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cmChimera

macrumors 601
Feb 12, 2010
4,271
3,753
Which in all probability is the same issue. Again folks :

30" ACD ran at 2560x1600 like 5-6 years ago. GPUs aren't the problem, it's something in the HiDPI software stack.

I personally wouldn't trade my rMBP 15" for the world.

I hope you're right.
 

MacFoodPoisoner

macrumors regular
Dec 1, 2012
150
0
You're saying the same thing I am except making a few wrong assumptions. The resolution isn't doubled then halved at all in HiDPI mode, it's only downscaled after upscaling if you use the scaled modes (1680x1050 or 1920x1200). Running at 1440x900 (2880x1800) only upscales non-Retina graphics to 2880x1800 and leaves it at that. Running 1920x1200 (which I run permenantly) runs a 3840x2400 framebuffer which it then downscales to 2880x1800 for displaying on the display.

And what I've been saying all along is quite correct, the problem is not the pixel pushing ability of the GPU. Pixel fill rates, look them up. Again, if you can't understand that a 4 year old GPU, the 9400m, could power a 30" ACD and that we're now in 2012, 4 years later, with GPUs 3 generations newer, I don't know how to explain it to you.

The 9400m could push 2.32 GP/s. Again, 4 years ago. 2880x1800 at 60 fps is roughly 311 MP/s. Are you getting this ? Even if what you say is true and HiDPI was so horridly optimized as you claim (which it isn't), that's still only half of the pixel fill rate of a now 4 year old Integrated GPU.

Anyway, I own a rMBP 15" and I've hardly met any "lag" whatsoever. I guess some people are just too sensitive. Thank god Apple knows it's a software issue and is fixing it for those people.

----------



The hardware is capable. You just don't understand GPU hardware or HiDPI to make such claims. Anand has always been full of it.

The only thing I agree with you is about the "fullness" of Anand.

I understand perfectly well what I am taking about. You are right though that at native it's just rendered pixel doubled. But in any other scaled mode it's exactly as I decribed it. Let me remind you that the ACD at 30" has a 2560 × 1600, that's about 4 million pixels, in 1920x1200 (and to a lesser extent in 1650x) we are talking about (2x2=4 times) 9.2 million pixels for the video card to draw, and then operate the scaler down to retina resolution. That's two and 1/4 acds. If it's the "software" (and it's simple operations that prove that's not the case) then how come even after ml the ui lags and stutters have not been solved?
 

Risco

macrumors 68000
Jul 22, 2010
1,946
262
United Kingdom
Wow, much better on my MBP without retina! Also seems to have fixed the rendering issues where you get a black line.
 

PalacePlayers

macrumors regular
Oct 5, 2011
106
3
Holy mother of God, I've been waiting for this news since the day I got my retina MacBook Pro. Safari for rMBP has been the single most crappy product they've ever released. It was so bad it's almost impossible to understand how they released it in the first place. Scrolling in sites like facebook and pitchfork was so bad I thought about returning the machine.

However, now that nightly has a fix, what are the chances of this being incorporated in the next Safari update? When do you guys think it will be released?
 

mdriftmeyer

macrumors 68040
Feb 2, 2004
3,795
1,946
Pacific Northwest
Apple didn't do anything, webkit did which is mostly people from KHTML which is what webkit was forked from.

All of WebKit has nothing of KHTML in it. The QTWebKit port is being backported to KDE's structure and I would appreciate if people realized that for the past 5 years nothing from KDE has existed in any Apple WebKit code.
 

myxomatosis

macrumors member
Nov 28, 2012
81
3
Montréal
Installed. Instantly noticed a difference on Facebook, Neowin.net and Gizmodo/Lifehacker.

I’m a happy man, it made my day! Choppy scrolling in Safari was the most annoying thing on my rMBP.
 

JPOWA

macrumors regular
Jun 29, 2010
177
69
This is great not only for the Retina line!

My 15" rMBP is flying now :D And my 2009 iMac too :D
 

KimJongEun

macrumors newbie
Oct 10, 2012
27
0
Hopefully Apple implements this into Safari soon. Scrolling full screen on my top-end 2011 27" iMac is horrible.

My wife, who knows little about computers, even asked me why a $2400 (I live in South Korea) computer couldn't even scroll down a webpage without choking.
 

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
The only thing I agree with you is about the "fullness" of Anand.

I understand perfectly well what I am taking about. You are right though that at native it's just rendered pixel doubled. But in any other scaled mode it's exactly as I decribed it. Let me remind you that the ACD at 30" has a 2560 × 1600, that's about 4 million pixels, in 1920x1200 (and to a lesser extent in 1650x) we are talking about (2x2=4 times) 9.2 million pixels for the video card to draw, and then operate the scaler down to retina resolution. That's two and 1/4 acds. If it's the "software" (and it's simple operations that prove that's not the case) then how come even after ml the ui lags and stutters have not been solved?

Because the software scalers probably aren't yet fully optimized at all. There's probably still a ton of operations left up to the CPU, not the GPU, so it's not fully using the pixel fill rate capability of the GPU and it's getting bogged down by the process scheduler.

Anyway it's moot, most people are not running the scaled modes, using plain old 1440x900 points (2880x1800 pixels) and getting this lag, so it's obvious there's something wrong with Apple's scaler in Quartz Extreme. Let's face it, HiDPI mode is quite new and it's not like Apple has ever been quick at optimizing their graphics stack (look at how long it took them for OpenGL 3.2..).

The GPU itself can do, again, way more than 2.32 GP/s. That's Gigapixels, billions of pixels per seconds. It's quite enough to run the resolution and do proper updating at 60 fps. Something else is amiss in the software stack where we're not getting done with a frame in less than 15 ms (the maximum render time per frame to maintain 60 fps).

I maintain this isn't a hardware problem at all.
 

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
All of WebKit has nothing of KHTML in it. The QTWebKit port is being backported to KDE's structure and I would appreciate if people realized that for the past 5 years nothing from KDE has existed in any Apple WebKit code.

For the last 5 years, WebKit has not been an Apple only project. Heck, 2 years ago, Google surpassed Apple in terms of raw commits to the code base. Of course WebKit has evolved since its days as KHTML, it still is a fork of KHTML, and is maintained by quite a few folk outside of Apple. In fact, Apple aren't even the main contributors anymore.
 

Formul

macrumors member
Jan 29, 2010
99
0
Czech Republic
For the last 5 years, WebKit has not been an Apple only project. Heck, 2 years ago, Google surpassed Apple in terms of raw commits to the code base. Of course WebKit has evolved since its days as KHTML, it still is a fork of KHTML, and is maintained by quite a few folk outside of Apple. In fact, Apple aren't even the main contributors anymore.

Thats all fine, but google keeps a lot of its top improvements in their forked chrome project while everything apple does is available to benefit everyone.
 

CausticPuppy

macrumors 68000
May 1, 2012
1,536
68
So I just installed the latest build.


Holy crap. :eek:


I actually thought Safari behaved pretty well and never had any complaints about scrolling performance, but now my rMBP performs better than any of my other computers in heavy sites like The Verge and Facebook.

And I only have the lowly HD4000.


I hope this makes it into a Safari update!



Oh yeah, it's totally a hardware problem. :rolleyes:
 

Aspen

macrumors regular
Jul 11, 2009
101
1
So why did Apple release a product that clearly wasn't ready yet?

They unfortunately do what all tech companies seem to do. Push out products to the public that are not ready; keeps the profits going. The public is part of the testing ground more frequently now.

I sure hope Apple rights this boat and doesn't end up like Microsoft, Dell, HP, Cisco, etc.

If you are reading this Apple, I sent my 13" rMBP back because of the scroll lag. When you get it fixed, I'll be buying it again but not until then.
 

Melons

macrumors member
Mar 28, 2012
44
1
This just made scrolling even smoother then my high end Windows computer. I do miss chrome though...
 

SethBoy

macrumors regular
Jun 23, 2007
217
632
Does the UI still lag when the rMBP is connected to an external display in clamshell mode?
 

AirThis

macrumors 6502a
Mar 6, 2012
518
14
People here are missing the point. This only fixes the issue for some websites.

- The Verge is still choppy as are many other websites.
- Webkit crashes in double tap mode.
- Webkit slows down the UI frame rate (it's measureable). And no, it's not a memory leak. I did all the tests for that.

Bottom line: not ready for prime time.
 

Snowshiro

macrumors 6502
Jan 12, 2008
387
6
this was specific to bad Safari performance, its looks marginally acceptable in Chrome as it is.

I'm pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that Chrome forces the discrete GPU to fire up (which gives smoother results at the cost of battery life) whereas Safari uses the integrated Intel 4000HD, which is why it was struggling.
 

MacFoodPoisoner

macrumors regular
Dec 1, 2012
150
0
Because the software scalers probably aren't yet fully optimized at all. There's probably still a ton of operations left up to the CPU, not the GPU, so it's not fully using the pixel fill rate capability of the GPU and it's getting bogged down by the process scheduler.

Anyway it's moot, most people are not running the scaled modes, using plain old 1440x900 points (2880x1800 pixels) and getting this lag, so it's obvious there's something wrong with Apple's scaler in Quartz Extreme. Let's face it, HiDPI mode is quite new and it's not like Apple has ever been quick at optimizing their graphics stack (look at how long it took them for OpenGL 3.2..).

The GPU itself can do, again, way more than 2.32 GP/s. That's Gigapixels, billions of pixels per seconds. It's quite enough to run the resolution and do proper updating at 60 fps. Something else is amiss in the software stack where we're not getting done with a frame in less than 15 ms (the maximum render time per frame to maintain 60 fps).

I maintain this isn't a hardware problem at all.

You make a very convincing argument. :) But what if in a typical apple fashion they aim to not optimize the code but offload it to better hardware next year?
 

EEXOOO

macrumors regular
Aug 1, 2009
133
0
I'm using a 1440p external monitor with my CMBP 2011 6490m and noticing significant improvements in scrolling.
 

CausticPuppy

macrumors 68000
May 1, 2012
1,536
68
People here are missing the point. This only fixes the issue for some websites.

- The Verge is still choppy as are many other websites.
- Webkit crashes in double tap mode.
- Webkit slows down the UI frame rate (it's measureable). And no, it's not a memory leak. I did all the tests for that.

Bottom line: not ready for prime time.

Once all the images are loaded (by scrolling once down the entire page) The Verge seems fine for me. I still get some hiccups as images are loaded.

Of course it's not ready for prime time, these are just nightly builds, not Safari release candidates. It does illustrate what can happen when software is optimized.
 
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