Intel's Integrated Graphics unusable on MBP 13" and MBP 16"??

[heythisisdave]

I have a 2018 Macbook Pro 13" and just recently got a 16" Macbook Pro with the UHD 630. On Big Sur 11.1, typing felt laggy and slow just like on my 13" - frustrating to the point where you subconsciously start banging on the keys to make them register faster.

Then I tried disabling "Automatic Graphics Switching" and now the machine just feels so much zippier. Text shows up immediately in iTerm2, typing in Gmail etc.

Is this something that's got worse in Big Sur and was OK in Catalina? I can't remember it ever being this bad. So glad that Apple is moving off Intel, Intel's dominance and laziness these last few years has finally caught up with them and excited to see ASi. I realize this is why so many times I've thought about using an iPad as a development machine, the lower latency just makes the whole typing experience much more enjoyable.

Am I missing something here? How can the integrated graphics perform so poorly that the latency of text input is noticeable?

 

[whacp]

I have the same issue on the 16 inch mbp running 11.1. Was having issue with external gaming keyboard in 11.0.1 but got fixed in 11.1. Typing and scrolling are still laggy and jumpy in frames. Apple released 11.2 beta and hopefully these issue will get addressed soon.

 

[ght56]

The 16-inch has always had a microstutter when on the integrated graphics. While disabling graphics switching completely eliminates it, another workaround is to enable graphics switching, creating a second user account, logging into that account, locking that account, and then logging back into your primary account. We aren't exactly sure why this reduces it dramatically, but it appears that both the integrated GPU and the discrete GPU are active when in this state.

 

[dinobear]

The 16-inch has always had a microstutter when on the integrated graphics. While disabling graphics switching completely eliminates it, another workaround is to enable graphics switching, creating a second user account, logging into that account, locking that account, and then logging back into your primary account. We aren't exactly sure why this reduces it dramatically, but it appears that both the integrated GPU and the discrete GPU are active when in this state.

That's really interesting to hear. Sounds like a software issue then rather than an intel issue? How does having another user account logged-in make the performance better if the machine is using the iGPU?
I've personally just kept my machine on dGPU for the most part as I can usually be plugged in.

 

[ght56]

That's really interesting to hear. Sounds like a software issue then rather than an intel issue? How does having another user account logged-in make the performance better if the machine is using the iGPU?
I've personally just kept my machine on dGPU for the most part as I can usually be plugged in.

It's not well understood at this point, but being logged into a second user account causes the dGPU to draw 2-3 watts consistently even when using the iGPU, almost as if both were operating different elements simultaneously as can be done with some Windows systems to my understanding.

 

[AtakanC]

The 16-inch has always had a microstutter when on the integrated graphics. While disabling graphics switching completely eliminates it, another workaround is to enable graphics switching, creating a second user account, logging into that account, locking that account, and then logging back into your primary account. We aren't exactly sure why this reduces it dramatically, but it appears that both the integrated GPU and the discrete GPU are active when in this state.

Is this really a thing? Even though its weird, if this user creating thing works, it will be super nice since I am also having some problems with iGPU performance.

 

[Azarias59]

9 months later and this is still an issue FYI.