I hate to be a naysayer, but the choppy graphics are really irking me. Everything was great in Tiger, but now in Leopard, the genie effect is slow and choppy, and the system feels somewhat sluggish. Is there a way to permanently fix this? I've heard that doing a fresh install helps. Should I wait for updates, or just try doing a fresh install. Any ideas?
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Is there any way to fix the choppy graphics?
- Thread starter thesdx
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I didn't have mega choppy graphics, but it was a bit jittery on the 3d dock. Moving the dock to the left or right of the screen disables the 3d effect, and looks nice IMO. It also sped things up a bit.
There is a thing you can type in terminal that will turn off the 3d dock on the bottom, it looks easy, but I prefer my dock on the side anyhow.
I'm fairly sure Apple will smooth out the wrinkles in Leopard in updates to come.
There is a thing you can type in terminal that will turn off the 3d dock on the bottom, it looks easy, but I prefer my dock on the side anyhow.
I'm fairly sure Apple will smooth out the wrinkles in Leopard in updates to come.
One thing i've noticed on my MBP is that if i have the background changing every 5seconds (or whatever the shortest time is) it makes ALL animations slow, even makes movies im watching choppy. Samething happens when i change it to change every 1 min. I guess the changing bkg thing in leopard really takes a toll on the system =(
When I first installed Leopard it ran choppy. A reboot fixed this. I'm on a 2.2Ghz MBP w/ 2GB RAM.
Choppy graphics on my MacBook. Erase and Install and 2D dock improves things.
Not choppy on my mini. ????
I have seen MacPro users complain about it too but that might be down to the ATI cards (X1900XT).
Not choppy on my mini. ????
I have seen MacPro users complain about it too but that might be down to the ATI cards (X1900XT).
The 3D dock on my Macbook used to be choppy, but now it seems to be fixed and runs at full speed. I didn't change anything at all - it just decided one day to start running properly.
Spaces, expose and dashboard are all still slow however. It really sounds like this is a bug somewhere.
Spaces, expose and dashboard are all still slow however. It really sounds like this is a bug somewhere.
I must be super lucky with my install. I did an archive and install on my 2.16 C2D 24" Imac with Nvidia 7600. Expose' Spaces, genie effect, all run super fluid, I believe even faster then my previous cat, Tiger. I guess I'm in the minority here.
Not trying to add insult here, but I usually run desksaver plus and boinc without any problems.
Worth considering, is perhaps my Tiger install had some performance problems before I moved to Leopard. I dunno?
Not trying to add insult here, but I usually run desksaver plus and boinc without any problems.
Worth considering, is perhaps my Tiger install had some performance problems before I moved to Leopard. I dunno?
Not at all, 1GB is great...Fresh install will sort it
Don't be so sure, i have a fresh install and 2Gb and it's still choppy for me.
Just a data point: No problems on 2.33GHz MBP. Dock perfectly smooth (3D). Expose fine.
A clean install helped my mbp a bit. It's a bit better. Not what I would call "choppy" - in fact, I think it runs smoother than Tiger did. On my iMac though, Leopard runs a bit choppier than Tiger. I really think you should just deal with it for now if you can't do a clean install - Apple will surely fix this very soon. Remember, we're only at 10.5.0.
Yes, but you aren't using the full 2GB's when using Finder and it is still choppy, so no, more RAM won't help.
Need better gfx drivers.
Leopard Choppy Jittery Video
After 2 weeks from upgrading to Leopard and reviewing the Forums, I FINALLY found a solution that works. The problem I was having:
* video playback was choppy (audio was fine in a movie playback, the video showed a new frame every 1-2 seconds)
The solution was "turn off desktop picture from changing every 5-seconds"!
I had selected a folder on my system to display a new picture every 5 seconds, however for whatever reason, that was causing the video to be choppy. I changed to every 1 minute and now I don't get the choppy video.
I had tried:
* reinstalling Leopard CLEAN on the system, and while it worked for a while (before I enabled the 5-second desktop picture change, and thought that solved the problem), the problem returned (the minute I changed to the desktop picture change)
* turned off (and even disabled) spotlight thinking it was a performance issue on indexing, no improvement
* I bought a new MacBook Pro 2.4ghz 4gb memory with 7200rpm drives and started with a clean install of Leopard thinking it was a performance issue, same thing, same problem, had NOTHING to do with system performance
So, if you have a problem where your videos are choppy and jittery, and you have a pretty descent system, AND you are swapping your desktop background every 5 seconds, turn off the background picture swapping on your desktop!
Other than that, I haven't noticed any other differences in performance between OSX 10.4 and 10.5, everything else seems to work the same...
Cheers!
Rand
After 2 weeks from upgrading to Leopard and reviewing the Forums, I FINALLY found a solution that works. The problem I was having:
* video playback was choppy (audio was fine in a movie playback, the video showed a new frame every 1-2 seconds)
The solution was "turn off desktop picture from changing every 5-seconds"!
I had selected a folder on my system to display a new picture every 5 seconds, however for whatever reason, that was causing the video to be choppy. I changed to every 1 minute and now I don't get the choppy video.
I had tried:
* reinstalling Leopard CLEAN on the system, and while it worked for a while (before I enabled the 5-second desktop picture change, and thought that solved the problem), the problem returned (the minute I changed to the desktop picture change)
* turned off (and even disabled) spotlight thinking it was a performance issue on indexing, no improvement
* I bought a new MacBook Pro 2.4ghz 4gb memory with 7200rpm drives and started with a clean install of Leopard thinking it was a performance issue, same thing, same problem, had NOTHING to do with system performance
So, if you have a problem where your videos are choppy and jittery, and you have a pretty descent system, AND you are swapping your desktop background every 5 seconds, turn off the background picture swapping on your desktop!
Other than that, I haven't noticed any other differences in performance between OSX 10.4 and 10.5, everything else seems to work the same...
Cheers!
Rand
Trying to remotely diagnose a problem for you with nothing but system specs and no current operational data is no better than throwing darts at a wall blindfolded.
Can you do me a favor and post a screenshot of your Activity Monitor, displaying your processes (top) and memory usage (on the bottom)? Preferably grab this screenshot around the time you're experiencing notably choppy graphics.
That's the first step... there may be others , depending on what that tells us.
I have a Mac Pro with 5GB of RAM and minimizing is only choppy on the 3D Dock. Also moving windows around is a little choppy because they break in half and stutter a little bit. Other than that, everything is fast. Now that I fixed my menus, I'm a little happier. I might to an erase and install on a separate drive just to check to see if it is an install problem. I'm blaming bad graphics card drivers for now.
I'm having this same problem with the choppy graphics. Especially when minimizing the window into the dock. The genie effect in Tiger was perfect. Now it's really choppy.
Even straight after a restart the problem is still there!!
Even straight after a restart the problem is still there!!
Agreed
I held off upgrading to Leopard until last Friday - when I first launched I was expecting to see the amazing performance leaps I'd read about..first thing I noticed was the stuttering graphics in the Dock - and in a week of using Leopard lts of weird graphic issues as I documented here before in my stacks post....there is also the issue of programmes crashing without spinning beach ball and my right of screen icons such as Macintosh HD suddenly appearing in the middle of the screen
I held off upgrading to Leopard until last Friday - when I first launched I was expecting to see the amazing performance leaps I'd read about..first thing I noticed was the stuttering graphics in the Dock - and in a week of using Leopard lts of weird graphic issues as I documented here before in my stacks post....there is also the issue of programmes crashing without spinning beach ball and my right of screen icons such as Macintosh HD suddenly appearing in the middle of the screen