Don't have any of those installed on the Mountain Lion disk yet. I'll see if I can play around with them tomorrow a bit.
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Retina MBP UI performance - with video
- Thread starter CausticPuppy
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Don't have any of those installed on the Mountain Lion disk yet. I'll see if I can play around with them tomorrow a bit.
I will test it after I get mine on Tue. Feel free to recommend a free/trial program to install and test. (autodesk?) I already have cs suite but only license for PC.
Gamespot is a taxing site. U should try it with your machine. It has prob 30-50 flash components on one page.
I got my machine a couple of days ago, no lagginess. I'm running Safari 6. Also there was an OS update that I immediately installed, so it's possible that avoided the issue to.
Hey
How's the fan doing? Is it just Apple PR ******** or does the asymmetrical fan really make that big of a difference? Thanks
How's the fan doing? Is it just Apple PR ******** or does the asymmetrical fan really make that big of a difference? Thanks
Why do some people have lag issue and some dont? Lots of inconsistency.
Did you try the gamespot website? iTunes store?
Just to throw my two cents in...
I went into the Apple Store in Liverpool yesterday and had a play around with the base level RMBP.
In the "best for Retina" mode, there was no lag going into/out of full screen or Launchpad... There was a SMALL amount of lag when scaling was enabled.
I went into the Apple Store in Liverpool yesterday and had a play around with the base level RMBP.
In the "best for Retina" mode, there was no lag going into/out of full screen or Launchpad... There was a SMALL amount of lag when scaling was enabled.
Because the people that are reporting no lag don't really get what's happening. It happens on scrolling or animating things with a lot of images, so if you "maximize" a finder window it'll be smooth on all RMBPs. But if you fire up the app store and maximize it from a small size you'll see extreme choppiness. Or if you load theverge.com for example and try to scroll. Pages with mostly text are much much much less laggy, pages with lots of separate graphic assets are much more. Hence mission control can still be fast because it's just animating a few bitmaps ( ~ 1 for each application ), whereas a web site that uses a lot of graphics ( hello a giant chunk of the web ) it'll get just embarrassingly slow.
In regards to using theverge.com as a litmus test, scrolling that page on my late 2010 Air is super-choppy in Chrome and Safari. Not that the 320M is a powerhouse or anything, but problems with that site wouldn't be unique to the RMBP.
Yes. Also didn't have any issues in the store a little bit ago.
But a buddy of mine said he saw a fair bit of choppiness.
If it's hardware, and it varies from machine to machine, I suppose there could be some yield/quality issues maybe with heat causing throttling? But that is just a WAG.
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Bingo. I do see some choppiness on TheVerge.com in 1920x1200 mode.
Still some in 1440x900, but less severe.
I guess for me most sites I visit aren't designed like that so I don't it much.
And I just realized people were saying gameSPOT.com not gameSTOP.com gameSPOT is choppy. not bad in 1440x900 but in 1920x1200 it is not great. i personally don't mind it much, but if I surfed a lot of visual sites like that I'd probably be up in arms. Fortunately for me, I don't. So YMMV.
I tried one out at Best Buy today. It was a little choppy when scrolling on image heavy web pages. I'm probably in for the next refresh. I tried it with the scaling to make it look like 1920x1200, just totally amazing.
So you realize all this issue is completely irrelevant on Moutain Lion ? People who says : "oh, it's kinda laggy with these websites, I prefer wait until a new more powerful model comes out, I cannot deal with scrolling right now", c'mon, mid-july ! Soon !
Yeah its definitely not a hardware issue, tuning the software should sort out the scrolling problems.
Ok but let's be realistic. MacBook Airs pre the i5 processor updates are literally useless for almost any real task. That's not a valid benchmark nor an excuse for a cutting edge quad core with hyper threading and 1600 RAM on top of a 6 GBPS SSD w/ one of the latest NVidia graphics chips.
The 2012 MacBook Airs ( have one right next to me ) can handle scrolling TheVerge.com just fine ( after the page has loaded and rendered obi ).
HERE'S SOMETHING REALLY TRAGIC THOUGH. If you set OS X's resolution to the native ( 2880 x 1800 ) scrolling is absolutely flawless. Smooth, buttery, surgery-like precision. And though text is still very readable ( and with Safari's smart zoom it's actually a pretty fun way to browse the web ), it's a little bit TOO small to read comfortably across all interfaces ( screwed around with writing some javascript in Coda and Dreamweaver ). If you have better eyesight than me it may be just your cup of tea and change your life, because it's amazing to be able to fit anything you want to side by side or side by side by side on the same laptop screen. Like a helicopter view or something.
So according to Anandtech the reason is that Apple actually renders ( invisibly ) whatever you're doing at twice the simulated resolution, for the "best for retina" setting that happens to also be the monitor's native resolution, but here's what triggers the lagggggggg...
It then scales the rendered screen DOWN for pixels not comprising bitmaps to fit into the target resolution ( 1440x900 on that default setting ). That extra math of scaling down is what causes the slowdown. If only it would force the i7 to do that math instead of the graphics card, which I'm guessing ( not a hardware expert by any means ) could work in simultaneous tandem ( almost like a 2nd graphics card for this intent/purpose ) to avoid the lag. The i7 will almost always have extra processor cycles to spare compared to the graphics card when it's burdened with 2880x1800 ( or higher if you pick a higher setting than best for retina, which you should, the fake 1920x1200 is amazing ).
That seems like good news, not tragedy. If scrolling is gloriously smooth at 2880x1800, that would seem to lend support to the idea that it's totally a software issue, since the hardware can obviously push the pixels.
There's nothing to worry. Since the Mountain Lion Developer Preview seems to fix these lags, its clearly a software issue... It would be nice though if Apple (or somebody who knows this tech stuff very well) would confirm that it is actually a software problem. Would let me sleep better!
There's nothing to worry. Since the Mountain Lion Developer Preview seems to fix these lags, its clearly a software issue... It would be nice though if Apple (or somebody who knows this tech stuff very well) would confirm that it is actually a software problem. Would let me sleep better!
And on that note, I think I'll wait until July to contemplate buying the retina Macbook.
I merely wanted to point out that that particular web site is something of a worst-case scenario, and likely plagues other Apple laptops than just the Retina Pro. At the Apple cube today I played with a Retina Pro and a 2012 high-res antiglare Pro. Both lagged on scrolling that page, though the Retina Pro lagged more than the antiglare on at both the 1440-equivalent "Retina" resolution and the 1920-equivalent "More Space" resolution. That's despite the fact that the antiglare Pro is also a "cutting edge quad core with hyper threading." And I wouldn't chalk up the antiglare's trouble with The Verge to the alleged problems with Apple Store demo models: other than scrolling The Verge, the high-res antiglare Pro was buttery smooth and flawless at everything (Mission Control, Spaces-switching, other web page scrolling).
I agree with you, though, that I wouldn't expect either brand-new machine to stutter while scrolling a web page with no other applications or processes running. I thought the Retina's screen was stunning (the 1920-equivalent "More Space" setting was simply unbelievable and is a screen real estate dream come true), but I wouldn't buy the computer until these rendering issues are sorted out. Scrolling web pages is an action so frequently performed on a computer that this kind of performance is just too degrading to the user experience in my opinion.
Interestingly, the scroll lag was worse in Chrome Canary than Safari.
Let's be realistic. A Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 320M isn't "literally useless for almost any real task", whatever a "real task" is.
Hello everyone,
Could someone of you with RMBP take a test with Safari, http://www.theverge.com/ site opened and with Activity Monitor please? Scroll page fast in Safari up and down several times and see how much Safari and "Safari Web Content" processes is eating a CPU.
I have only MBP 2009 with Dual Core processor, and that page is scrolling without any choppiness there, and eating up to 70% of CPU during scrolling.
I assume that RMBP is taking 100% during scrolling of that page and this causes the choppiness, so this is why I'm asking here to make this test.
As example here is attached screenshot from my MBP'2009 and I want to see same screenshot from RMBP. Note that screenshot is taken during scrolling when it takes maximum CPU on the Safari processes in Activity Monitor.
P.S. I don't have RMBP in my country yet so can't do this test myself.
Could someone of you with RMBP take a test with Safari, http://www.theverge.com/ site opened and with Activity Monitor please? Scroll page fast in Safari up and down several times and see how much Safari and "Safari Web Content" processes is eating a CPU.
I have only MBP 2009 with Dual Core processor, and that page is scrolling without any choppiness there, and eating up to 70% of CPU during scrolling.
I assume that RMBP is taking 100% during scrolling of that page and this causes the choppiness, so this is why I'm asking here to make this test.
As example here is attached screenshot from my MBP'2009 and I want to see same screenshot from RMBP. Note that screenshot is taken during scrolling when it takes maximum CPU on the Safari processes in Activity Monitor.
P.S. I don't have RMBP in my country yet so can't do this test myself.
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I got the CPU % up to 100% between two Safari processes, however, the CPU User% was only about 12%. Makes me think Safari is only using one core.
Hi David.
Do you own RMBP? If so, does ML fix the issue?
I just want to know if this is a hardware issue or software issue.
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So, it seems like there are a lot of processing power needed to display 2x resolution image on 1440x900 resolution. Where as, if we scale the resolution to 2880x1800 there s less processing power needed.
This to me means that the quad core isnt powerful enough to process retina display images.
No matter how much optimisation on safari Apple uses, it still require the cpu to process images for retina display. Which to me is very challenging to solve this lag issue unless processor upgrade. => hardware issue rather than software issue
Do you think the same?
I can get my 2.6 GHz (16GB RAM) RMBP up to 100.7% CPU on the Safari Web Content process. The Safari process is only up around 15% at the same time. I can do this with both theverge and this page I'm typing on right now (macrumors forum). The verge is far more visually choppy however than macrumors forums.
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I posted the following in a different thread and it is probably relevant to the readers of this thread.
I have the new RMBP with 2.6GHz & 16GB. I have all the updates installed and it still lags quite badly. I also have 2 different generations of 27" iMacs as well as a 2010 13" MBA and a 2011 17" MBP all running Snow Leopard. They all scroll just fine - smooth as can be. My RMBP is a mess on most sites. Sites like The Verge & IGN are like scrolling on an old Android Phone.
As per the recommendation in this thread I downloaded and installed Safari 5.2 and it doesn't look any different. Chrome & Chrome Canary are both a little better that Safari but still no where close to all my older macs.
I love the Retina display but not enough to forgo the smooth scrolling I have come to love on my macs.
I also wanted to note that the scrolling in the app store is also pretty bad.
Hey
How's the fan doing? Is it just Apple PR ******** or does the asymmetrical fan really make that big of a difference? Thanks
Happy to report I'd say it makes a HUGE difference. You can't actually hear it or tell that it's on unless you stop and concentrate even under high load.
The bad news is... this bitch gets really really hot. Uncomfortably hot to the point where you kind of want to stop using it. You don't, but you want to.
But, even then, essentially silent. The glare problem is also 98-99% solved, so I wouldn't expect a full on matte option for this model at all. And you wouldn't want one, it's not longer annoying and the contrast and color benefits are > the very slight sporadic glare if any.
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Let's be realistic. A Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 320M isn't "literally useless for almost any real task", whatever a "real task" is.
Well hopefully it's improved dramatically from when I had mine but I bought it on launch day and it was literally unusable even as a web browser. When I'd get past 3-4 tabs it'd just start to struggle, couldn't handle being used on a soft surface like a couch or bed without getting loud and angry, and everything was just so slow that I almost threw it out my window like a frisbee. Ended up returning it instead.
A mac genius also told me as I was returning it that it's not a "real" Core 2 Duo. It's a special one that.... a hell of a lot of the time just totally shuts down the 2nd core EVEN when you need it just to maintain the system's temperature, so everything ends up being 1992 slow. Again, hope yours is better than mine was. Mine was a joke.
So amazing. At 2880x1800, and I was literally flying up and down the page like a jackhammer over and over, I couldn't get it to break 17ish percent.
It's a strange experience working at this resolution, but I'm able to read text surprisingly well. I'm not zooming in on MacRumors for example. It's kind of... amazing.
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Got it to teeter around 17% at the 1920x1200 simulated resolution
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Oops, just got which figure you're talking about. I'd argue though that what activity monitor is reporting there is irrelevant because at 2880x1800 it's perfectly smooth and at the 1920x1200 "setting" it's extraordinarily choppy. So it's got to be a bottleneck somewhere else in the software stack than simply the core's utilization while scrolling. The core may fly up like that because of the high resolution of touch input the mac trackpads collect too ( which is why scrolling is so different and better on the mac trackpad than almost any other input device ), totally independent of the content on the screen itself scrolling, which is more likely to be handled/processed by the video card ( my guess, don't have data to back this up ).
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At 2880x1800 there's no scaling happening, that's the true/native/actual resolution of the retina screen. So there is no extra calculation happening to show things on the screen. Hence, it's faster. The video card inside is capable of handling most things at that resolution very quickly...
At any other resolution however, let's take the default scaled resolution ( 1440x900 ), what happens is that for each frame per second ( imaginary, it's not really measured that way ) the video card has to render everything like it normally does, meaning figure out what to show for each pixel, and THEN do another full calculation for each pixel to drop it down to simulate the 1440x900 from its first rendering at 2880x1800. I'm doing a terrible job of explaining this but in a nutshell: It's actually a lot less work to use the much higher resolution of 2880x1800 than any scaled resolution that OS X ships with ( the only options available ).
I'm not an Apple App Developer so I don't have access to Mountain Lion. Though I wants it