So I just got a new MBP, 15" 2.66 with dedicated 9600M. I've been using it mostly with the 9600M disabled just because I haven't had a need for any 3d graphics power yet. But I've noticed that the dock is kind of laggy in terms of animation. The most noticeable thing is when I open the Applications stack, the opening animation is rather choppy, not perfectly smooth. When I close the stack its fine, but opening it seems to choke a little bit. Is the 9400 REALLY that bad that it can't animate the dock fluidly, or is something else to blame? I tried resetting PRAM already but it did nothing. Any suggestions?
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Brand new MBP, laggy dock
- Thread starter abs1nthe
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any idea what it could be? I mean the thing is literally a day old. Besides installing software I haven't done anything to it.
Well I should probably clarify that it's probably not as bad as I'm probably making it out to be. I would have never known it was choppy if I didn't have my hackintosh to compare it to. On that machine (with a GTX285), it is perfectly fluid, no delay or choppy animation whatsoever. Granted, that GPU is 100 times more powerful, but like I said, I'd assume that whatever hardware Apple uses in its machines should be capable of handling OS animations. Everything is up to date, yes, I just updated to 10.6.2 and everything else that came with it. It's really a very subtle slow down and most people probably wouldn't ever notice or think anything's wrong. The genie effect, for instance, is smooth as butter. But every now and then when I mouse over the dock (with magnification), it will lag for a tiny second. The worst is opening the Applications stack. I assume the lag is from actually loading all the icons/apps rather than the graphical animation taking place. This MBP (since I'm not going to be keeping it) is standard with a 5400RPM drive...could that be the issue?
The dock on my 13" MBP was very laggy when I first got it. I though something may have become corrupted when using migration assistant so I reinstalled SL, which improved things a little bit. Since upgrading the RAM to 4GB and the HDD to a 250GB 7200 RPM, and since trashing the com.apple.dock.plist file the dock finally seems to be behaving as it should.
4 gigs. Everything is standard on this MBP. 2.66 C2D, 4 gigs RAM, 320 GB hard drive at 5400 RPM.
my hackintosh (GTX260) is way faster than my macbook, it's not laggy but it ain't smooth either, some times it lags. 9400m it's old as hell
I figured that's essentially what it is. My hackintosh smokes this thing in terms of hardware, but that's about it. Waiting for arrandale still I guess
yep the thread is almost in i7 part my hackintosh even gives me less trouble, but it was assembled by me, my last branded pc (an hp) gave nothing but trouble and my macbook (no arrendale = no macbook pro) keeps my work in order at university
my hackintosh even gives me less trouble, but it was assembled by me, my last branded pc (an hp) gave nothing but trouble and my macbook (no arrendale = no macbook pro) keeps my work in order at universityI figured that's essentially what it is. My hackintosh smokes this thing in terms of hardware, but that's about it. Waiting for arrandale still I guess
Have you tried trashing the com.apple.dock.plist and com.apple.dock.db files, or reinstalling SL? I don't see how it could be the 9400M as my 13" MBP now works very very smoothly (dock and everything) after trashing the dock files.
The 9400M is reasonably capable, I can get through Tales of Monkey Island on near top settings at native resolution fine. I know it's not the most graphically intensive game in the world, but it's certainly more so than the dock! It may be more likely that you have corrupt files somewhere.
Next time you're in an Apple store try some of their 13" MBP's and see if the same issue is there. If not then it's not the 9400M.
The Dock on my MBP is fairly smooth, but on my oldish Hackintosh equipped with an 8800GT, all the animations are buttery smooth. Given that every surface, texture and sprite are OpenGL accellerated in OS X, I'd say that the little 9400M is doing pretty well. You want pain? Try running Expose, Spaces and the Dock on a Dell D620 equipped with the Quadro NVS 110. That POS has 64 MB of texture ram and about 2/3 the horsepower of a lowly 7300 GT. Eek.
Anyone found a solution for this? Opening things like the Applications folder is choppy and it annoys me every time, but it goes away if I open the folder over and over in quick succession. But after about 5 seconds it comes back. I'm using a 2010 15" MBP + SSD with SL reinstalled on it fresh multiple times (and has shown the problem every time). I mostly use an external display, but I see the problem on the MBP's screen too.
I've never noticed this before on my hackintosh. I've put a video link below, and although it's much more difficult to see in the video, in person it's pretty annoying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2BqXRZYoBk
(Choppy the first time, smooth afterwards)
I've never noticed this before on my hackintosh. I've put a video link below, and although it's much more difficult to see in the video, in person it's pretty annoying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2BqXRZYoBk
(Choppy the first time, smooth afterwards)
Story of all computers.
If you open any application, close it, then reopen it...it will open up much faster, for several reasons.
my i5 uMBP wih a SSD also slightly had a choppy opening of the Applications folder from the dock, i've never actually used that before to launch an app but I tried it and i def. noticed it being choppy. I can check my Hackint0sh later but I have a feeling it would not lag on that at all.
I don't think that particular action is a GPU intensive action, it might be better to show a video of something else that might be more distinctively lagging on a constant basis.
Right, I know this, but I'm wondering why it's choppy the first time. The GT 330M should be more than capable of handling a smooth animation, so it's probably not the problem. Then I thought maybe it was some kind of image caching thing where once I open it, the animation is stored in the RAM temporarily which makes subsequent animations smoother -- but the animations are always smooth on my hackintosh. So it seems to most often be a problem with the MB(P).
Well, I think it's a good idea to update threads every time whenever a solution is found no matter how old the thread, just in case someone else finds it on Google.
There's a kext called AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext that controls clock speeds on the GPU/VRAM. There are four states, 3 being the lowest and 0 being the highest. Depending on the GPU, state 3 often puts the graphics below 100mhz, which is when the choppiness occurs.
Earlier in the thread I said "Opening things like the Applications folder is choppy and it annoys me every time, but it goes away if I open the folder over and over in quick succession". What is happening (verified by viewing Console.log after telling AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext to log state changes) is the graphics state is changing to 2 or sometimes 1, which means that GPU clock speed is dramatically increased because of the increased activity.
I wish Apple would have disabled state 3 or something when the MBP is plugged in so that I can use it as a desktop without having to worry about choppiness. Obviously when it's plugged in, power savings are somewhat less important.
There's a kext called AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext that controls clock speeds on the GPU/VRAM. There are four states, 3 being the lowest and 0 being the highest. Depending on the GPU, state 3 often puts the graphics below 100mhz, which is when the choppiness occurs.
Earlier in the thread I said "Opening things like the Applications folder is choppy and it annoys me every time, but it goes away if I open the folder over and over in quick succession". What is happening (verified by viewing Console.log after telling AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext to log state changes) is the graphics state is changing to 2 or sometimes 1, which means that GPU clock speed is dramatically increased because of the increased activity.
I wish Apple would have disabled state 3 or something when the MBP is plugged in so that I can use it as a desktop without having to worry about choppiness. Obviously when it's plugged in, power savings are somewhat less important.