higher on the new one when the apps and OS are exactly the same, maybe it's a retina thing.... (Can you tell yet I don't know my ass from my elbow on tech matters).

Brentsg, you mentioned that you want to be using all your ram, and why worry so much about not using it. I totally get what your saying and normally I'd agree but on the old mbp I had some psd files that whilst working on them would eat 7 - 10 gb. On the new Mbp it doesn't look like I will have enough left to begin with.

Maybe I am worrying about nothing, I don't know how these things are done so I guess I was hoping that one of you would have an good explanation that the new mbp does things a little differently and it will easil be able to handle all the stuff I through at the 3 year old version.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Well I did say migrated but I migrated by restoring from a time machine backup. Maybe I mislead unintentionally. I got the new Mac started it up and then straight away restored from a TM backup that I had just got from the old mbp. So I had the old OS, settings, apps, etc etc

Terminology problems. Did you first boot your new machine with the TM drive connected? When you launched your new machine it will have started Setup Assistant which, after doing the country and wifi stuff, gives you the option to migrate data from your old machine before creating a user on the new machine. Setup Assistant will import you old users accounts with same UUIDS, and apps and setting, (depending on your selections) but it will not import your old OS. This sounds like what you did and is the optimum way to commission a new machine, unless doing a fresh from scratch install.

It is possible to simply restore a TM backup to another machine, starting booted from the Recovery Partition. This is a bit like cloning from a backup, and will put the old OS back on the new machine if possible....but don't know what would happen with a three year gap between machine hardware. What was the OS installed on your 2012 machine? and what is now on your 2015 machine?

I do not generally believe in fresh installs, but I did one machine upgrade a few years ago by the Setup Assistant method and it was not happy. I ended up erasing and reinstalling with zero migration of old apps and settings. I have since done three machine upgrades by the SA method which have been fine.

 

[Weaselboy]

Well I did say migrated but I migrated by restoring from a time machine backup. Maybe I mislead unintentionally. I got the new Mac started it up and then straight away restored from a TM backup that I had just got from the old mbp. So I had the old OS, settings, apps, etc etc

Like Mike mentioned, I think we have a terminology issue here and I suspect you migrated rather than restored. Right after you started the new machine did you follow the prompts when it asked if you wanted to import from a Time Machine backup?

Have you tried the safe mode boot I mentioned to eliminate any launch or startup items that may be conflicting with the new OS version?

 

[snaky69]

Well I did say migrated but I migrated by restoring from a time machine backup. Maybe I mislead unintentionally. I got the new Mac started it up and then straight away restored from a TM backup that I had just got from the old mbp. So I had the old OS, settings, apps, etc etc

Anyway the fan has got a bit better but it still does its nut more often than on the old mbp. I went to the activity monitor as some of you suggested to check my RAM usage that graph at the bottom was green flat lining so that's a good sign; however I did run both the old mbp and the new side by side running the same apps opening the same photoshop, zbrush and c4d files and also just a standing review with nothing open and I did see that the old mbp ram usage for the same apps was always 1/3 to 1/2 lower. Standing test was 7gb ram Vs. 4gb ram so still not sure why Ram usage is so much higher on the new one when the apps and OS are exactly the same, maybe it's a retina thing.... (Can you tell yet I don't know my ass from my elbow on tech matters).

Brentsg, you mentioned that you want to be using all your ram, and why worry so much about not using it. I totally get what your saying and normally I'd agree but on the old mbp I had some psd files that whilst working on them would eat 7 - 10 gb. On the new Mbp it doesn't look like I will have enough left to begin with.

Maybe I am worrying about nothing, I don't know how these things are done so I guess I was hoping that one of you would have an good explanation that the new mbp does things a little differently and it will easil be able to handle all the stuff I through at the 3 year old version.

If you go to the Apple menu and click about this mac, what version OS X is the 2012 running, and what version is the 2015 running?

If they are the same, you restored from time machine. If they aren't, you migrated.