I just compared Blender 2.69’s and 2.7’s hair rendering in Cycles.
Version 2.7 is 3-4% slower on my Mac.
Please move this thread to another forum if it isn’t relevant here…
I cant really help but Im just going to ask the obvious stuff so you can say yes/no, so when someone who does know what they are talking about sees this they don’t have to ask them.
Have you set your GPU in preferences, when you upgrade blender it resets your preferencesthat may include you GPU preference.
Are your drivers up to date?
Are all your setting the same?
Where you using an optimized build before?
theres a lot of stuff over at developer.blender.org talking about cycles slow down im sure they will find something to fix it soon
Cycles is going to get slower before it gets faster as more features are added and the kernel increases in size. It’s not worth making a post about every time it happens, as the devs are well aware of all render time changes.
No, upgrading doesn’t modify preferences.
Also, this was a CPU test; not a GPU test. I should have mentioned that. I posted this in the first place because 2.7’s CPU performance - hair rendering in particular - is supposed to be improved, according to the release notes.
No settings or drivers were changed between testing 2.69 and 2.7.
Thank you - that’s good to hear!
Moved from “General Forums > Latest News” to “Support > Technical Support”
You could at least try to post this in the correct forum. Latest News? Really? </mini_rant>
Well, the 2.7 release notes said the opposite.
At any rate, I’m not complaining at all, just stating the facts. And I’m sure 3% slow-down is relevant to some users.
I’m also sure it will be fixed. 
Um, so it’s relevant that the new and faster 2.7 is released - but not that it’s slower than 2.69? </micro_rant>
I don’t want to derail this topic (because it is worth investigating). However, one thread is news. The other (this one) is a support request. Both are relevant.
Fair enough.