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Full Version: Dolphin and OS X El Capitan
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 Just yesterday I upgraded from Yosemite to El Capitan and tested Dolphin to see how it performs on my Macbook Pro Retina 13'' late 2013, using the new OS. If you want a quick answer, it's that [color=#333399]Dolphin runs fine in El Capitan[/color] (at least for me!). If you want to upgrade, but you worry about just Dolphin, it's most possible that you can go ahead. But before doing so, don't forget to check if your other apps are going to work properly after the upgrade! It would also be better if you first read other threads or posts about how Dolphin runs in El Capitan, because you never know!

 I wanted to compare how Dolphin runs with El Capitan vs Yosemite in this thread, but there are no important differences to note. The Dolphin interface appears fine with the new default font El Capitan brings. Games run neither faster, nor slower and I haven't found any new graphics issues. The old known graphics issues continue to be present, since Apple brought Metal, which is a new graphics api but didn't do anything about the OpenGL drivers (just as I suspected Dodgy ).

• The only difference I noticed (concerning Dolphin of course) is that transition to full screen and out of it is much faster than before and not just in Dolphin, but in Youtube as well. Sometimes the fullscreen transition in Yosemite would take a long time (2 or even 2.5 seconds), especially if the system was overheating, which was a little frustrating. Now it takes less than 1 second for Dolphin to go to fullscreen.

If you're reading this and you have tested Dolphin in the new OS, reply.
The Metal API is faster because it's a very different API that more closely matches the graphics hardware, not because of some optimizations that could be applied to OpenGL. Nothing has changed for OpenGL, because there isn't anything new from the Metal API that could apply to OpenGL.
(10-02-2015, 01:34 AM)Armada Wrote: [ -> ]The Metal API is faster because it's a very different API that more closely matches the graphics hardware, not because of some optimizations that could be applied to OpenGL. Nothing has changed for OpenGL, because there isn't anything new from the Metal API that could apply to OpenGL.

Well apparently the Metal drivers are also just generally better than the neglected OpenGL drivers.  
Just installed El Capitan (fresh install) and did a quick test with Dolphin, the performance seems the same. Will do some more tests later.

My MacBook is quitte old and don't support Metal :'(
Metal's not automatic,  it's a seperate path.  Also it has specific regressions in certain tasks compared to OpenGL