On Jul 6, 2016, at 1:59 AM, 'Irrational John' via G-Group <g3-5-list@googlegroups.com> wrote: > > Do you currently run El Capitan on a Core 2 Duo system? If so, how well does > it perform? How responsive is it?
I have a 13” Mid-2009 MacBook Pro 2.26GHz running El Capitan with 8GB RAM & normal HD. I mean to replace the HD with an SSD soon. The limitation in my opinion is the graphics card, the nVidia GeForce 9400M has 256MB DDR3 and the display is limited to 1280x800. This is fine for most video in El Capitan, but occasionally it bogs down a tiny bit. An SSD may help this, but otherwise I notice no extreme performance issues. The big issue recently has been some sort of SMC bug (theoretical, but lots of anecdotal evidence of similar symptoms) that causes the fan to run slow and the laptop to overheat. This model overheats easily under load, and overheating results in either a random panic (meaning the panic logs show random backtraces that are non-repeatable) or a black screen reboot without a panic log being generated. The only solution seems to be to install a 3rd-party fan manager and crank up the fan manually so the temperature remains low, then everything is ok. Apple seems to be aware of this issue, which appear to have not existed in El Capitan 10.11.0 thru 10.11.3, and was introduced in 10.11.4 & 10.11.5. People are hoping that 10.11.6 will have a fix for this SMC bug. The reason it’s thought to be an SMC bug is that when the problem manifests, it persists over reboots, but resetting the SMC seems to eliminate the problem for a short period. This issue affects several older models of MacBook & Macbook Pro. I also have a 2009 Mini with 8GB with El Capitan 10.11.5, no SMC problem, it’s a slight faster 2.53GHz CPU, and has the same minor graphics limitation, so occasionally it bogs on 1920x1080 video. -- -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "G-Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to g3-5-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
