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10.6.5 is throttling the 330M

M

Moses

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 7, 2006
42
0
I have a MBP, 17 inch i7. I have it set to use the 330M full-time, by unchecking the option in the energy saver preferences

Ever since 10.6.5 was installed, the 330M is being throttled, much like if the MBP was dynamically selecting between the Intel graphics and the 330M based on the graphics workload.

So, for example, if I bring up dashboard for the first time, the animation is a little jerky, but after that initial time the animation is smoother, as if the 330M has been turned up by the operating system informing it that more horsepower is required. After a few seconds however, if I again bring up dashboard, the animation is jerky again.

Similar patterns can be observed with expose and other graphics-intensive operations.

I find this annoying - I want the 330M running as it was in 10.6.4 - everything smooth, all the time.

Any way to fix this? I tried the macgfxswitcher app, and it doesn't fix the problem, as the issue isn't with the 330M not being used, it definitely is, it's with 10.6.5 throttling its performance.
 
i brought this exact issue up in the 10.6.5 is released thread on the front page. no idea whats going on but its EXACTLY happening to me. its extremely annoying. i tried gfxcardstatus 1.6 and 2.0 beta and still no dice. i was honestly thinking of reformatting and manually downloading/installing the 10.6.4 update and skipping 10.6.5. :mad:

glad to see someone else realizes this besides me. :)
 
I've been experiencing this too with the first launch icon bounce on the dock everytime I start an app. Not sure how to fix this without Apple releasing a fix.
 
Your only evidence of this is that the dashboard is jerky and the dock icon bounce stutters at times?

Even the crappy graphics card in the first ever Intel Macbook is more than powerful enough to drive dashboard smoothly.

What's actually happening is that your computer is having to load all of the dashboard widgets from disk, which takes time and causes the jerky animations. Once they're in memory, they don't have to be loaded from disk anymore and the animations are smooth. However, after a period of not being used, the system removes them from memory and next time you invoke dashboard they need to be loaded from disk again, which makes them stutter once more.

I have a three month old 27" iMac with an ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB of VRAM, and it does exactly the same thing.
 
I have 10.6.5 in my system and when I hit the dashboard button everything is smooth but I have not checked the option to use nvidia chip all the time.

what speed is your HDD?
 
I have a 15" on 1680x1050 and I am not seeing this phenomenon, so it's probably not a universal problem.

We have to figure out what the people with the problem have in common.
 
hmm well I have a lower spec to yours and we are both fine...

only common thing is the fact they have checked the option not use the intel graphics option
 
Kenndac said:
What's actually happening is that your computer is having to load all of the dashboard widgets from disk, which takes time and causes the jerky animations. Once they're in memory, they don't have to be loaded from disk anymore and the animations are smooth. However, after a period of not being used, the system removes them from memory and next time you invoke dashboard they need to be loaded from disk again, which makes them stutter once more.
Click to expand...
Not after a few seconds. That's much too aggressive. I see my widgets swapped out of memory after a restart, or a couple days of not using them. The OP is seeing the stuttering after a few seconds of not being used.
 
How many dashboard widgets are you running? Any that display photos or update live from the internet?

My i7 15" is perfectly smooth with dashboard but I just have Weather and iStat along with some static widgets that only do something if you interact with them (Calculator, calendar, etc.)
 
Kenndac said:
Your only evidence of this is that the dashboard is jerky and the dock icon bounce stutters at times?

Even the crappy graphics card in the first ever Intel Macbook is more than powerful enough to drive dashboard smoothly.

What's actually happening is that your computer is having to load all of the dashboard widgets from disk, which takes time and causes the jerky animations. Once they're in memory, they don't have to be loaded from disk anymore and the animations are smooth. However, after a period of not being used, the system removes them from memory and next time you invoke dashboard they need to be loaded from disk again, which makes them stutter once more.

I have a three month old 27" iMac with an ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB of VRAM, and it does exactly the same thing.
Click to expand...

i remember how jerky the animations would be with my old mbp with the 9400M - it was annoying. when i switched to the 9600GT, everything would be smooth. even my dads old mbp (santa rosa, 2.2ghz, 4GB of ram, 8600GT 128MB) doesnt have this jerkiness and he is updated to 10.6.5. if the gpu is integrated, i can understand the jerkiness, but if its dedicated, there is NO excuse.

it never used to do this on my machine starting from 10.6.3 and 10.6.4 - it would be totally smooth after loading the first time, but in 10.6.5, even after a few seconds of opening dashboard or expose, it would immediately begin to have to jerky animations. if i leave it alone for a couple of seconds, up to a minute - it would go back to the jerky animations. ill even take a video and post it later (have to get to class now :mad:).

i guess i will try reinstalling the 10.6.5 update - i really dont want to have to reformat again and stick with 10.6.4, unless there is a way to downgrade, which i dont believe there is.
 
Not running any heavy widgets, just standard apple clock, calculator. Definitely an issue with 10.6.5 throttling the GPU.

I'm running the Apple-supplied 256GB SSD, otherwise a very vanilla i7 17 inch.

Also, to clarify, the initial animation isn't horribly juddery, I'd say it's probably 15-20fps, it just isn't the super-smooth 30fps+ it was before this patch.
 
Moses said:
Not running any heavy widgets, just standard apple clock, calculator. Definitely an issue with 10.6.5 throttling the GPU.

I'm running the Apple-supplied 256GB SSD, otherwise a very vanilla i7 17 inch.

Also, to clarify, the initial animation isn't horribly juddery, I'd say it's probably 15-20fps, it just isn't the super-smooth 30fps+ it was before this patch.
Click to expand...

Its not "definitely an issue" It could be a lot of other things besides the gpu being throttled. Bad programming? Bad update install? Have you tried repairing permissions? There are many, many possible causes.
 
With my 9600M I get a little jerkiness when initially opening the dashboard, of course I have 8+ widgets. My dock works fine though...maybe it's just a glitch specific to the 330M?
 
I agree with the OP about EXACTLY his experiences. I can't say if it's caused by a throttling of the GPU, but it's really disappointing because I was looking forward to 10.6.5 to make the effects smoother due to graphics card driver updates. I think the people who don't consider it an issue is only because they don't consider that jerkiness as actually jerkiness at all. I know because I've asked other people who claim no jerkiness but I'll check myself, and it'll do exactly what the OP describes.
 
aimbdd said:
Its not "definitely an issue" It could be a lot of other things besides the gpu being throttled. Bad programming? Bad update install? Have you tried repairing permissions? There are many, many possible causes.
Click to expand...

I reinstalled from scratch, clean system, combo update from 10.6.

Same problem.

Definitely a 10.6.5 issue, I'm sticking with my throttling theory, based on its behavior.

This isn't a huge issue, but it's an issue - either an undocumented feature (which I would like the option to turn off, thus giving me full 330M performance) or a bug.
 
Last edited:
Moses said:
I reinstalled from scratch, clean system, combo update from 10.6.

Same problem.

Definitely a 10.6.5 issue, I'm sticking with my throttling theory, based on its behavior.

This isn't a huge issue, but it's an issue - either an undocumented feature (which I would like the option to turn off, thus giving me full 330M performance) or a bug.
Click to expand...

Mine does it too on my 9600m. I still disagree.
 
It's very smooth with both the Intel GPU and the 330m normally.

However, when I run a heavy game, I do notice that the first "effect" is a bit jerky and after that it is very smooth.

I think it's a power management thing. Why else you think MBP get good battery life in OS X, but not in Windows ( some laptops have bigger batteries than a MBP but still get worse battery life, so OS X is doing some tricks ).

I think Apple should disable power savings when it's plugged in imo.

There is no jerkiness normally if I don't run a heavy game ( like starcraft II ) in the background on the first launch of the effect on my MBP.

edit: Now all effects seem to be very smooth at the first launch while running a game? Seems I can't reproduce the problem.
 
Are you sure they're "very smooth"? Because I would never consider both the Intel and Nvidia equally "very smooth". In fact, I wouldn't consider the Intel smooth at all. I fear we just have different opinions of what "smooth" actually means. Nevertheless, if I had to deal with the jerkiness of the animation with the Intel while plugged in (and didn't have something like the 330m to use), I would've returned my Macbook Pro a while back.

I could deal with the jerkiness on battery power because I'll take the extra battery power.
 
I tried deleting the .kext, but I can't tell any difference. Maybe I need to manually edit it? I need to know the appropriate values though.

EDIT: Wait, actually, I think that initial jerkiness is gone.
 
karohan said:
Are you sure they're "very smooth"? Because I would never consider both the Intel and Nvidia equally "very smooth". In fact, I wouldn't consider the Intel smooth at all. I fear we just have different opinions of what "smooth" actually means. Nevertheless, if I had to deal with the jerkiness of the animation with the Intel while plugged in (and didn't have something like the 330m to use), I would've returned my Macbook Pro a while back.

I could deal with the jerkiness on battery power because I'll take the extra battery power.
Click to expand...

At older updates, the Intel was laggy/jerky sometimes, but with not this version. So I know what you mean about jerky behavior. I can honestly say that it's very smooth now, comparable to the 330m.

It's all software/drivers, because my old laptop does far more complex animations in Linux without a problem which has an older/weaker Intel GPU.

Maybe you have something running in the background that's causing it?
 
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