rMBP 13" (Haswell) scroll lag?

[NickPhamUK]

I come from MBA 2011 so I don't know all the fuss people have been talking about the scrolling lag issue in retina models. I'm considering to upgrade to the coming rMBP Haswell line so that bothers me a lot. What lags, besides Safari? Has the issue been addressed in Mavericks beta? Is it the fault of HD 4000 being too weak to handle the resolution? Do you think the situation will be any better with Iris Pro 5100?

 

[psik]

good question - i asked this question myself and it wasnt really answered .. and even more important, the iris 5100, is it a future proof graphics card for
basic video and graphic design? i mean, if i buy the 16 GB model of 13" if it is offered, it will be a lot money, so it will a futureproof laptop?

 

[kaellar]

It's mostly not hardware- but software-based issue. It was mentioned while Mavericks announcement, that there have been software improvements done, and the scrolling is way smoother across the apps. And since current-gen rMBP owners report that issue is eliminated in Maverics developers previews, there is nothing to worry about when Haswell rMBPs will come out.

 

[sofianito]

I come from MBA 2011 so I don't know all the fuss people have been talking about the scrolling lag issue in retina models. I'm considering to upgrade to the coming rMBP Haswell line so that bothers me a lot. What lags, besides Safari? Has the issue been addressed in Mavericks beta? Is it the fault of HD 4000 being too weak to handle the resolution? Do you think the situation will be any better with Iris Pro 5100?

You can't know for sure until Mavericks is released...

 

[racer1441]

The lag issue is way way way over blown. I have used the 13 inch retina for a while, and bought one day one to test with. Nothing I have ever done has lagged the machine.

My advice, don't worry.

 

[sofianito]

The lag issue is way way way over blown. I have used the 13 inch retina for a while, and bought one day one to test with. Nothing I have ever done has lagged the machine.

My advice, don't worry.

You have been running Mavericks since day one...

 

[iMacBooked]

Indeed, you'll have to wait for Mavericks to be sure about this.

 

[psik]

thanks for sharing guys

 

[swerve147]

The lag issue is way way way over blown. I have used the 13 inch retina for a while, and bought one day one to test with. Nothing I have ever done has lagged the machine.

My advice, don't worry.

Lag is completely subjective. There is definitely a drop in fps with retina displays, 13 and 15. And it does strain the HD4000.

But less fps may or may not bother you. Some people here say "there is no lag" or "I see no lag". The truth is they're just not as sensitive to the drop in frame rate as compared to a standard display. But the fps drop is most definitely there.

Haswell and Mavericks will improve upon the fps issue simply due to the fact that they're better performance-wise than Ivy Bridge and ML.

 

[Virginaustralia]

What are you talking about? i thought the MBP hasnt been released with haswell yet only the Air has

 

[cbautis2]

I hate to admit this but my friend's Penryn with Intel GMA 4500MHD Windows 7 laptop with IE 10 is buttery smooth when scrolling compared to the 13" retina MBP on Chrome. I agree with previous posters that it's software fault. Intel HD 4000 is eons faster than the GMA 4500MHD so it shouldn't even break a sweat when scrolling webpages if the Hardware acceleration is as good as IE 10 on Windows 7 and 8. I can't wait for Mavericks on my 2011 MBA to fix this choppy scrolling on Chrome. Safari fares better but nothing compared to IE 10, especially on scrolling up and down like a madman on "theverge.com"

 

[racer1441]

You have been running Mavericks since day one...

Using the rMBP. All the words mean something. Try to keep up.

----------

Lag is completely subjective. There is definitely a drop in fps with retina displays, 13 and 15. And it does strain the HD4000.

But less fps may or may not bother you. Some people here say "there is no lag" or "I see no lag". The truth is they're just not as sensitive to the drop in frame rate as compared to a standard display. But the fps drop is most definitely there.

Haswell and Mavericks will improve upon the fps issue simply due to the fact that they're better performance-wise than Ivy Bridge and ML.

That's like saying you used the Force to feel frame rate issues. Each machine will be different, but in the end does it matter, and the answer is no, despite what some people would have others believe.

 

[swerve147]

Using the rMBP. All the words mean something. Try to keep up.

----------



That's like saying you used the Force to feel frame rate issues. Each machine will be different, but in the end does it matter, and the answer is no, despite what some people would have others believe.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/8

RE: lag, it doesn't matter to you, and it doesn't matter to me (it doesn't bother me either). But that doesn't mean it isn't there. It most definitely is. And it bothers people. That's why you see people complain about it.

Let's not pretend it doesn't exist just because it doesn't bother us. Like I said initially, it's subjective.

 

[bobbydd21]

I hate to admit this but my friend's Penryn with Intel GMA 4500MHD Windows 7 laptop with IE 10 is buttery smooth when scrolling compared to the 13" retina MBP on Chrome. I agree with previous posters that it's software fault. Intel HD 4000 is eons faster than the GMA 4500MHD so it shouldn't even break a sweat when scrolling webpages if the Hardware acceleration is as good as IE 10 on Windows 7 and 8. I can't wait for Mavericks on my 2011 MBA to fix this choppy scrolling on Chrome. Safari fares better but nothing compared to IE 10, especially on scrolling up and down like a madman on "theverge.com"

Agreed it is definitely software related. Even using WebKit instead of Safari instantly resolves any lag issues with Safari.

 

[NickPhamUK]

So let me confirm this, only scrolling in Safari lags right? Is there any other "lag" issues compared to cMBP 13"?

 

[CausticPuppy]

So let me confirm this, only scrolling in Safari lags right? Is there any other "lag" issues compared to cMBP 13"?

The scrolling in Safari has already been largely fixed; I have no complaints, although the WebKit nightly builds still are a bit smoother. The issue can be fixed 100% with software optimization. I expect Mavericks to match or exceed the performance available in the webkit builds.

Firefox and Chrome are noticeably worse.

I have seen other un-optimized software exhibit really laggy behavior, such as almost anything written in Java (Eclipse, SoapUI, etc).

Sublime Text 2 is a bit laggy, but Sublime Text 3 beta is super smooth. So as time goes on more and more apps will be optimized for better retina performance.

----------

It's mostly not hardware- but software-based issue.

The "scroll lag" is caused by the limit of single-core CPU performance (it has nothing to do with the GPU). So the software optimization is to make better use of multiple cores, and/or offload the rendering to the GPU.

 

[sofianito]

The scrolling in Safari has already been largely fixed; I have no complaints, although the WebKit nightly builds still are a bit smoother. The issue can be fixed 100% with software optimization. I expect Mavericks to match or exceed the performance available in the webkit builds.

Firefox and Chrome are noticeably worse.

I have seen other un-optimized software exhibit really laggy behavior, such as almost anything written in Java (Eclipse, SoapUI, etc).

Sublime Text 2 is a bit laggy, but Sublime Text 3 beta is super smooth. So as time goes on more and more apps will be optimized for better retina performance.

----------



The "scroll lag" is caused by the limit of single-core CPU performance (it has nothing to do with the GPU). So the software optimization is to make better use of multiple cores, and/or offload the rendering to the GPU.

Your statements regarding Java GUI applications is worrying me. AFAIK, Eclipse is multi-threaded. What parts of Eclipse lag? What JDK/JRE version did you use to runrun Eclipse?

According to Apple:

Benefits of Apple’s Java implementation include access to Aqua user interface elements “for free” through Swing, native preemptive multitasking, multiprocessing support (with no additional coding required), and treatment of JAR files as shared libraries. This last advance improves the speed of execution and reduces the RAM footprint of applications which rely on the same archive, such as applications within suites. Additionally, Mac OS X plugs the Java windowing toolkit directly into the Mac’s native windowing toolkit, giving Java applications and applets the graphics performance benefits of Quartz, one of three powerful graphics technologies on Mac OS X.

Since JDK 1.7, Oracle took over the JVM implementation and integration with OS X.

 

[cbautis2]

CausticPuppy wrote:

The "scroll lag" is caused by the limit of single-core CPU performance (it has nothing to do with the GPU). So the software optimization is to make better use of multiple cores, and/or offload the rendering to the GPU.

I disagree with you. GPU hardware acceleration is what makes scrolling buttery smooth. This is clearly shown in Windows 7 IE10 where it's possible to scroll 120fps consistently on a lowly mobile Penryn processor. This due to the fact that the Intel GMA 4500MHD supports the 2D graphics acceleration baked to the OS, and IE 10 is clearly utilizing it. So relying on CPU performance is very inefficient since GPU processors are geared to do those things if the software takes complete advantage of it.

 

[akdj]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/8

RE: lag, it doesn't matter to you, and it doesn't matter to me (it doesn't bother me either). But that doesn't mean it isn't there. It most definitely is. And it bothers people. That's why you see people complain about it.

Let's not pretend it doesn't exist just because it doesn't bother us. Like I said initially, it's subjective.

Anand tested the rMBP with Lion, not Mountain Lion...his mini quote after he updated to ML 10.8.0
"The good news is Mountain Lion provides some relief. At WWDC Apple mentioned the next version of Safari is ridiculously fast, but it wasn’t specific about why. It turns out that Safari leverages Core Animation in Mountain Lion and more GPU accelerated as a result. Facebook is still a challenge because of the mixture of CPU decoded images and a standard web page, but the experience is a bit better. Repeating the same test as above I measured anywhere from 20 - 30 fps while scrolling through Facebook on ML’s Safari.

Whereas I would consider the rMBP experience under Lion to be borderline unacceptable, everything is significantly better under Mountain Lion. Don’t expect buttery smoothness across the board, you’re still asking a lot of the CPU and GPU, but it’s a lot better."

This of course, again was the first 'build' of ML. Each iteration and point update has continued to increase the scrolling FPS and animations between apps, including Launchpad and Mission control. While I agree it's 'still there' in some occasions---The Verge, Tech Crunch, Face Book....poorly coded (for HiDPI displays) sites are the 'challenging' areas I still notice, albeit not annoyingly bad, a bit of lag. Easily remedied by enabling the discrete card---EVEN though the 'drawing' of the page is heavily dependent on single core CPU performance. Also helps a lot with Chrome (which has also had multiple updates of late) and Firefox.

CausticPuppy wrote:

I disagree with you. GPU hardware acceleration is what makes scrolling buttery smooth. This is clearly shown in Windows 7 IE10 where it's possible to scroll 120fps consistently on a lowly mobile Penryn processor. This due to the fact that the Intel GMA 4500MHD supports the 2D graphics acceleration baked to the OS, and IE 10 is clearly utilizing it. So relying on CPU performance is very inefficient since GPU processors are geared to do those things if the software takes complete advantage of it.

I think you're actually agreeing with him. That's exactly what he/she said---when apps and the OS is optimized to utilize more than a single core and/or offload some of the page drawing to the GPU---things will get even better. IE---remedied with software

J

 

[CmdrLaForge]

Isn't it kind of ridiculous that we have to discuss FPS while scrolling in a browser in 2013?

 

[sofianito]

Isn't it kind of ridiculous that we have to discuss FPS while scrolling in a browser in 2013?

Indeed it is a sad and bitter fact...

 

[Breitling65]

I come from MBA 2011 so I don't know all the fuss people have been talking about the scrolling lag issue in retina models. I'm considering to upgrade to the coming rMBP Haswell line so that bothers me a lot. What lags, besides Safari? Has the issue been addressed in Mavericks beta? Is it the fault of HD 4000 being too weak to handle the resolution? Do you think the situation will be any better with Iris Pro 5100?

No lag on scroll on mine new MBPR 13 inch, Haswell will improve battery only. 5% of promised improvement is nothing, delete your slowing everything antivirus and you will get 5% improvement same day.

 

[JohnDoe98]

So let me confirm this, only scrolling in Safari lags right? Is there any other "lag" issues compared to cMBP 13"?

On my 15", 2.3ghz RMBP, running the latest Mavericks DP (6), I have no lag whatsoever system wide (Mission control, moving in and out of full-screen, launchpad, etc.) or in Safari. That being said, there is lag in preview in rather large pdfs, but my guess is that's going to happen on any laptop.

 

[leman]

Has the issue been addressed in Mavericks beta?

Yes

Is it the fault of HD 4000 being too weak to handle the resolution?

No

Do you think the situation will be any better with Iris Pro 5100?

No

P.S. There is no Haswell rMBP yet, so nobody here has even the faintest idea about its performance or issues. My 15" rMBP however has no perceivable lag in day-to-day tasks when using the HD4000 for rendering a 3840x2400 desktop...

 

[Vanilla35]

I'm sorry to say for everyone who believes they don't have lag on their computer. But speaking of Safari, in the Apple store. I used a 15" cMBP vs. a rMBP on over 3 occasions, and I noticed the lag in the 15" rMBP every time. I tested a few regular sites (some news, ect - I didn't use facebook, or the verge), and although the differences are slight, I still noticed a less smooth experience web browsing on the Retina. I didn't do actual recorded tests, but if I were to give my opinion; if the cMBP scrolled on average at 55-60fps. The rMBP scrolled at 40-45fps. However I definitely noticed worse performance on the retina on certain sites. Just feels more choppy

Some may say it is what it is, but that seriously pisses me off. As an average consumer who cares about the little things, spending top dollar for a top CPU and comparable GPU set up, I do not want to notice worse scrolling smoothness (even if I'm a picky person) on a newer product. I hope Mavericks completely rids the computer of this problem. But my assumption is, it'll take another 6-10 months to iron out most of it, to the point where us picky people don't know the difference anymore