Poor Exposé Performance - ideas?

[DaUlf]

I've been having some trouble with Expose performance being somewhat jerky in the "all windows" mode. It usually expands fine, but when I select a window that isn't in the application I'm currently in, it will frequently be jerky/stutter. This will even happen with 4 windows open (sys prefs, Mail.app, and Safari x2). I've had Activity Monitor open during the time, and CPU usage doesn't seem to hit anywhere near 100%, so I'm slightly confused as to what is causing the performance hit. I don't have anything special installed, and nothing sizable ever running other than maybe iTunes. RAM usage seems to be ok, with plenty of "Free" and "Inactive."

I'm running on a 1.25GHz AlBook with 512MB RAM... Shouldn't be having any trouble. Any ideas?

 

[joshuwa72]

on my DP 1.25 G4 1.25gb RAM if I have only 2 windows open and do all windows mode expose, the windows dont resize or anything (theres no need for them to, since they are all in view) but the screen does get dark and the windows open shift a little (specialy itunes in the corner at dock-level which slides above the dock).

Because the windows arent resizing or moving anywhere, just shifting a few pixels, it makes it look like it is jittery, but its really not, its just shifting then moving back but because its only going a small distance it looks like a jitter rather than a smooth slide.

I dont know if this is what your talking about, but if it is, its not the performace of your machine, but the way you precieve a window shifting 10 pixels as moving faster/jittery than one gliding half way across the screen smoothly - they are both moving just as smooth, you just cant notice the smoothness in a 5-10 pixel shift.

 

[DaUlf]

Generally the problem is when the windows are making larger leaps. It'll be smooth sometimes and not very smooth at all others. Something I've noticed: Mail.app window seems to be one of the worst offenders. Don't know if that's just a guess or whether it's an actual problem. My mailboxes are kind of large, but that shouldn't affect the display of it, right?

edit- this happens with windows other than Mail, it just seems it always happens when Mail is around. Maybe that's when I'm multitasking more. Who knows.

 

[snickelfritz]

Hmm, I can open 8 Finder windows, Safari and Mail, and Expose animates very smoothly on my 1ghz Powermac G4 w/GF4MX video chipset.
No stuttering at all.

Maybe it's a driver issue with your particular video chipset.
From what I've heard, the next Panther update will include video driver updates.

 

[XnavxeMiyyep]

Are you running Konfabulator? That gave me some serious problems on Panther, so I got rid of it(didn't use it much anyway). Check the activity monitor (Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor) to see if you have enough free RAM and if any programs are taking up a ridiculous amount of RAM or processing power.

 

[amberashby]

I had this same problem on my dual 2.0 Ghz G5. I isolated it to Meteorologist. Quit running it and everything is now smooth.

Try creating another user account with no extra apps installed and see if it is still choppy.