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Cassadian

macrumors regular
Sep 4, 2012
140
0
Any updates on whether or not certain issues were fixed for users with the Retina?

Thanks for all the hardwork you've put into this program!
 

bitninja

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 16, 2007
236
0
San Jose, CA, USA
Any updates on whether or not sleep issues were fixed for users with the Retina?

I haven't done anything specifically in this release to address that, no – I haven't been able to reproduce it at all on my new rMBP. To be honest, there's probably nothing I can do to fix it if it's an OS-level issue. :/
 

appletwig

macrumors newbie
Aug 10, 2012
28
0
Strange that i can replicate screen tearing on every macbook retina i come across and you cant.
 

Ledgem

macrumors 68020
Jan 18, 2008
2,034
924
Hawaii, USA
I only recently discovered this program and started using it, but it's fantastic. I'm looking forward to seeing what the update brings, and thank you very much for your work!
 

Blue Sun

macrumors 6502a
Feb 11, 2009
984
327
Australia
Cody,

Thanks for making this little program - very handy. And a second thanks for regularly updating it (I'm using a 2010 MBP so the new version is very much appreciated).

Cheers.
 

Eithanius

macrumors 68000
Nov 19, 2005
1,541
411
What was the issue again on 2010 MBP...? I've been using gfxCardStatus for many months without issue...

Any screenshots for that...?
 

swamyg1

macrumors regular
Dec 11, 2007
234
76
Can you explain why power based switching was removed from the "advanced" section in preferences? I thought that was the whole point of having this little app... Unless I'm missing something?
 

bitninja

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 16, 2007
236
0
San Jose, CA, USA
Can you explain why power based switching was removed from the "advanced" section in preferences? I thought that was the whole point of having this little app... Unless I'm missing something?

If that was the whole point of gfxCardStatus, I wouldn't have buried the settings under the Advanced tab in preferences. :p

Power source-based switching was removed because a) it has never worked 100% properly, and was causing an unbelievable amount of problems for some people, and b) I get several hundred support emails about it per month. I just don't have the time to deal with that anymore. Rather than spend a ton of time trying to fix it, it's being removed altogether, because it's largely unnecessary if you're on 10.8 at this point.

gfxCardStatus is, first and foremost, a diagnostic utility. The recommended way to use it is to just start it up, and not touch anything – leave it in Dynamic Switching mode. That way, you know when something is draining your battery, and you can send a note to the developer(s) of those apps, and ask them to fix it (unless the app has a good reason to use the discrete GPU, like Photoshop, Keynote, iPhoto, games, etc.).

Having Integrated Only mode available is convenient when you really need to squeeze some extra battery life out of your machine, but it's not what you should be running in 100% of the time. There's a good reason that OS X's automatic graphics switching is on by default – so that there can be a relative balance between graphics performance and battery life. It just so happened that in the 10.6 and 10.7 days, it was mostly the former, because nearly every other app caused the discrete GPU to come on. In 10.8, that has largely been resolved.

tl;dr – use Dynamic Switching.
 

swamyg1

macrumors regular
Dec 11, 2007
234
76
Thanks for taking the time to explain this. Great development work, thanks for totally saving my battery and improving my Retina experience!
 

terraphantm

macrumors 68040
Jun 27, 2009
3,814
661
Pennsylvania
If that was the whole point of gfxCardStatus, I wouldn't have buried the settings under the Advanced tab in preferences. :p

Power source-based switching was removed because a) it has never worked 100% properly, and was causing an unbelievable amount of problems for some people, and b) I get several hundred support emails about it per month. I just don't have the time to deal with that anymore. Rather than spend a ton of time trying to fix it, it's being removed altogether, because it's largely unnecessary if you're on 10.8 at this point.

gfxCardStatus is, first and foremost, a diagnostic utility. The recommended way to use it is to just start it up, and not touch anything – leave it in Dynamic Switching mode. That way, you know when something is draining your battery, and you can send a note to the developer(s) of those apps, and ask them to fix it (unless the app has a good reason to use the discrete GPU, like Photoshop, Keynote, iPhoto, games, etc.).

Having Integrated Only mode available is convenient when you really need to squeeze some extra battery life out of your machine, but it's not what you should be running in 100% of the time. There's a good reason that OS X's automatic graphics switching is on by default – so that there can be a relative balance between graphics performance and battery life. It just so happened that in the 10.6 and 10.7 days, it was mostly the former, because nearly every other app caused the discrete GPU to come on. In 10.8, that has largely been resolved.

tl;dr – use Dynamic Switching.

What about those of us who left it a dynamic while on battery and discrete only while plugged in? On the rMBP especially the UI is smoother with the discrete GPU running, and I don't particularly care about power consumption while plugged in.

I think it would be better to leave the feature in along with a disclaimer saying it's an unsupported feature and you will not offer any guarantees about its functionality

Then there are some apps, like VLC, that may very well make good use of the discrete GPU on slower machines, but work fine on newer iGPUs.

I understand it's your app and of course you're free to do what you want. But I personally (as well as many others I presume) found some of the abilities in the old versions to be quite useful, and would really appreciate if you were willing to add such features back to the advanced tab along with a disclaimer of all warranties. Or even make it a part of a paid version or something
 
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Mabyboi

macrumors 6502
Apr 23, 2010
489
0
Ontario, Canada
I personally loved using the power based switching, I just set it to force integrated when on battery and dedicated when plugged in. It helps a lot, I suggest putting it back in with a disclaimer or something..
 

bitninja

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 16, 2007
236
0
San Jose, CA, USA
I understand it's your app and of course you're free to do what you want. But I personally (as well as many others I presume) found some of the abilities in the old versions to be quite useful, and would really appreciate if you were willing to add such features back to the advanced tab along with a disclaimer of all warranties.

I imagine that the UI choppiness will improve over time as the graphics drivers get better – totally understand why you'd want to be on the discrete GPU while plugged in in this case. Intel's HD 4000 chipset is such a huge improvement over previous models, it's just a shame they had to go and add 4x as many pixels to the screen, because it makes it seem like it's a lot worse than it is in reality. :p

Rather than working around the choppiness with a hack, though, you may want to just file a bug report with Apple at http://bugreport.apple.com if you have a developer account, or http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html otherwise. If lots of people write in about the issue, they'll give it the attention it deserves, and then it'll be properly fixed without needing a 3rd-party app to fiddle with things.

Mabyboi said:
I personally loved using the power based switching, I just set it to force integrated when on battery and dedicated when plugged in. It helps a lot, I suggest putting it back in with a disclaimer or something..

In what case does it help you a lot? Are there particular apps that you run that made you want to use power source-based switching? Almost every app (aside from Skype and Chrome, which are both garbage) that needs to use the discrete GPU at this point has a good reason to if you're on 10.8 (and if you're not, you should upgrade).

The issue with just putting the disclaimer in there is that I would probably still get a large volume of support requests. People don't ever want to read disclaimers. The only way I could get anyone's attention about this was to entirely remove it, and make everyone think about whether or not they really need the feature anymore. For most everyone, the answer should be no.

Think about it: this whole app wouldn't have even been necessary if GPU switching had worked really well out of the box in 2010 machines. Rather than hacking around the actual problem forever, gfxCardStatus is great to use as an informational tool to let you know when an app isn't behaving like you want it to. Then, you can get in touch with the author and/or Apple and tell them that the behavior isn't acceptable to you as it stands.

If everyone does that, nobody will need gfxCardStatus at all in the future. Wouldn't that be great? ;)
 

davidlv

macrumors 68020
Apr 5, 2009
2,291
874
Kyoto, Japan
Despite the thread's title, non-beta ver. 2.3 is now available at the authors HP; :cool::D:cool:
http://codykrieger.com/
and Macupdate.com, etc.
Am setting up a new 2011 refurbished MBP now, will install this soon. Thanks in advance for all of the hard work! :cool:
 

rev.b

macrumors regular
May 1, 2009
232
0
Portugal
I just updated to 2.3 and I was very disapointed to find that it's impossible to force integrated only because:

gfxCardStatus v2.3 and above actively prevents you from switching to Integrated Only mode when any apps are in the Dependencies list (or if you have an external display plugged in). This is because if you were to do this, your discrete GPU would actually stay powered on, even though you've switched to the integrated GPU.

I'm sorry, but you are telling that gfxCardStatus (that I tought one of the most useful piece of software I have in my MBP and that I have gladly donated some $$) was, all of this time, basically doing... nothing? Forcing integrated mode only kept the discrete chip powered on, wasting battery?

If it can't force integrated mode only, what's the point??

Please explain this to me.
 

rev.b

macrumors regular
May 1, 2009
232
0
Portugal
Ok, I think I just figured it out. It doesn't allow to force to integrated until you quit all the dependent apps; then if you force integrated, starting those apps again will not switch to discrete video card.

Ok, that's very usefull if forcing integrated while running a "bad" app would not power down the discrete GPU, but I thought gfxcardstatus was doing it correctly from the beginning. So 90% of the time, I was actually running on low performance integrated intel and the Radeon GPU was actually draining battery... :eek:
 

bitninja

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 16, 2007
236
0
San Jose, CA, USA
Ok, I think I just figured it out. It doesn't allow to force to integrated until you quit all the dependent apps; then if you force integrated, starting those apps again will not switch to discrete video card.

Ok, that's very usefull if forcing integrated while running a "bad" app would not power down the discrete GPU, but I thought gfxcardstatus was doing it correctly from the beginning. So 90% of the time, I was actually running on low performance integrated intel and the Radeon GPU was actually draining battery... :eek:

In many cases, probably, yeah. It's unfortunate that it took this long to get this new behavior into the app that prevents you from switching in that case. I had info on this in the FAQ for the longest time, too, but nobody ever read it. :/
 

rev.b

macrumors regular
May 1, 2009
232
0
Portugal
In many cases, probably, yeah. It's unfortunate that it took this long to get this new behavior into the app that prevents you from switching in that case. I had info on this in the FAQ for the longest time, too, but nobody ever read it. :/

Yup, you're right. I didn't knew forcing integrated had this limitation.
Thanks.
 
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