@kyle.demerath, there was a summary written about the work in Paul's Nightly Changelog post:
The API is identical; this was just a rebuild of the internal logic and removing a library dependency. There were some layout issues with the previous carousel that may have forced you to add style to your views (slides) to get them to align correctly. If that's the case, you can remove anything like that. Each slide displays from its top, right corner inside of the carousel.
With regard to the slowness that you mentioned... Can you elaborate on what you are seeing there?
Also, I'd recommend reverting to the stable release of 8.0.10 vs the Release Candidate (RC). RCs may still include bugs and should really be used for testing features/fixes.