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lag and stuttered scrolling on riMac 5K?

I

imaginaryfriend

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 10, 2010
32
0
I just got an i5, 295, ssd, 8gb ram 5K.

noticed significant scrolling lag when using full screen mode (preview, Evernote especially, Safari is okay). read some forums this is common with mbp as well... scrolling is smoother on my 2 year old mba than riMac... hmmmm...

anyone else getting this? will upgrade RAM Saturday to 24 GB.
 
imaginaryfriend said:
I just got an i5, 295, ssd, 8gb ram 5K.

noticed significant scrolling lag when using full screen mode (preview, Evernote especially, Safari is okay). read some forums this is common with mbp as well... scrolling is smoother on my 2 year old mba than riMac... hmmmm...

anyone else getting this? will upgrade RAM Saturday to 24 GB.
Click to expand...

return it. i have base iMac with 4k external and am not seeing any of that type of behavior.
 
imaginaryfriend said:
I just got an i5, 295, ssd, 8gb ram 5K.

noticed significant scrolling lag when using full screen mode (preview, Evernote especially, Safari is okay). read some forums this is common with mbp as well... scrolling is smoother on my 2 year old mba than riMac... hmmmm...

anyone else getting this? will upgrade RAM Saturday to 24 GB.
Click to expand...

I have noticed the same on opera and safari. I have an i7, 295, 16gb ram, ssd
 
imaginaryfriend said:
pioneers... ha.

so people can really use preview to browse a big .pdf with no lag (continuous scrolling option, full screen)? if so, this would be helpful to determine if i need to return it...

example pdf => http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/750614main_NASA_FY_2014_Budget_Estimates-508.pdf

.pdf browsing in safari appears to be smoother...
Click to expand...

For some reason scrolling through this PDF in Preview spikes the CPU (not a GPU thing...) even on non-retina systems, and in Mavericks as well. It's a mystery to me why it would be that much better on your MBA.
 
5iMacs said:
For some reason scrolling through this PDF in Preview spikes the CPU (not a GPU thing...) even on non-retina systems, and in Mavericks as well. It's a mystery to me why it would be that much better on your MBA.
Click to expand...

In my MBP is not smooth...
 
dollystereo said:
In my MBP is not smooth...
Click to expand...

My mid-2012 rMBP scrolls smoothly. Will all the varying reports I think it's something to do with Yosemite.

Edit: scratch that, notice it's happening on Mavericks too. No idea what the problem is.
 
Everything is smooth here but Mission Control and its animations. This is a software issue, not exclusive to the Retina iMac..
 
My late 13 i7 rMBP on both internal and an external 27 non-retina monitor, Yosemite, scrolls through that PDF fast in Chrome and Preview with minor CPU impact.
 
wonder where the variability is coming from. for those with smooth scrolling - is there anything about your system that you think may be making it better?

i also noticed it appears to be a CPU issue, processor gets going when scrolling.

and for those with riMac - the more i zoom in on the .pdf in preview, the worse the lag gets. if you zoom in so that the width of the page fills the screen when in full screen mode, it becomes super laggy....

wonder whats going on... any ideas?
 
I don't get any detectable lag. I tried with Firefox, bot in tab and in fullscreen mode. Then Preview seemed ok until I tried full screen and it crashed. Keeps crashing with that PDF.
 
I was viewing it in Preview, no crash. I didn't go through the whole thing though.
 
gosh the computer is perfect except for this scrolling lag - considering i work a lot with annotating pdfs/evernote, this is frustrating.

for those with no lag - what are your specs? could the i7/RAM make the difference?

i also noticed the lag present in iPhoto when you zoom in and out on the thumbnail screen... it's pretty bad...
 
leenak said:
I was viewing it in Preview, no crash. I didn't go through the whole thing though.
Click to expand...

It crashed when I started scrolling. Now it crashes when I open it. I probably should download the pdf again.

----------
imaginaryfriend said:
gosh the computer is perfect except for this scrolling lag - considering i work a lot with annotating pdfs/evernote, this is frustrating.

for those with no lag - what are your specs? could the i7/RAM make the difference?

i also noticed the lag present in iPhoto when you zoom in and out on the thumbnail screen... it's pretty bad...
Click to expand...

i7, M295X, 24Gb RAM (8GB stock + 16Gb Crucial).

I did notice a good perf improvement when I added the RAM, but I didn't really do any lag tests, I just had a few beach balls here and there and adding the RAM got rid of that (except when starting up iTunes).
 
pasadena said:
It crashed when I started scrolling. Now it crashes when I open it. I probably should download the pdf again.

----------



i7, M295X, 24Gb RAM (8GB stock + 16Gb Crucial).

I did notice a good perf improvement when I added the RAM, but I didn't really do any lag tests, I just had a few beach balls here and there and adding the RAM got rid of that (except when starting up iTunes).
Click to expand...

Are you sure the performance boost was because of the extra ram?
 
lag improves when playing with the display settings - definitely retina related. annoying. also strange how everything else is just so smooth.

curious about machines that do not have any lag.
 
imaginaryfriend said:
lag improves when playing with the display settings - definitely retina related. annoying. also strange how everything else is just so smooth.

curious about machines that do not have any lag.
Click to expand...

I think part of the confusion here might be what constitutes significant/objectionable lag, so I'll try to be as descriptive as possible.

I'm running on an i5/M290X and when I full-screen the PDF in Preview and view it at normal size for reading I can spin through the pages with the trackpad quickly and smoothly.

When I zoom in really far, like the width of the page is half the screen, it gets choppier on updates but still feels like inertial scrolling without any delay in response.

Nothing like the extreme glassy smoothness of an average web page in Safari, but has Preview ever been on par with that?
 
it's just crazy how i can play two 4K videos simultaneously full screen with no stutter... but it takes significant effort to scroll through a .pdf
 
imaginaryfriend said:
it's just crazy how i can play two 4K videos simultaneously full screen with no stutter... but it takes significant effort to scroll through a .pdf
Click to expand...

Well...at the risk of dating myself, up to the early 2000's one of the most taxing programs on your computer (CPU, disk I/O, and graphics blitting) was Adobe Acrobat. It was one of the best ways to convince yourself that you had a faster machine when you upgraded.
 
macmee said:
Are you sure the performance boost was because of the extra ram?
Click to expand...

Yes. I used it for a couple of days before I added the RAM (it was delivered first :D). As I said I was getting a few beach balls, doing just normal stuff. I added 16Gb and did nothing else, and no more beach balls.
 
EnderTW said:
return it. i have base iMac with 4k external and am not seeing any of that type of behavior.
Click to expand...

Again.

Return your iMac, that is not normal behavior. If people were stuttering on scrolling, you'd see headlines all over the internet about how the retina iMac lags.
 
EnderTW said:
Again.

Return your iMac, that is not normal behavior. If people were stuttering on scrolling, you'd see headlines all over the internet about how the retina iMac lags.
Click to expand...

this seems to be a feature of other retina devices (18 page apple.com thread here => https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5547471?start=255&tstart=0) -- not just my iMac.

there is no stuttering on safari, nor apps that i more commonly use. i have only found it to be an issue when dealing with preview, evernote and iPhoto. granted, these are just the examples i've come across - there may be more i may notice in the future.

can you really do preview, full screen, with the .pdf above zoomed in a bit, with the continuous scrolling setting on with no lag/stutter? if you have a lot of thumbnail events, can you do full screen zooming in and out on iPhoto with no lag? if so... then i guess i should return...

but it appears that a few other people are observing this lag, which makes me think it's not an isolated event.

i don't think this is a dealbreaker for the machine though.
 
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