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Retina Macbook Pro 13", Performance dissapointment

G

GameFreak348

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 28, 2014
152
0
Hello guys,

I have this Retina Macbook Pro 13" late 2013 for about 5 months.
Intel Core i5 4288U 2.6 Ghz
2x4GB DDR3 1600Mhz Ram
Intel Iris 5100 with 1.2 Ghz max. clock
512GB PCIe SSD
Mac OS X Yosemite

And I just really dont like the performance. When playing minecraft and watching a yt video minecraft drops down frames and is unplayable. Youtube is sluggish, web browsing is laggy with firefox. Windows 7 is extremely horrible, the retina screen is making so much performance go away. Im really dissapointed and I will probably get a 13" Macbook Air or 2012 13" Macbook pro with NO RETINA SCREEN. Im still waiting for the new Broadwell macbooks tho.
Am i the only one who has this problem? My macbook is so laggy and nothing is really smooth
 
GameFreak348 said:
Hello guys,

I have this Retina Macbook Pro 13" late 2013 for about 5 months.
Intel Core i5 4288U 2.6 Ghz
2x4GB DDR3 1600Mhz Ram
Intel Iris 5100 with 1.2 Ghz max. clock
512GB PCIe SSD
Mac OS X Yosemite

And I just really dont like the performance. When playing minecraft and watching a yt video minecraft drops down frames and is unplayable. Youtube is sluggish, web browsing is laggy with firefox. Windows 7 is extremely horrible, the retina screen is making so much performance go away. Im really dissapointed and I will probably get a 13" Macbook Air or 2012 13" Macbook pro with NO RETINA SCREEN. Im still waiting for the new Broadwell macbooks tho.
Am i the only one who has this problem? My macbook is so laggy and nothing is really smooth
Click to expand...

If you want to play games, a discrete GPU would probably be a good thing.
If you can live with playing games at half the retina resolution, that would probably help matters a lot, as would turning off or at least lowering some of the more demanding eye-candy in the game.

Do you experience youtube problems in Safari too? (I don't have a good answer to this problem, I'm just curious).
 
GameFreak348 said:
Hello guys,

I have this Retina Macbook Pro 13" late 2013 for about 5 months.
Intel Core i5 4288U 2.6 Ghz
2x4GB DDR3 1600Mhz Ram
Intel Iris 5100 with 1.2 Ghz max. clock
512GB PCIe SSD
Mac OS X Yosemite

And I just really dont like the performance. When playing minecraft and watching a yt video minecraft drops down frames and is unplayable. Youtube is sluggish, web browsing is laggy with firefox. Windows 7 is extremely horrible, the retina screen is making so much performance go away. Im really dissapointed and I will probably get a 13" Macbook Air or 2012 13" Macbook pro with NO RETINA SCREEN. Im still waiting for the new Broadwell macbooks tho.
Am i the only one who has this problem? My macbook is so laggy and nothing is really smooth
Click to expand...

No such problems on my own 13" rMBP (2.8GHz i7-4558U, 16GB RAM, 512GB PCIe SM0512F).

Games would lag when played at 2560x1600, but are smooth at 1280x800.

No lag in Boot Camp after installing all the right drivers. NFS HP 2010 even runs smoothly at everything low, 1280x800.
 
GameFreak348 said:
Hello guys,

I have this Retina Macbook Pro 13" late 2013 for about 5 months.
Intel Core i5 4288U 2.6 Ghz
2x4GB DDR3 1600Mhz Ram
Intel Iris 5100 with 1.2 Ghz max. clock
512GB PCIe SSD
Mac OS X Yosemite

And I just really dont like the performance. When playing minecraft and watching a yt video minecraft drops down frames and is unplayable. Youtube is sluggish, web browsing is laggy with firefox. Windows 7 is extremely horrible, the retina screen is making so much performance go away. Im really dissapointed and I will probably get a 13" Macbook Air or 2012 13" Macbook pro with NO RETINA SCREEN. Im still waiting for the new Broadwell macbooks tho.
Am i the only one who has this problem? My macbook is so laggy and nothing is really smooth
Click to expand...

You do realize that you can change the resolution on the macbook right?

Instead of changing one simple function that takes 5 seconds. You want to buy a slower inferior computer so you can have worse hardware and the same resolution you could custom set on your existing computer.

Getting a slower computer will no make your programs run faster.

If you lower the resolution of the whole computer and still have problems then you'll need a 15" MacBook Pro, with discreet graphics.
 
You're not the only one, but a lot of people's "fix" is to use software that's properly optimized for high-res displays.

I mean, you can't really blame Apple for Windows 7 and Firefox having poor performance at high resolutions.

You could argue that Apple shouldn't have made such high-res displays until the rest of the hardware could keep up with most current software, but then there would have been no incentive for third-party to step up in terms of software optimization. Apple has always been a company willing to make short-term compromises in order to push long-term advances faster.

Using Safari on Mavericks/Yosemite along with HTML5 video players has always worked well for me. If Apple can get graphics software optimization right, then third-parties should as well, at the risk of losing customers.

If you can't stay away from software like Windows 7, Firefox, Flash, etc, then maybe it's not the right computer for you, or as some have suggested you may lower the resolution and still benefit from a color-accurate IPS display.

I suggest you install an utility like SwitchResX to easily change resolution from your menubar. That way, you could change your resolution depending on your usage. Using graphically efficient software? Use the full Retina resolution. Using poorly optimized software? Then use a non-HiDPI resolution like 1440x900. Windows and its ecosystem (especially Windows 7) is not well optimized for HiDPI displays anyway, so you wouldn't be losing much by staying at low resolution with 100% scaling at all times while in Boot Camp.
 
Last edited:
Recently bought a 13" Retina 2.8, 512 and am very please with the performance of the system and I also have 2011 cMBP & 2012 Retina MBP`s as a benchmark. Like others have mentioned it`s down to your choice of applications, and usage.

I went for the 13" for the portability and was a little sceptical of the performance, after close to two months of working with the 13", I have found the system to be very responsive, easily equaling my 13" 2011 Air. I steer clear of applications that wont play well with Retina, and what few games I play are old and I can run in full resolution. I also run QuickRes and have custom profiles set up for my needs.

Q-6
 
GameFreak348 said:
Hello guys,

I have this Retina Macbook Pro 13" late 2013 for about 5 months.
Intel Core i5 4288U 2.6 Ghz
2x4GB DDR3 1600Mhz Ram
Intel Iris 5100 with 1.2 Ghz max. clock
512GB PCIe SSD
Mac OS X Yosemite

And I just really dont like the performance. When playing minecraft and watching a yt video minecraft drops down frames and is unplayable. Youtube is sluggish, web browsing is laggy with firefox. Windows 7 is extremely horrible, the retina screen is making so much performance go away. Im really dissapointed and I will probably get a 13" Macbook Air or 2012 13" Macbook pro with NO RETINA SCREEN. Im still waiting for the new Broadwell macbooks tho.
Am i the only one who has this problem? My macbook is so laggy and nothing is really smooth
Click to expand...

Nope. I'm using that exact same rMBP at work (except with 256GB SSD) but I have yet to encounter any lagging or stuttering. I don't run Minecraft (or any games on my work MBP for that matter) or Windows, but I do run Final Cut Pro X and it feels like the rMBP and FCPX are made for each other.

I love the responsiveness and overall editing performance the little 13" delivers.
 
OF course im not running everything with 2560x1600. im running 1440x900 and 1680x1050 on windows 7. AND of course im not playing games with 2560x1600 resolution-.-.

Everything just doesnt feel like smooth
on my old sandy bridge HP web browing and everything else was alooooot smoother, but it was running 1024x768 resolution with a 15.4" screen. In gaming at 720p the new retina macbook pro smokes my sandy bridge laptop. The sandy bridge laptop has a Radeon HD 6490M but that gpu is worse than an Intel HD 4000. Im really thinking of getting a non retina macbook. Ill just give the retina macbook to my mom. I really dont like the performance. Heck my old Blackbook 2007 feels smoother
 
GameFreak348 said:
OF course im not running everything with 2560x1600. im running 1440x900 and 1680x1050 on windows 7. AND of course im not playing games with 2560x1600 resolution-.-.

Everything just doesnt feel like smooth
on my old sandy bridge HP web browing and everything else was alooooot smoother, but it was running 1024x768 resolution with a 15.4" screen. In gaming at 720p the new retina macbook pro smokes my sandy bridge laptop. The sandy bridge laptop has a Radeon HD 6490M but that gpu is worse than an Intel HD 4000. Im really thinking of getting a non retina macbook. Ill just give the retina macbook to my mom. I really dont like the performance. Heck my old Blackbook 2007 feels smoother
Click to expand...

If I was you I would look at the OS and what is going on, what your describing is not my experience with the 13"Retina and I am far form an Apple apologist.

Q-6
 
You're not alone...

OP-

I completely hear what you're saying. I've used several retina MBP models since 2012 and feel that the 13" is just too under-powered (i've even had a bad experience with the 15", but that's another story.)

I second just about everything you've described including laggy UI animations and sluggish browser performance. And I wouldn't even dare try to partition a retina with Windows; it just can't seem to handle it.

Yes, it's a beautiful display, but it's almost worthless if the hardware cannot back it up. I personally went for the last, 2012 "classic" MBP. I upgraded the RAM, switched the HDD with an SSD, and I've been happy ever since!
 
I decided to wait for the broadwell macbooks so the older non retina macbooks get cheaper. Im definetly buying a non retina macbook. Sorry retina macbook pro. Im sure my grandmother or my sister will like the retina macbook pro
 
GameFreak348 said:
I decided to wait for the broadwell macbooks so the older non retina macbooks get cheaper.
Click to expand...

The Iris 6100 GPU integrated with the 28W Broadwell CPUs is reportedly much faster than the Iris 5100 GPU in your rMBP. Since your plan is to wait for Broadwell, I suggest trying a Broadwell rMBP before buying a cMBP.
 
I don't have these problems either on my 13 rMBP, a 2.6ghz with 16 gigs of ram and 512 SSD. Windows server and workstation vms run well, as do my linux vms. I play some older games and they run just fine.
 
Gaming performance is perfect for me, i get double the frames my old laptop with the HD 6490M had. The Iris 5100 is as strong as a NVIDIA GT 8800, my old GT 120 mac pro can easily run my 2560x1600 30" Screen without any laggs. On the 13" its just basically overkill because the gpu has to downscale the graphics and everything.

Chris thats exactly how it is with my macbook pro. I cant live with that.
 
Have 2012 rMBP, which has an HD4000 and 650m + 8gb mem & 512GB SSD & 2.6 i7 CPU. Even when forcing the computer to use the integrated gpu it's never lagged like that running Yosemite/Mavericks/Windows8, so it can't be because your GPU isn't capable of running it smoothly. It's gotta be something else. CPU underpowered/lemon? Software/settings? overheating? bad logic board? Any of these could be the culprit.

One thing for sure: flash is a CPU hog. I'd switch to html5 and see if that fixes the problem. Then dig into the rest using Activity Monitor and try to figure out what's wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/html5

If everything fails, have it serviced and fixed. It's still under warranty I presume?
 
On my "underpowered" 13" 2014MBP I am typing this in Safari, with 12 tabs open, as I am:

Compiling a video on Contour Storyteller on Yosemite
Running AutoCad in Wimdows 7 at 2560 x 1920 on a VMware VM (running on a Transcend 128 gb drive in the SD card reader bay)
DLing 4 ~2 GB torrent files in parallel on the same VM using VUSE
And I have MotoGP 14 running on Steam.

Switching from OS X to the VM and back is lag-free and instant, switching among any of these apps is flawless, CPU temp is 149 degrees and fans are inaudible at 1600 RPM.


"underpowered" is not how I would describe this laptop.
 
Stop with all the "get the 15" next time", my old blackbook 2007 runs alot smoother than my retina macbook pro. i was in a shop today and the macbook air and the 2012 pro run alot smoother than my laptop. The CPU i5 4288U is definetly not slow, its as good as an AMD A10 5800K 3.9 Ghz. Im gonna go back to mavericks, to see if yosemite is the problem.
 
Was about to suggest going back to Mavericks. I've not had any problems with Yosemite performance-wise, but it's worth a shot as I've read about slow-down issues with some configs.

Just for kicks, fired up Firefox and, 6 tabs, 2 of which youtube pages running flash, paused one started the other (1080p fullscreen.) At same time ran Diablo 3 1200x800 high-res high physics medium shadows & clutter (usual settings I use) after forcing HD4000. Prior to doing that started xcode and changed active processor cores from 8 to 4 (ie halfspeed.)

Result? ran smoothly. So I reduced active cores number even further to 2. Some (but minor) lag, it's there but it's not say 10fps bad. Closer to 20. I own Display Menu so I switched off HiDPi, no difference lag didn't improve nor worsen.

I then reduced Cores to 1 and disabled hyperthreading. Computer became horrid with or without HiDpi.

Upped Active Cores back to 8 and closed xcode. Repeated experiment with 650m this time around. Practically same results at 1200x800. I normally game at 1900x1200 or (1600x1080 with AA) but for comparison purposes ran it at lower res.

Make of it what you will.
 
If i run youtube without minimizing and try to play minecraft, i get stutters and the fps is like 10
 
GameFreak348 said:
If i run youtube without minimizing and try to play minecraft, i get stutters and the fps is like 10
Click to expand...

My advice is to take your computer to Apple and have it fixed if trying out Mavericks doesn't solve the problem. As long as the slowdown is reproducible they'll pretty much agree that the performance is unacceptable and have your MBP fixed or replaced.
 
So i tested another retina macbook pro 13" with mavericks on, it was alot ****ing smoother. I dont know whats wrong with my macbook. Im downgrading to mavericks right now
 
Archer1440 said:
On my "underpowered" 13" 2014MBP I am typing this in Safari, with 12 tabs open, as I am:

Compiling a video on Contour Storyteller on Yosemite
Running AutoCad in Wimdows 7 at 2560 x 1920 on a VMware VM (running on a Transcend 128 gb drive in the SD card reader bay)
DLing 4 ~2 GB torrent files in parallel on the same VM using VUSE
And I have MotoGP 14 running on Steam.

Switching from OS X to the VM and back is lag-free and instant, switching among any of these apps is flawless, CPU temp is 149 degrees and fans are inaudible at 1600 RPM.


"underpowered" is not how I would describe this laptop.
Click to expand...

...and when you are finished it drives you home.
 
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