2015 Macbook Pro's Intel Iris 6100 is so choppy in Yosemite

[Pinkiy]

If I understood OP correctly, they were able to resolve the issue by resetting PRAM? Or did I miss something?

no but their are 3 people with the issue, including myself. so i just think its prudent to wait for more feedback that it worked. rather than a solution for 1 individual.

dont get me wrong i hope it works so mine will not sound like its working hard all the time

 

[Samuelsan2001]

It's a software issue

So today I bought a new 2015 13" Macbook Pro after finally giving up on waiting out Apple for a retina display on my aging Macbook Air. I am experiencing extremely poor GUI performance.

I know that retina displays are taxing on GPUs, but the Intel 6000 series seems incapable of driving this display without extreme choppiness in Yosemite for a number of actions— mission control, switching between windows, opening new windows, etc. This is the most significant lag I've experienced on any laptop on Yosemite. My old 2010 Macbook Pro 13" doesn't lag this bad on Yosemite.

Is this the experience of others here? The performance is so bad that I'm going to return the laptop if it doesn't improve because it severely impedes on the usability of the system. Also it is BRAND NEW!

UPDATE: Resetting the PRAM may fix this issue for you— it fixed it for me.

It's been with us since mavericks and the transparency in Yosemite doesn't help. A PRAM reset can help and so can a clean install and turning down transparency in settings.

Really is a bit rubbish of apple not to have sorted this yet the iGPU is easily powerful enough for the screen they have arm processors pushing these sort of pixels on some tablets..

 

[diesel]

2015 Macbook Pro's Intel Iris 6100 is so choppy in Yosemite

It's been with us since mavericks and the transparency in Yosemite doesn't help. A PRAM reset can help and so can a clean install and turning down transparency in settings.



Really is a bit rubbish of apple not to have sorted this yet the iGPU is easily powerful enough for the screen they have arm processors pushing these sort of pixels on some tablets..

The iGPU is indeed up to the task of powering the retina screen without issues on the 2015 rMBP. Just like the previous haswell based igpus were. I would guess most everyone having problems did a restore from backup vs just a clean setup from out of the box and as a result brought over an app or something else that might not be fully compatible with something in the new systems.

That does not necessarily mean you have a lemon or a hardware issue and before exchanging the machine the consensus is try a pram reset first then try a reinstall of the osx and then a clean setup without restoring from backup.

As someone else mentioned, if you do choose to exchange for a new machine you will be playing the screen lottery game so if you are satisfied with your current display I would try the potential solutions first.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

Intel just released new Haswell and Broadwell GPU drivers that I expect will greatly improve performance when make it to OS X in 10.10.4 or 10.11.

 

[cookies!]

The iGPU is indeed up to the task of powering the retina screen without issues on the 2015 rMBP. Just like the previous haswell based igpus were. I would guess most everyone having problems did a restore from backup vs just a clean setup from out of the box and as a result brought over an app or something else that might not be fully compatible with something in the new systems.

That does not necessarily mean you have a lemon or a hardware issue and before exchanging the machine the consensus is try a pram reset first then try a reinstall of the osx and then a clean setup without restoring from backup.

As someone else mentioned, if you do choose to exchange for a new machine you will be playing the screen lottery game so if you are satisfied with your current display I would try the potential solutions first.

Oh wow, I didn't know there were screen issues endemic to this model. I won't exchange it, as I like mine, or at least I haven't noticed any issues.

My laptop had this issue out of the box (a fresh install with none of my apps installed), so I don't think it was my software's fault.

The PRAM reset did work for me, but I did not that it may not work for others.

 

[jclardy]

Did you guys restore from backup? I just upgraded a few days ago with a fresh install and have had no issues, it runs smoother than my 2014 27" iMac.

I upgraded from a 1st gen 13" rMBP with HD4000, you don't know interface lag till you run that thing at 1680x1050 scaled. On here it is like slicing butter.

 

[prism]

Clearly this is an issue with the subpar coding of Yosemite and inefficient use of memory. All those the keep posting that they don't have any choppy GUI issues are either running very few apps or don't understand the problem.
I tend to have at least 20 tabs open in Safari and 10 apps (including 1 vm). I notice the jittering mainly after doing all this, not right after a reboot or even soon after.
If I am mistaken, then it can only be a hardware issue but that would seem highly improbably.

 

[madflava54]

I am having the choppiness with a few apps open as well. I thought resetting the pRAM fixed it. I dropped it to the default resolution and opening consecutive Safari windows causing significant jitteriness. It is not as smooth as I would imagine it. I even upgraded to 16GB of ram so that I would not run into jitteriness for a number of years. Right now, I am pretty disappointed.

 

[prism]

I am having the choppiness with a few apps open as well. I thought resetting the pRAM fixed it. I dropped it to the default resolution and opening consecutive Safari windows causing significant jitteriness. It is not as smooth as I would imagine it. I even upgraded to 16GB of ram so that I would not run into jitteriness for a number of years. Right now, I am pretty disappointed.

What do you mean upgraded to 16gb? You can't upgrade the rMBP ram aftermarket, its soldered.

 

[diesel]

Oh wow, I didn't know there were screen issues endemic to this model. I won't exchange it, as I like mine, or at least I haven't noticed any issues.



My laptop had this issue out of the box (a fresh install with none of my apps installed), so I don't think it was my software's fault.



The PRAM reset did work for me, but I did not that it may not work for others.

There aren't any specific display issues endemic to the new model but I was speaking in general terms regarding the mbp's given the history of the macbook displays. There always exists the possibility that a replacement machine "may" have display issues that the machine you are replacing does not have. So if your display or your machine is perfect in general, I would strongly suggest a fresh install as a final attempt to resolve before exchanging.

 

[Pinkiy]

What do you mean upgraded to 16gb? You can't upgrade the rMBP ram aftermarket, its soldered.

think he means when he bought it from the store, at a guess.

i did ditch safari as it was juddery, now use chrome...

however that was before i did this RAM reset.

 

[madflava54]

What do you mean upgraded to 16gb? You can't upgrade the rMBP ram aftermarket, its soldered.

Yes, I paid for the upgrade....

and it's so weird that there is a lag that is appreciated. Do you guys have this problem? Can someone try opening multiple Safari windows? I just hit command+N and it's just not that smooth.

 

[mattoligy]

I'm going to return my new Macbook Pro for this reason partly and also the fact it's choppy with 1080p mkv playback via HDMI! Even my iPad 3 could achieve this without problem...

Really don't like Intel anymore... I want an ARM OS X / iOS type hybrid OS on a 12" iPad Pro! Just can't believe there is still no touchscreen on the MacBooks and I just can't live without one it just feels weird!

The new 13" Macbook Pro doesn't score much higher than an iPad Air 2 in Geekbench and the next iPad may even be as fast as the Macbook Pro with half the size and weight and a touchscreen... I don't see the point in a 13" Macbook Pro. 15" is a different story as it's twice the power with a dedicated GPU and more screen real estate! Surely if you want the power a desktop OS brings you buy a 15" or a desktop and if you want portability you buy an iPad...

Current day OS X just doesn't work well on a dual core 13" and below screen size and the new Macbook Pro really fails to define it's own purpose... It lacks the power and screen size of a desktop and lacks the portability of an iPad... It's a chore to use as a mobile computer and I think an iMac and an iPad combo is the sweet spot, if you have the money...

Apple are starting to realise this and answered it with the new Macbook, which I won't even get started on as this post is long enough already...

 

[Pinkiy]

my mac has just gone mental with the fan under the keyboard on the right hand side... no idea wha that is there.

also i did check memory usage under the monitor tool

is it normal to be using most of my memory with only chrome open? piccy below.

by the way it went mental when i had twitch open, like the gpu was struggling.

might go see the apple shop this weekend.

 

[duervo]

FWIW, you only have one fan (which is on the right side.)

Also, you are barking up the wrong tree by focusing on RAM as the cause of the fan noise (and, BTW, your RAM usage is perfectly fine. When the "pressure" graph is "yellow", that's when you should start to worry. When it's red, be concerned.)

You need to be looking at what would be causing temperature of your system to increase enough so that the cooling fan had to spin up like it has. Given the stated workload at the time you experienced this symptom, you may want to look at CPU.

Twitch videos use Flash Player for their streams, which is always loaded with Chrome (as it's bundled with that browser,) which is a large part of why Chrome sucks so much butt. Google really needs to rip that crap out of their browser, for starters, but anyway ... Twitch has been working on HTML5 support for over 2 years now, and was supposed to be done with it ages ago. They have gone silent on the subject now (at least from what I have seen,) so no telling when or if they will ever support it.

If you can't live without Twitch, then you will have to live with the fan spinning up to cool the CPU whenever you watch any of their streams.

 

[Pinkiy]

ah cool its good to know about the memory thing.

tbh i know about chrome, flash etc. it was more round to how **** this GPU is at dealing with it random things. stuttery playback, choppy performance generally during window transitions and random fan goes metal just after 2 mins of being turned on when its not even hot

i've tried resetting the SMC this morning see if that fixes the odd fan issue, and hope for an update around the GPU performance.

 

[gen66]

And i'm having exactly this kind of lag on a mid 2014 ,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKzdnm9bHTI

Is this the same issue you are talking about or it's different? Should I try the same fix as you?

 

[madflava54]

http://www.yosemite-ui-lag-fix.com

This oddly has helped my lag; i.e. the increase contrast setting.

 

[Pinkiy]

so i dunno if its a fix really but as mine was a new machine the genius suggested i wipe and re install from scratch incase i got a bad install.

does seem loads better now just on first use. will keep check off it though. he said that if i continue to get the issue return it as maybe i got a duff book

 

[appleminion]

you prob got a lemon... same specs, 16gb ram, 512 ssd, buttery smooth

 

[steveyo]

Check system logs to see if a application is causing it.

I had issues with a A/V software that brought the notebook to a crawl

 

[SBruv]

http://www.yosemite-ui-lag-fix.com

This oddly has helped my lag; i.e. the increase contrast setting.

It's not the increased contrast that helps, it's the reduced transparency that gets automatically turned on with it. It does make a difference, as does running in non-HiDPI mode, resetting PRAM, etc, but the simple truth of it is that the retina display packs too many pixels for Mission Control and Spaces (when sliding from the desktop) to run perfectly smoothly (as they do on my 2013 MBA and 2012 iMac), no matter what resolution you run at.

If you think yours is perfectly smooth, you're not talking about the same issue as me and others here, which is - 100% definitely - present on all 13" retina MBPs running Yosemite (and previous OS X versions, for all I know).

If it doesn't bother you, good for you; but it is an issue for those used to the perfectly smooth Space switching and Mission Control on other Macs.

 

[cookies!]

iStat Menu seems to be another culprit causing major GUI lag. I killed it and I instantly have buttery smooth performance 100% of the time again.

 

[SBruv]

iStat Menu seems to be another culprit causing major GUI lag. I killed it and I instantly have buttery smooth performance 100% of the time again.

By 'killed it', do you just mean turning the menu bar items off in the main iStat interface, or uninstalling it?

 

[saturnotaku]

I mean just look at it. It's ugly...

Yosemite looks great and is the best OS X release since Snow Leopard.