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I have my MBP i5 set up so that it uses the discrete chip when plugged into the power supply, and automatic switching when using battery. This is a great solution for me.

Agreed that these new features are excellent!
 
Are you sure you're using the intel card? And yeah, I have a couple friends with a macbook pro that say they don't have it choppy either with the intel. But I'm wondering if you guys just are being a little less picky b/c when I say choppy, its not like super lag. It's just noticeable enough to be annoying. Slightly choppy/rough is the best way to describe it.
 
Are you sure you're using the intel card? And yeah, I have a couple friends with a macbook pro that say they don't have it choppy either with the intel. But I'm wondering if you guys just are being a little less picky b/c when I say choppy, its not like super lag. It's just noticeable enough to be annoying. Slightly choppy/rough is the best way to describe it.

No, I'm well aware of what card I'm using....and no, no lag or roughness. Out of curiosity, do you have a lot of things running when you notice this?
 
Wow that is interesting. I called Apple Care and they couldn't explain it either. He told me to do an extended hardware test and call him back. Nothing came up, so I'll call him back today. I'll also check out the display models at Best Buy or something too.

The choppiness is visible with even one window and expose. It's probably most visible if you have 2-3 windows flushed to one side of the screen. The choppiness is also visible with the Applications stack and the genie effect, but I care most about the expose animation b/c I use that the most.
 
Okay, so I went to an authorized apple service provider and they checked out my laptop. They weren't sure what to do at first, so they took my laptop to run further tests and see what they could do and maybe replace any problematic parts. In all honesty, I hope you're right and there is no choppiness expected and that something was wrong with my laptop. We'll see, I guess.
 
Thats just if I turn off Quartz Extreme.
I have a 2009 MBP so I don’t have integrated graphics.
 
I find that my 2009 13" MBP struggles when connected to a 2560x1600 res external monitor. Expose becomes a bit sluggish and same happens with Stacks so it seems that the 9400M can't quite hack it at that res. The same display with my Hackintosh and GTX 260 is smooth as pie at that same res.

Still a bit strange because neither should be particularly taxing for even the 9400M card.
 
It's really hard to say off a screen capture b/c running one will slow down framerates in the first place. It's better to take a video of the screen b/c while the quality will be meh, the capture will be more accurate with any lag. That being said, I tried doing that previously and its still hard to visualize the lag from a video than actually doing it on my laptop.
Either way its not as bad as with quartz being off and its not too too bad. It's just an annoying type of choppiness where you know something probably isn't wrong but the card might not be powerful enough (which shouldn't make any sense either even with the Intel). I can definitely tell it's "choppy" and it's not me being too picky because compared with the Nvidia, the animation is noticeably rougher.
 
It's a very popular problem among mac'ers. Choppy animation on nvidia cards, problems with spaces, usb-headset, bluetooth, reducing graphic performance - big problem. The solution is following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmoWoeNrkOs
As author claims.....it's really works. No more chopping, expose and so on.
 
It's a very popular problem among mac'ers. Choppy animation on nvidia cards, problems with spaces, usb-headset, bluetooth, reducing graphic performance - big problem. The solution is following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmoWoeNrkOs
As author claims.....it's really works. No more chopping, expose and so on.

My issue with this is that with this I am afraid that I will lose all power management (even with the Intel) when on battery. Can I only have power management disabled when on AC power? Does this not effect Intel graphics because that would work too.
 
My issue with this is that with this I am afraid that I will lose all power management (even with the Intel) when on battery. Can I only have power management disabled when on AC power? Does this not effect Intel graphics because that would work too.

Don't worry about your power management! The time of autonomous working will not reduce. All will be fine. This method works. It's simple and safety.
Enjoy your mac!
 
Don't worry about your power management! The time of autonomous working will not reduce. All will be fine. This method works. It's simple and safety.
Enjoy your mac!

Wait are you sure that my actual battery time for working will not decrease? B/c the estimated battery times are lower with the Intel after the modification. Is that just b/c I need to recalibrate (I will as soon as I can)?
 
Interesting topic. Coming from the 13" I haven't had a 15" since the 8600. Since no longer run Windows bootcamp and only use the Mac for work (office, Safari and VMware) I don't think I've ever seen a setting for this or noticed any slow downs. Where can I see which card is running?

Cheers,
 
Interesting topic. Coming from the 13" I haven't had a 15" since the 8600. Since no longer run Windows bootcamp and only use the Mac for work (office, Safari and VMware) I don't think I've ever seen a setting for this or noticed any slow downs. Where can I see which card is running?

Cheers,

To see which card is running and/or change it, use gfxCardStatus:
http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus
 
Wait are you sure that my actual battery time for working will not decrease? B/c the estimated battery times are lower with the Intel after the modification. Is that just b/c I need to recalibrate (I will as soon as I can)?

The tempereture's level in Istat Nano for Dashboard hasn't shown serious temperature's changes in Nortbridge.
So..there are a parameters in kext: Idleinterval and energySavingPolicy. The values of which are 250 and 0, respectively. The customizing of these parameters did nothing.
The delay and choppy effect arises because of wrong policy of power save and because of Idleinterval.
Please, measure your battery before and after using this method (in video, I mean) and write the values!
p.s. Do'u have 13' or 15' notebook with two cards? The method presented in video works only with Nvidia cards. Maybe (if you own 15') the battery changes it's state into Intel HD mode automatically. That can be a reason of problem.
 
The tempereture's level in Istat Nano for Dashboard hasn't shown serious temperature's changes in Nortbridge.
So..there are a parameters in kext: Idleinterval and energySavingPolicy. The values of which are 250 and 0, respectively. The customizing of these parameters did nothing.
The delay and choppy effect arises because of wrong policy of power save and because of Idleinterval.
Please, measure your battery before and after using this method (in video, I mean) and write the values!
p.s. Do'u have 13' or 15' notebook with two cards? The method presented in video works only with Nvidia cards. Maybe (if you own 15') the battery changes it's state into Intel HD mode automatically. That can be a reason of problem.

I have the 15" in with two cards. Are you sure the method in the video (removing/disabling the .kext) works only with Nvidia cards? I have it set up to use only the Intel on battery and it would be great if it only worked with Nvidia. The problem (which is lower battery life when on Intel) arises when I delete that .kext though, so I am concerned that the .kext does affect the Intel graphics.
I will try a fully battery drain and report back though.
 
Regarding battery life, I can confirm makker's fix does NOT affect the integrated Intel graphics. So with cody krieger's gfxCardStatus app, you can select integrated graphics when you need good battery life. But with nvidia selected, battery life for me dropped to about 4.5-5 hours which is a lot less than before.
 
Are you sure it does not affect the battery life? I mean even if you look at the .plist itself, you can see that there are entries regarding power management of the Intel graphics card (You can match Control IDs with that of the Intel graphics chip in System Profiler). Deactivating the .plist seems like it would affect both Intel and Nvidia power management and I seemed to receive less battery life with the Intel.
 
I can live with it, but don't you think that the intel graphics would be able to handle something as simple and integral to the operating system as its GUI effects? A lot of effects such as the magnification on the dock were perfectly fine, its just expose (and dashboard, but I disabled that). I use expose a lot, and I run only Nvidia when on AC power, but I don't want to have to when on battery.

Believe in Intel graphics? No. Not ever.

My old laptop with a GMA X3100 couldn't even run a youtube video w/o the fans revving up to max speed. Effing annoying if you ask me.
 
Yea the Intel integrated GPU will do that. I remember when I had the 17" i7 mbp whenever it was using the intel gpu the gui animations would look choppy and not as smooth as the dedicated graphics.
 
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