GPU intensive browser animation brings Macbook Pro M1 to a crawl.

[canhaz]

Hi All

I saw this cool fractal animation on Twitter today. Viewing the animation on the latest Firefox (108.0.2) and macOS Ventura 13.1 on a 2021 MacBook Pro 14.

What's interesting is CPU stays at about 20% but the GPU usage is maxed out (that column in Activity Monitor can be turned on to see this).

Yet the UI goes to molasses, and the whole machine become barely unusable until the render thread is is out of the viewing area (eg switch to different browser tab). Mouse and Dock become a stuttering mess and things are generally terrible.

This is quite different to a CPU bound or network slowdown that has a smooth mouse and UI but a color-wheel/beach-ball.

Just wanted to confirm others are seeing this too? I tried it in Safari and it does fair better, though still slows the entire UI and system down.
Curious if this is an Apple Silicon hardware design feature or maybe Ventura as I don't recall seeing this before.

Previously on Intel mbp, unresponsiveness was associated with was heat/thermal throttling, or high CPU usage and beach-balls

 

[bobcomer]

That's close to what it looks like on a Windows laptop. 5-6% CPU, and close to 100% GPU. (ryzen 5850u)

The UI is not really effected at all. I use Chrome as the browser...

 

[TechnoMonk]

I don't see GPU usage at more than 50% on Safari. No effect on UI.

Edit: I tried on Firefox. Yikes, GPU is around 80% still functional UI.

 

[Honza1]

Not sure why anything would be wrong, seems designed to use as much GPU as available. This is how to load your GPU and test it. I have tried on 4k display and my M1 Pro GPU went to 100%.
My UI slowed down visibly, but was usable. Worked as expected.

 

[Toutou]

It's also weird in Safari, it literally brings my M1 Air to its knees. GPU usage rises to about 60 %, CPU usage negligible, but the whole machine starts intermittently freezing every few seconds and macOS' UI slows down to like 5 FPS.

 

[GumaRodak]

Perhaps your gpu is mining ethereum for that page

 

[galad]

That just means that the GPU work submitted by that page is too big and the UI GPU work is getting delayed.

 

[Basic75]

Just wanted to confirm others are seeing this too? I tried it in Safari and it does fair better, though still slows the entire UI and system down.

It runs well in full-screen, but when I switch to a different Space the transition animation is a bit choppy. In windowed mode covering about half the display the impact is much less. This is with latest Ventura and Safari on a 16" MBP (M1 Max, 32-core GPU, 64GB) running on battery.

 

[maflynn]

My desktop using an RTX2060 shows about 60% GPU usage, and 10% on CPU (I7 11th gen). My Razer RTX 2070 and I think 9th or 10th Gen processor shows 100% GPU and low CPU. My MBP shows 100% GPU and negligible CPU in chrome. In Safari the CPU utilization is higher sometimes spiking to > 50%

 

[vladi]

Not to brag but I have to

76% GPU on 5120 x 2160 resolution

 

[jdb8167]

It's also weird in Safari, it literally brings my M1 Air to its knees. GPU usage rises to about 60 %, CPU usage negligible, but the whole machine starts intermittently freezing every few seconds and macOS' UI slows down to like 5 FPS.

100% GPU on my M2 MacBook Air. I tried to open System Settings and my computer locked up completely (latest Ventura). Eventually it crashed to the login screen (not the unlock screen). Definitely sluggish even when it didn’t crash.

 

[darngooddesign]

Hi All

I saw this cool fractal animation on Twitter today. Viewing the animation on the latest Firefox (108.0.2) and macOS Ventura 13.1 on a 2021 MacBook Pro 14.

View attachment 2141061

What's interesting is CPU stays at about 20% but the GPU usage is maxed out (that column in Activity Monitor can be turned on to see this).

Yet the UI goes to molasses, and the whole machine become barely unusable until the render thread is is out of the viewing area (eg switch to different browser tab). Mouse and Dock become a stuttering mess and things are generally terrible.

This is quite different to a CPU bound or network slowdown that has a smooth mouse and UI but a color-wheel/beach-ball.

Just wanted to confirm others are seeing this too? I tried it in Safari and it does fair better, though still slows the entire UI and system down.
Curious if this is an Apple Silicon hardware design feature or maybe Ventura as I don't recall seeing this before.

Previously on Intel mbp, unresponsiveness was associated with was heat/thermal throttling, or high CPU usage and beach-balls

16" M1-Pro 10/16. full-screen Safari, 2% CPU and 85% GPU.

 

[mi7chy]

That would make a nice screensaver if not for load and battery drain. Surprisingly, M1 MBA is even slower than M1 iPad Pro. Not only rendering the graphics but also dragging down UI response with another multitasked app, dragging terminal app around screen, etc. Chrome, however, has a tad less impact on UI response than Safari on Ventura. Thought it was just an ARM thing but Snapdragon 888 phone is not far behind dGPU and a hair above AMD 5800H APU then the two M1 devices trailing. Maybe it's not yet optimized for AS.