5.5 is higher for max effort, slightly higher for xhigh and lower for high, medium and low effort.
The biggest proportional difference seems to be at max (5.5 is 38% more) and at high (5.5 is 21% less).
I think most people run at high and xhigh. At xhigh it is close enough to be task dependent and I don't think most people will notice. At high effort I think it looks like it will be an improvement for most people.
5.5 Max should probably be compared to Fable - it performs a lot better than 5 Max.
https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/claude-opus-5-5?models=...