Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Any 2010 MBA owners notice this?

T

TheRealDamager

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 5, 2011
1,043
11
I have a 13" 2010 MBA, and just purchased a 2011 13" I7 MBA.

Scrolling on the newer, faster MBA is incredibly choppy. I did a test today where I set my 2010 MBA next to the new one, and brought up several sites in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. Every one on the 2010 scrolled smoothly. On the 2011, scrolling is choppy - instead of scrolling smoothly, it seems like it jumps in increments than makes it much harder to follow.

Am I the only one seeing this?
 
TheRealDamager said:
So to be clear - your 2011 is scrolling smoothly - no issues?
Click to expand...

No issues. I have the 13" 2010 as well, so I can do a side-by-side comparison, but I have used my 64/2 since it was delivered earlier this evening, and I have had absolutely zero issues with scrolling, or anything else. This computer has simply been a joy to use.
 
Well, from my experience playing with store models, the 2011 Air's on display did feel choppy with regards to general animations. Things like switching between apps, switching between tabs, and going in/out of Mission Control, or activating Launchpad wasn't smooth sailing sometimes.

I tested one website in Safari: http://www.apple.com/iphone

Both the 11" and 13" i5 models in the store could not zoom in smoothly. They seemed to jump and the 11" particularly froze for a short while before re-rendering the page. Scrolling when zoomed out is fine, but zoomed in made both machines choke beyond comparison.

It might just be the store displays, though. But my 2010 13" MBA definitely felt smoother, and that was why I went home without an upgrade.
 
Mine can be a bit choppy in safari and chrome but it's not anything I am that bothered about really and I am sure with future 10.7 updates or newer firmware it will be resolved.

I do not think it's worth taking it back because of that and you might end up with a laptop with more issues.
 
The only time I noticed something like that on 2011 13" MBA was when I was also running a Win 7 VM under VMware.
 
That my friend is the difference between Nvidia 320M and Intel HD3000 graphics, the latter which overly depends on TurboBoost to do rendering/refreshing of the display. In the Sandy Bridge CPU, TurboBoost goes from an idle of 800Mhz to 2900Mhz to process the graphics process queue, and the choppiness you are seeing is the delay in spinning up from idle to full-bore, max TB. It's what happens when you pair a weak IGP with an otherwise good-performance CPU, the CPU has to make up it by running at an extremely high frequency, eating battery and causing heat buildup.
 
Last edited:
calvol said:
That my friend is the difference between Nvidia 320M and Intel HD3000 graphics, the latter which overly depends on TurboBoost to meet rendering/refreshing of the display. In the Sandy Bridge CPU, TurboBoost goes from an idle of 800Mhz to 2900Mhz to process the graphics process queue, and the choppiness you are seeing is the delay in spinning up from idle to full-bore, max TB. It's what happens when you pair a weak IGP with an otherwise good-performance CPU, the CPU has to make up it by running at an extremely high frequency, eating battery and causing heat buildup.
Click to expand...

Good info, but are you sure this is expected behavior? It make reading sites like this a real pain because instead of smoothly scrolling, it jumps, and this makes it tough to keep your eyes on the text you were reading.
 
calvol said:
That my friend is the difference between Nvidia 320M and Intel HD3000 graphics, the latter which overly depends on TurboBoost to do rendering/refreshing of the display. In the Sandy Bridge CPU, TurboBoost goes from an idle of 800Mhz to 2900Mhz to process the graphics process queue, and the choppiness you are seeing is the delay in spinning up from idle to full-bore, max TB. It's what happens when you pair a weak IGP with an otherwise good-performance CPU, the CPU has to make up it by running at an extremely high frequency, eating battery and causing heat buildup.
Click to expand...

Also - if this was the case, wouldn't everyone have the same jerky scrolling? Why would some on this thread report smooth scrolling?
 
No choppy scrolling noticed. Far from it..

Not sure, but I think that there has to be something wrong with what ever controls the scrolling motion on your MBA.. I am sorry though that I do not know what it could be.
 
I think that it's good for you to have it checked: my new 13" i7 MBA scrolls very smoothly. I wouldn't like persistent jerky scrolling behavior at all, and if the geniuses can't provide a good resolution, I'd think that it would be worth a return/exchange.
 
I just did a test on my brand new 13" standard macbook air 2011.

I loaded www.crackberry.com (It's usually a very long page)
it had plenty of flash videos on it, I started at least three
video's playing and did a scroll test, and it was very very smooth,
with three flash video's playing and scrolling was silky smooth...

:)
 
I use Firefox and noticed pages sticky but turned on the smooth scrolling option and no more.
 
Two questions:

Do you have Lion on both? My MBP seems fine, but the i7 quad core 17" MBP I tried in the store had super choppy animations when full screening an app.

Second, do you have something that messes with the input, like Better Touch Tool installed? When I upgraded my MBP to Lion BTT caused some issues with trackpad input.

And to whoever was saying it is the integrated chip - please. Scrolling websites is not a GPU intensive task, my 1st gen Macbook with intel GMA 950 graphics can do it smoothly still.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back