Exactly. The software simply isn't optimized yet. Like when apple switched to intel and only a couple of apps were universal.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
An honest assessment of the lags and stutters in the Retina Macbook Pro
- Thread starter blow45
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I consider myself a Mac power user. Lord knows I've owned enough of them. I have a new MBPr along with an "Early 2011" 17" MBP I'm transitioning from, and a Mac Mini as my media center machine. Also an ASUS netbook. I've had the MBPr for three days now and in that time have been trying to reproduce the "stutter" or "lag" that's being discussed here. I've not been able to do it. No matter what the resolution I test at, no matter what application I'm using, the user interface response has been perfect.
Some background: This is a 2.6GHz core i7 MBP Retina Display (Quad core i7), 16GB dram, 768GB SSD running 10.7.4 Build 11E2620. Boot ROM version MBP101.00EE.B00. I have a 27" Apple LED display (DP, pre-Thunderbolt). I've done tests both with and without the external display.
Applications tested: Firefox v13.0.1, Safari v5.1.7 (7534.57.4), Word 2011 v14.2.2 (120421), Photoshop CS6 Extended v13.0 x64, Photoshop CS5 Extended v12.0.4 x64, In Design CS 6 v8.0, Final Cut Pro v5.1.4
As I say, I've not been able to recreate anything I'd describe as lag or stutter. Perhaps I don't understand what's being described. Is there a video out there showing this behavior?
Some background: This is a 2.6GHz core i7 MBP Retina Display (Quad core i7), 16GB dram, 768GB SSD running 10.7.4 Build 11E2620. Boot ROM version MBP101.00EE.B00. I have a 27" Apple LED display (DP, pre-Thunderbolt). I've done tests both with and without the external display.
Applications tested: Firefox v13.0.1, Safari v5.1.7 (7534.57.4), Word 2011 v14.2.2 (120421), Photoshop CS6 Extended v13.0 x64, Photoshop CS5 Extended v12.0.4 x64, In Design CS 6 v8.0, Final Cut Pro v5.1.4
As I say, I've not been able to recreate anything I'd describe as lag or stutter. Perhaps I don't understand what's being described. Is there a video out there showing this behavior?
Generally to see what folks are talking about on the rMBP:
Set resolution in System Prefs -> Display to Scaled, Looks like 1920x1200.
Open http://www.theverge.com in Safari, scroll quickly top to bottom, then back to the top. The scrolling won't be totally smooth.
Open 10-15 Safari windows, activate Mission Control (or App Expose). The animation will be a bit choppy.
Same setup (10-15 Safari windows), exit Mission Control. Use Ctrl-Right to switch to Space #2. Then Ctrl-Left to switch back to Space #1. The animation will be a bit choppy.
And the most obvious to me: Drag your Applications folder onto the right side of the Dock, to make it a stack. In its options, set it to display as a list. Most likely you should be able to pop it up and it'll scroll off the top of the screen. Hover over the top of the list to scroll up, and notice how weirdly slow/choppy that action is.
This is all much more prevalent when on the integrated Intel HD4000, but still noticeable on the dedicated card (just not so much). Also much less noticeable at HiDPI 1440x900. A little less at HiDPI 1680x1050.
For comparison, download SetResX/Retina Display Manager (RDM) and set the resolution to non-HiDPI 1920x1200 or 1680x1050, then do the same tests. Particularly the stack scrolling.
(This all seems to implicate the HiDPI upscaling/downscaling mechanism as the culprit, particularly since non-HiDPI modes don't seem to experience this at all)
I've updated mine (2.7GHz, 16GB) to 10.8 DP4, and while things are definitely better (particularly in Safari), it's not gone. That having been said, it's not bothering me all that much, and it definitely seems like something that will continue to lessen with software optimizations.
If this is supposed to be a GPU issue only, shouldn't there be a huge difference between the two?
Not as much as I thought there would be, to be honest. It's *definitely* much better with the 650M enabled, but it's still there.
In my real honest opinion I don't think it's a hardware problem...but more a drivers problem!
If you for example a thunderbolt display with a resolution of 2560x1440 (about 3.7M pixels) and if you plug a 13" Macbook Pro it does't lag at lag with a HD3000...or does it? So why a HD4000, more powerful and with the double of memory should lag with 5M pixel? It doesn't make sense at all!
More, the difference between HD4000 and 650M is huge so the difference in performance should be...and it isn't!
More mature software and drivers should correct this...I hope!
If you for example a thunderbolt display with a resolution of 2560x1440 (about 3.7M pixels) and if you plug a 13" Macbook Pro it does't lag at lag with a HD3000...or does it? So why a HD4000, more powerful and with the double of memory should lag with 5M pixel? It doesn't make sense at all!
More, the difference between HD4000 and 650M is huge so the difference in performance should be...and it isn't!
More mature software and drivers should correct this...I hope!
For some reason, I'm getting a lot of lag on this site:
http://manytricks.com/witch/
Scrolling up and down in the top half of the page is terrible! How does this perform on yours?
http://manytricks.com/witch/
Scrolling up and down in the top half of the page is terrible! How does this perform on yours?
From what I've been reading the main load of the scrolling is being put on the CPU which shouldn't be handling it in the first place and mountain lion is supposed to address it by moving the process to the GPU. It's a software issue mostly...
you basically just told everyone that you have absolutely no idea how retina display works. your example literally has nothing to do with anything. do a search and read up on retina display.
I know how it works and I know the logic of what I'm saying!
I have a RMBP I tried it at it's native resolution and others, without any scale with both GPUs on ML! The lag it's the same!!
So your point about the scalers and that I don't know what I'm talking about it's out of context!
Most of us reporting lag are running the 1680 or 1920 scaled modes and not 'best for retina'. In these higher res modes osx has to upscale to double those resolutions and then downscale back to the native 2880 retina resolution. That doesn't have to be done for your thunderbolt display. Also, your resolution has hardware scaler supoort, while the retina's resolution has to be partly scaled in software, hence the cpu usage This has been posted multiple times in this site and well detailed on anandtech.
On ML (Safari 6) I only notice lag on Facebook an The Verge!
Switching between spaces (fullscreen apps) sometimes...it's not always!
Ok so I got mine and I do notice some lag. Here is what I don't understand though:
1. Some pages are absolutely smooth and they do have a lot of images as well, likewise there are some pages that stutter but really don't seem to be graphics intense (Google results e.g.)
2. I don't see any difference in using the dedicated over the integrated one.
If this is a GPU issue shouldn't the much faster dGPU remove what little stutter the iGPU produces?
1. Some pages are absolutely smooth and they do have a lot of images as well, likewise there are some pages that stutter but really don't seem to be graphics intense (Google results e.g.)
2. I don't see any difference in using the dedicated over the integrated one.
If this is a GPU issue shouldn't the much faster dGPU remove what little stutter the iGPU produces?
Just out of interest, is there not a way to "disable" the integrated Intel 4000 and solely rely on the dedicated graphics?
I noticed some lag when I last tried a rMBP. It wasn't anything major, it's very similar to how my Mac Mini runs my 27" monitor with it's Intel 3000 graphics card.
I noticed some lag when I last tried a rMBP. It wasn't anything major, it's very similar to how my Mac Mini runs my 27" monitor with it's Intel 3000 graphics card.
I was just watching the ad on the retina pro for the first time. It was particularly ironic how they repeated that this was the most responsive mac ever built. These issues might turn out to be much improved with the upgrade to mountain lion -although judging by other people's comments here I am not at all confident about this (which is very disappointing since I very much want to buy this mac)- but I think they should be more careful with the wording of their marketing material. I think we can at least all agree here that this model certainly doesn't deserve laurels and extra praise for responsiveness. In the very best case scenario it's as responsive as any good recent mac.
I have found that switching between discrete and intel graphics does NOTHING to correct the "stutter". I find the polar extremes on this confusing; from "no lag or stutter here, silky smooth" all the way to "the OS itself cannot keep up". I personally sat in the store and tested every machine for an hour, 30 minutes of which i simply stayed in the OS and navigated through files, opened panels, looked through prefs and the experience was bad. Graphics tearing, drop down menus "appearing" with a few frames instead of sliding smoothly, swipes into mission control tearing apart and stuttering.
Im not imagining this. I still cant get an answer from these forums or apple about what controls what, and whats causing this to happen. I think theres a little too much magic under the hood trying to get the retina to play nice to be able to make an asessment on whats what.
Im wondering if people ARE having these issues but just dont (or dont want to) see it. All i know is all four machines i tested in the apple store had some pretty bad problems in the OS UI alone. So far the only answers Ive gotten are smug (get used to it, its a beautiful machine, stop whining) or technologically confused (oh, its just the battery heat)
hard for me to make a decision to return my 2012 non retina for one of these if i have no clue whats causing the tearing and stuttering..obviously a gorgeous display and easy on the eyes, but theres a real issue here and nobody seems to know any answers
----------
by the way, people keep talking about gaming FPS or webpage scrolling. I can deal with that. My concern is the OS itself.
Im not imagining this. I still cant get an answer from these forums or apple about what controls what, and whats causing this to happen. I think theres a little too much magic under the hood trying to get the retina to play nice to be able to make an asessment on whats what.
Im wondering if people ARE having these issues but just dont (or dont want to) see it. All i know is all four machines i tested in the apple store had some pretty bad problems in the OS UI alone. So far the only answers Ive gotten are smug (get used to it, its a beautiful machine, stop whining) or technologically confused (oh, its just the battery heat)
hard for me to make a decision to return my 2012 non retina for one of these if i have no clue whats causing the tearing and stuttering..obviously a gorgeous display and easy on the eyes, but theres a real issue here and nobody seems to know any answers
----------
by the way, people keep talking about gaming FPS or webpage scrolling. I can deal with that. My concern is the OS itself.
I saw the same polar opposite opinions on the new iPad forum when I was trying to decide to buy one. People were posting pictures of yellow/pink/green/uneven tint on their new iPad; so it was obvious that there was an issue. However, a bunch of people were saying their screens were perfect and the complainers had OCD.
The only thing that lead me believe the issue was real is some of the people with bad screens were asking the "my screen is perfect" folks to post pictures of their perfect screens. No one did........
VFC, yeah i know.. for me it was easy, i saw the ipad, it worked amazingly, i bought one at its been flawless and by my side 4 hours of the day. The screen reports were simply bad units and replaced. it was cut n dry.
The rMBP? Im stumped and ive never seen such inconsistent reports about anything like this. I myself thought people were complaining about nothing (i have a strong stomache for this kind of stuff). I was floored when i saw it in the stores, as it was worse than I thought it wouldve been. I was expecting web browsing issues but when the OS was tearing and stuttering I was taken back. When every machine did it I was utterly confused.
The only explanation possible is that the 16g machines with faster procs are handling it and the others arent (machine spec dependent OS performance). I cannot accept that apple would EVER make a machine that couldnt handle its own OS but thats what i saw with my own eyes and Im upset about it. Ive been waiting 3 months for this to come out and now im torn and utterly confused. I simply cannot get an answer to whats causing it to the extreme on some machine, and not at all on others.
If you are one of the people with a rMBP and you truly have no issued with it, that doesnt mean everyone else is crazy, you simply lucked out. I saw it with my own eyes (only on an 8g base model) and im not crazy.
The rMBP? Im stumped and ive never seen such inconsistent reports about anything like this. I myself thought people were complaining about nothing (i have a strong stomache for this kind of stuff). I was floored when i saw it in the stores, as it was worse than I thought it wouldve been. I was expecting web browsing issues but when the OS was tearing and stuttering I was taken back. When every machine did it I was utterly confused.
The only explanation possible is that the 16g machines with faster procs are handling it and the others arent (machine spec dependent OS performance). I cannot accept that apple would EVER make a machine that couldnt handle its own OS but thats what i saw with my own eyes and Im upset about it. Ive been waiting 3 months for this to come out and now im torn and utterly confused. I simply cannot get an answer to whats causing it to the extreme on some machine, and not at all on others.
If you are one of the people with a rMBP and you truly have no issued with it, that doesnt mean everyone else is crazy, you simply lucked out. I saw it with my own eyes (only on an 8g base model) and im not crazy.
Apparently Apple stores run a "kiosk" app on the display computers that has been shown in another thread to be cause of severe UI lag on the rMBP.
beautiful, this is the kind of help im looking for. I was wondering if something was on the image of those machines or something specific to store floor models. I would think theyd have the best of the best running but i was surprised to see 8g ram models only as well. I closed all running apps and didnt see anything like that so if they are its under the hood. Weird theyd run something that would cause this. Im even more confused now
It's hard to gauge with a technology product since there's the cognitive bias and the rationalization of ones purchase, all the more so when the product is expensive. Apple also has a certain percentage of it's clientèle that are very emotionally attached to the company (there's cult of mac, not cult of lenovo or sony...
) and anyone trying to decide for themselves if there's an issue with a product will inadvertently face personal attacks by self appointed defenders of apple. Apple are pushing technology and they have to be commended for that, and they want to be the first to market at all costs, and sometimes the cost is in the quality of the end product. Iphone thinness and antenna, ipad and screen quality, now the pro and the lags. At the end of the day one has to weigh how much they need the new product and to what extent the problem will affect them.
I recently bought the new ipad, and predictably, I 've returned it due to screen tint, and I am expecting a new one with fingers crossed since if the problem isn't so apparent I might not be able to return it and I ll suffer through the slight tint. But I need it due to poor eyesight, as I do the retina pro.
beautiful, this is the kind of help im looking for. I was wondering if something was on the image of those machines or something specific to store floor models. I would think theyd have the best of the best running but i was surprised to see 8g ram models only as well. I closed all running apps and didnt see anything like that so if they are its under the hood. Weird theyd run something that would cause this. Im even more confused now
Here's the thread, shame it got buried; I feel it could answer a lot of questions.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1386070/
Someone points out the Kiosk app at around page 6.