Plotting much slower in 2016b vs 2014a, not large # of markers.

I've seen a number of posts about relative slowness plotting large numbers of markers after 2014b, but in my case, I'm plotting only a dozen or so semi-transparent patch objects. Plots were immediate in 2014a, but painfully slow (seconds) on 2016b. This is with software rendering.

Is this a known thing, and is there anything I can do to help it? I can move up to more a more recent version if things are improved.