Safari Technology Preview release 129 does not fix. Maybe I need to buy an external SSD, install a full clean version of Big Sur on it, and boot from there. See if that fixes the problem. Will post again when I've tried that
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Rendering glitches only in specific apps Photos and Safari on MBP 15'' (Mid 2014) when dGPU active in macOS 11 Big Sur
- Thread starter porg
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I promised feedback on the proposed fix.
I followed the advice of the Apple technical support specialist today. I had read one article which suggested that a complete clean install of Mac OS Big Sur onto my machine might fix the problem. This was on the basis that perhaps a required file had been either not copied or corrupted on my previous upgrade install from Catalina to Big Sur. So the technical specialist suggested that I perform a clean install.
So I bought myself a Samsung External USB T5 1TB SSD drive; configured it as a boot drive; installed a clean Mac OS Big Sur boot image ver 11.5.2 from the Apple App Store; and booted from there. Not a hapeth' of difference whatsoever. Safari still displays the green horizontal bars and rendering issue.
Perhaps this version of Mac OS should be called "Bug Sore"
I followed the advice of the Apple technical support specialist today. I had read one article which suggested that a complete clean install of Mac OS Big Sur onto my machine might fix the problem. This was on the basis that perhaps a required file had been either not copied or corrupted on my previous upgrade install from Catalina to Big Sur. So the technical specialist suggested that I perform a clean install.
So I bought myself a Samsung External USB T5 1TB SSD drive; configured it as a boot drive; installed a clean Mac OS Big Sur boot image ver 11.5.2 from the Apple App Store; and booted from there. Not a hapeth' of difference whatsoever. Safari still displays the green horizontal bars and rendering issue.
Perhaps this version of Mac OS should be called "Bug Sore"
- Thanks guys for reporting your experiences!
- It's very likely a software issue from all our observations.
- Luckily I don't get it too often in Safari.
- And in Apple Photos I somehow internalized to ignore the glitch as good as possible.
- Glad to read that some of you got at least some feedback from Apple!
- (I never even got a reply to my particular Apple feedback submisson. Btw, almost never got a reaction over the decades (since back when it was called Radar). Maybe my account or my region is flagged as low priority service. This is speculation only. But it's somehow strange that I never get a reaction although providing issues with a clear reproduction, environment, all details necessary.)
- The next release of macOS 12 Monterrey only supports MacBook Pro 2015 or newer, so I guess that's it.
- Very unlikely that this issue get's patched. As an Apple consumer I'm meanwhile used to the expected product lifecycle. Not happy about it, but the main competition is even worse.
- The SW and HW replacements part support span at Apple is usually around 7 years. And 2014-2021 is again exactly that lifespan.
- But a bit bitter is that in reality it was only about 5 years, because I bought my Mid 2014 model only at the end of 2014, and these Big Sur issues already started 2020.
Porg:
It's a great shame that Apple have decided to ignore their user base in this particular respect. In fact to some extent treating us with contempt. But as you say 7 years is about the lifetime for hardware/software lifetime span. What worries me most is where do I go from here in terms of next hardware/software combination. I bought my MacBook Pro because of it's high spec intended for mainly Adobe Photoshop work. It was far more expensive than an Intel based / Microsoft Windows based configuration - and for me a somewhat leap of faith from that environment which I had used since the early days of the IBM PC, back in the late 1980's / early 1990's. Reading recent posts it appears Apple's M chipset is not supported by Adobe, and the AMD GPU offerings don't appear to be supported either.
What a great shame that Apple appear to be going down the route of "sexy" functionality at the expense of robust base functionality and rigorous testing.
So maybe it's time to say goodbye to Apple, and "Hello Again!" to Microsoft. Over and Out!
To me (knock on wood) the problem seems to be solved with the Safari 15.0 update.
Big Sur, iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2 GB.
Big Sur, iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2 GB.
Regrettably Safari 15.0 does not fix the rendering problem on MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) configured with NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB GPU.
Glitch also appears in Adobe Illustrator (Retina and secondary screens) with Catalina installed, usually at certain zoom magnifications. Secondary Screen also blinks at times when the mouse pointer is moving over it. I have two external monitors (HDMI and TB) and the glitches appear in either and both where Illustrator is. I haven't tested other Adobe apps, but I've used Animate recently with no glitching.
Edit: The above screenshot were taken with Catalina, before my SSD and Big Sur upgrade, but still occurs in Big Sur.
Edit: The above screenshot were taken with Catalina, before my SSD and Big Sur upgrade, but still occurs in Big Sur.
Last edited:
Geforce is designed by Nvidia which reinforces my theory that this is actually a strange interaction between certain websites, Safari, and the Nvidia graphic chipset.
@Maximara Not exactly.
Listing some apps for which the glitch was reported when the dGPU Geforce GT750M is in use:
- Safari (and there not general, but very specific to certain features)
- Apps which utilize WebKit (the rendering engine of Safari), i.e. Mail.app when viewing HTML emails
- Apple Photos
- Adobe Illustrator (as @xanderx007 reported just yesterday).
You would think such a bug would be easy to duplicate if it was on the graphics driver or window compositing engine (Quartz, Metal, etc). The fact it is intermittent suggests something else is involved.
What he means is, because the glitch occurs in certain conditions (and not all the time), it might not just be the dGPU, but something else altogether, like a combination of factors.
In my case, it's easy to <duplicate> with Adobe Illustrator since it occurs so far only in AI and Photos. I don't see any visible difference in Safari, and I don't know if entire page Facebook elements disappearing after viewing a photo and closing (in messenger) it count as a glitch. I have yet to see the glitch in other Adobe apps (PS, Animate, InDesign, etc).
Simply put, the glitch occurs with certain combination of factors involving the dGPU and specific software renders.
Last edited:
Update:
Aside from the screen glitches, the dGPU is actually slowing down how Illustrator renders images, especially when a document becomes graphic-heavy (AI is red on Activity Monitor, consuming 20-80GB memory), with multiple layers and artboards, and multiple documents open (copy-pasting). As soon as I switch to CPU view, everything becomes fine.
So, I turned the GPU off on AI preferences.
Aside from the screen glitches, the dGPU is actually slowing down how Illustrator renders images, especially when a document becomes graphic-heavy (AI is red on Activity Monitor, consuming 20-80GB memory), with multiple layers and artboards, and multiple documents open (copy-pasting). As soon as I switch to CPU view, everything becomes fine.
So, I turned the GPU off on AI preferences.