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2016 15" MBP UI Lag

overlof said:
Maybe I am crazy, but I see lag(lowering fps) in pretty each action, like changing Desktops, scroll text, typing in IDE in this video. I worked with 2015 rMBP and see no lags here.
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You are not crazy. The UI lag is absolutely there and very apparent in the videos you posted. Especially the lag you see when switching between apps and screens (not just scrolling around in Finder). Anyone who watches those and says otherwise is fooling themselves and/or hasn't experienced the fluidity of the previous generation Macbook Pros.

I had a 2016 15" MBP for 2 weeks and returned it for a 13" touchbar MBP (16GB/512GB/Intel Iris 550) because:

1) I wanted a smaller machine for work travel.
2) I had a hunch that the Intel 530 GPU in the 15" was the culprit and hoped the Intel Iris 550 would solve the UI lag.

However, after using this machine for work/home on a daily basis for over 5 months, the UI lag persists after multiple OS updates and still annoys me every single day. In fact, over the last 2 weeks I've started running into a new issue where the whole computer would appear to just go to sleep with the screen going black, audio turning off and unresponsive for about 5 seconds before the screen/audio turns back on and returns to normal. And no, I'm not a "power user" either.

My daily apps include:
Spark Email
Skype for Business
Excel (moderately sized documents with 4-5 tabs and a few thousand data points)
Slack
Calendar
Safari
Chrome
Spotify


My old 2015 15" MBP handled the same daily usage with absolute ease and never gave me any issues whatsoever. I truly hoped that the UI lag issue was simply due to poor OS optimization and that software updates would fix it. But so far that has not been the case. The worst part has been watching my colleague's Dell XPS 9360 continue to be absolutely flawless for him for many months now, with a very similar workload. He also previously had a 2015 13" MBP, BTW.

I hate to admit it but now that I've discovered that my identical 13" MBP is selling on Swappa for over $1600, I'm seriously considering taking the loss, selling this headache filled machine and making the switch to Dell/Windows. I really wanted to give Apple the benefit of the doubt here but while I absolutely love the overall design of this machine and personally enjoy using the touch bar, for the price point the ui lag and glitchy experience has gone on too long.
 
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sn0warmy said:
I hate to admit it but now that I've discovered that my identical 13" MBP is selling on Swappa for over $1600, I'm seriously considering taking the loss, selling this headache filled machine and making the switch to Dell/Windows. I really wanted to give Apple the benefit of the doubt here but while I absolutely love the overall design of this machine and personally enjoy using the touch bar, for the price point the ui lag and glitchy experience has gone on too long.
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Because of taxes here in Russian Federation I payed 3200 dollars for my tbMBP 15" (modification is only 512 gb ssd), so I feel myself like a scapegoat. I dont like touchbar and these lags drive me crazy every day. I can't imagine what should Apple do with their Pros to make me like idea buying new macbook for next 10 years I think)))
 
I wonder what iGPU will now have the 15" MBP and 13" ? we know what cpu Apple can put inside..maybe the new iGPU will eliminate the UI lag?
 
fokmik said:
I wonder what iGPU will now have the 15" MBP and 13" ? we know what cpu Apple can put inside..maybe the new iGPU will eliminate the UI lag?
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I'm hoping for this as well, I'm only concerned with the iGPU that it's optimized to work smoother with Sierra. If battery goes up an hr that's icing on the cake. 19 more days...
 
I picked up a new 15" MBP (2.7ghz, Pro 460, 1tb) a couple weeks ago and have been seeing the same issues everyone on this forum have talked about. I was in the middle of building a new website for my company and one of the first things I noticed was how poorly the site ran on the new machine. My old 2012 MBA (i7) still runs everything fairly smoothly, and I expected my new $3400 MBP to run circles around it.

One of the best / easiest ways to compare the UI performance of the 2016 MBP against other machines is to open a Javascript heavy site, especially one with parallax. I found this site listed on a blog talking about cool parallax effects: http://www.firewatchgame.com

The site loads and scrolls flawlessly on my MPA, but fails miserably my new MBP. I've tried using Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox all have issues rendering the page's parallax effects (javascript) on the iGPU.

Turning on the dGPU fixes the parallax issues, but it still hangs and stutters more than it should. This is especially noticeable when scrolling through gmail or any long list of content that utilizes JS.

I'm pretty sure this is mainly a software issue and that Apple will eventually get around to fixing it, but I don't understand what's taking them so long.

Two things I'm curious and / or concerned about:

1: Did the UI lag become better or worse with the big Dec update that Apple put out to address the consumer report's negative battery life review? From what I've read Apple "Fixed" some bugs that were causing the graphics switching to not function properly. Now I'm wondering if they throttled the GPU to increase battery life.

2. The fact that Apple is expected to release a refresh in a couple weeks, after the laptop how only been out for about 6 months, is a little concerning. Especially considering the biggest difference between Skylake and Kabylake is optimized graphic performance. More specifically, I'm concerned that Apple has realized that Skylake's iGPU has issues and are switching to Kaby lake rather than addressing the issues for current owners.

Chances are that Apple is switching to Kabylake so MS can't spend the next year bragging that their newly announced Surface Laptop is running the latest gen CPU, while Apple is a gen behind. None the less, I'm seriously considering bring my machine back and waiting it out.

Thoughts?
 
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Just got my 15" MBP with Touchbar a few days ago (256GB model) and can confirm I have the same UI lag issues. When I turn off "Automatic graphics switching" in Energy settings the lag seems to go away - obviously that's not ideal when running on battery, and unfortunately there's no way to set this option to turn off only when the MBP is charging.

The lag is quite noticeable when opening and closing a folder stack set to grid view on the dock. It's also noticeable when switching between spaces in. mission control especially when switching between an app that's say in the first desktop to one that's in the third or fourth desktop. Surprisingly there's no animation lag when opening the Launchpad or Dashboard. Other UI animations like resizing Finder windows are also buttery smooth. This leads me to believe that this is a software issue rather than hardware related.

Hopefully Apple will fix this with a future macOS update.
 
rodiak said:
Just got my 15" MBP with Touchbar a few days ago (256GB model) and can confirm I have the same UI lag issues. When I turn off "Automatic graphics switching" in Energy settings the lag seems to go away This leads me to believe that this is a software issue rather than hardware related.

Hopefully Apple will fix this with a future macOS update.
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Some of us have been waiting for 5 months for Apple to fix this...I'm almost believing this might be fixed with new spec bump and that the new processors might fix this lag. I also saw an improvement when you turned off auto graphics switching box but then battery suffered.
 
Anyone installed the beta yet? The new MBP's have faster IGPU as said in the keynote. Does it mean that the 2016 users are screwed?
 
Looks like High Sierra will fix this finally. Which would be exciting indeed if it's as buttery smooth as on iOS.
 
19george97 said:
Are you running the beta?
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No but from what I got watching the Keynote it seems that stuff like this will be fixed once final release is out. Craig said the UI snappiness was on their list along APFS.
[doublepost=1496740229][/doublepost]Check the keynote around 30:00 minute mark. Craig says they put macOS window server UI on the new Metal framework for buttery smooth UI animations with Mission Control, expose, etc.
 
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Anybody with the 2017 15" pro have any lag with the intel hd 630 for everyday tasks? From what I hear it is slower than the 530 on the 2016.
 
I previously posted in this thread about how the 2016 MBP was giving me lag. I sent those back and waited for the 2017 with Kaby Lake. I've had the 2017 15" for about 4 days and have been running it just like I did with the 2016 and I can tell you there is no lag at all with this 2017 MBP. I have got a few beach balls but nothing like with the 2016 and no real notibale lag. I'm pretty happy about this. So far battery life is about the same which was always good for me even on the 2016.
 
I brought back my 2016 MBP today and plan on picking up the new 2017 next week (ordering online). As I posted earlier, my 2016 was showing lag throughout the UI, which was especially noticeable on website heavy on JavaScript. However, it seemed to run more smoothly over the past couple weeks. This may have just been a matter of the OS caching pages I visited frequently, or maybe browser updates that brought better hardware rendering. Either way, it didn't perform as I would expect a $3000+ laptop should. I'll update everyone on the new machines performance in the next couple weeks once I get my new machine and have had some time to play with it.

In the mean time: @MrGuder How is your new machine handling sites heavy on JS? For Example: http://www.firewatchgame.com/
 
MrGuder said:
I previously posted in this thread about how the 2016 MBP was giving me lag. I sent those back and waited for the 2017 with Kaby Lake. I've had the 2017 15" for about 4 days and have been running it just like I did with the 2016 and I can tell you there is no lag at all with this 2017 MBP. I have got a few beach balls but nothing like with the 2016 and no real notibale lag. I'm pretty happy about this. So far battery life is about the same which was always good for me even on the 2016.
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I have maxed out 2017 MBP 15", and I can tell you the UI lag is still there and the same.

The problem is that both Skylake and KabyLake CPU have the weak intel iGPU inside. Unlike the previous generation where it's using Iris Pro, which is a much better iGPU. Not sure if its the yield issue with Skylake/KabyLake on their quad core. The 2015 MBP 15" have far superior iGPU compare the the latest offering. Hence the reason why latest generation lag in UI pretty badly compare to the older one. The 13" version is using Iris Pro, which is the reason why it doesn't lag as much. You can force using dedicated GPU to fix the problem for 15", but battery will run much faster.

The performance issue was there since first Retina MBP with Maverick. It was fixed in the later version, but broke again in Yosemite until they fixed it again in High Sierra (I believe its due to Metal2 migration). Apple engineering lately have some serious problem.
 
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kreisher said:
I brought back my 2016 MBP today and plan on picking up the new 2017 next week (ordering online). As I posted earlier, my 2016 was showing lag throughout the UI, which was especially noticeable on website heavy on JavaScript. However, it seemed to run more smoothly over the past couple weeks. This may have just been a matter of the OS caching pages I visited frequently, or maybe browser updates that brought better hardware rendering. Either way, it didn't perform as I would expect a $3000+ laptop should. I'll update everyone on the new machines performance in the next couple weeks once I get my new machine and have had some time to play with it.

In the mean time: @MrGuder How is your new machine handling sites heavy on JS? For Example: http://www.firewatchgame.com/
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I'll check that out tonight.

For the most part I agree with shansoft above and that the iGPU is slower than the 2015 MBP. However for me, I've noticed a slightly better iGPU on the 2017. I still am getting a few spinning wheels waiting for webpages to load or even re load when jumping back I'll get the lag waiting for the previous page to load up. I was getting it a lot on the 2016 but not quite as much on the 2017 but after more time with it...it's still there.

I never had this problem in the iGPU on the 2015 MBP with (iris pro only). It was just a smoother experience. The webpages would fly and going back never would exhibit a spinning wheel waiting to load.

I'm thinking High Sierra will help eliminate the lag on the 2016 and 2017 models.
 
MrGuder said:
Tell me where on that site your experiencing lag?
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Primarily seeing lag in the parallax at the top to the page. It also catches hangs when scrolling down the page, then rubberbands like it was struggling to render the JS. This only happened with the iGPU. When I force enabled the dGPU the lag went away.

I'm on the fence over whether to pick up the new 2017 MBP. Now that you've owned yours for several weeks, are you finding it to be a better overall experience?
 
I think most of these issues will be solved now that metal is going to be used for these system animations in macOS High Sierra. My guess is the lag stems from an old API.
 
CONFIRMED FIXED on High Sierra with the iGPU on a MBP 2016 15" with the highest resolution 1920x1200 and the internal display!

Well done Apple Now let's make sure this does not regress.

Expose i.e. mission control works buttery smooth. Now this PDF http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axj/pub/papers/lambda-calculus.pdf that used to be super laggy with Sierra opens flawlessly.

So it indeed was Metal that was the problem or optimizations in Metal as someone here pointed out (Quartz being the issue).

Now, the problem is that the external display doesn't work for me when it used to with Sierra. Opened a support ticket with Apple and ran their diagnostics.
 
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dashwin said:
CONFIRMED FIXED on High Sierra with the iGPU on a MBP 2016 15" with the highest resolution 1920x1200 and the internal display!

Well done Apple Now let's make sure this does not regress.

Expose i.e. mission control works buttery smooth. Now this PDF http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axj/pub/papers/lambda-calculus.pdf that used to be super laggy with Sierra opens flawlessly.

So it indeed was Metal that was the problem or optimizations in Metal as someone here pointed out (Quartz being the issue).

Now, the problem is that the external display doesn't work for me when it used to with Sierra. Opened a support ticket with Apple and ran their diagnostics.
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Some animations are better for me but launchpad and switching between different desktops is still stuttering, and some graphic glitches in adobe photoshop is still present for me... overall performance is still crappy, will hand in to applecare to see if its some hardware error i think
 
Jaekae said:
Some animations are better for me but launchpad and switching between different desktops is still stuttering, and some graphic glitches in adobe photoshop is still present for me... overall performance is still crappy, will hand in to applecare to see if its some hardware error i think
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I suggest people to use QuickRes or SwitchResX that is a small tool where you can switch from non-retina to retina graphicd (you can still get the same resolutions tho) and you'll notice no-lag AT ALL with no-retina graphics but as a trade off you'll lose some sharpness in text and so. A tradeoff that doesn't bother me at all.
 
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