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rMBP users on Mavericks- How is the lag?

How smooth is Safari in Mavericks, compared to the current WebKit nightlies? I've been running the nightlies on my rMBP 13" for a long time, since Safari can't keep up with scrolling. Granted WebKit can't either at times, but it's miles better than Safari, and most of the time very useable.

Still, for me the improved text quality is worth it for me, at the current price of some lag here and there. (That Safari's kerning of text isn't of high quality bothers me more than the lag.)
 
imladris said:
How smooth is Safari in Mavericks, compared to the current WebKit nightlies? I've been running the nightlies on my rMBP 13" for a long time, since Safari can't keep up with scrolling. Granted WebKit can't either at times, but it's miles better than Safari, and most of the time very useable.

Still, for me the improved text quality is worth it for me, at the current price of some lag here and there. (That Safari's kerning of text isn't of high quality bothers me more than the lag.)
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In my eye it is much smoother. Ist is better than Chrome when scrolling. Only the Google+ website causes issues, but this is normal since the page is optimized for Chrome.
 
petvas said:
In my eye it is much smoother. Ist is better than Chrome when scrolling. Only the Google+ website causes issues, but this is normal since the page is optimized for Chrome.
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Hm, okay. When I got my rMBP 13", Chrome scrolled so badly that I switched back to Safari, after having used Chrome almost exclusively for some years. But maybe it has improved since december?
 
imladris said:
Hm, okay. When I got my rMBP 13", Chrome scrolled so badly that I switched back to Safari, after having used Chrome almost exclusively for some years. But maybe it has improved since december?
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I have been using the developer versions of Chrome and scrolling was better than Safari. I had no stuttering at all. With Safari 6 I had stuttering all the time.
 
petvas said:
I have been using the developer versions of Chrome and scrolling was better than Safari. I had no stuttering at all. With Safari 6 I had stuttering all the time.
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That's good to hear. I guess I should check back on Chrome then! In any case, I'm happy that improvements are coming in for both Safari and Chrome.
 
Andrmgic said:
If you choose one of the other options "Looks like 1680x1050" or "Looks like 1920x1200", the display image is rendered at 3360x2100 and 3840x2400 respectively and then scales it down to 2880x1800.

In most cases, the machine runs well and doesn't have much lag, but the Nvidia 650m gpu inside of it can only push so many pixels and it has limits to how quickly it can do that.

They will need a more powerful gpu inside to push these pixel counts with absolutely 0 UI lag.
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Nope, sorry, this isn't (and never has been) a GPU issue. Ultimately OSX relies on a lot of CPU work to handle UI elements. The additional work to enable retina displays to work they way they do in OSX, along with replacing some fixed function code with more general calls, puts a LOT of additional workload on both CPU and GPU. Most of the testing I've seen on rMBP's points to serious interface lag occurring when a single core on the CPU is maxed out. This is more common on the 13" model where the CPU tends to be slower than those in the 15". The problem gets worse when you start running a non-optimal resolution as there's even more pixels to render and scaling to perform.

Mavericks seems to have had a pretty major overhaul in the codebase and I'd be amazed if a big chunk of that work wasn't focused on offshoring more of the workload on to the GPU. It would certainly explain why the general feeling is it goes a long way towards fixing lag on the same hardware.

More than that though I honestly think Mavericks might be what's holding back Haswell-based rMBP's. Haswell is built in such a way that, under certain circumstances, it can reach the point where it has to drop chip speed for a single core a bit earlier than Ivy Bridge. That'd be less than ideal for a rMBP if it still relied heavily on single core performance to provide a smooth OS. Add in other battery saving (i.e. reduction in required CPU power and therefore reduction in heat) functions and Mavericks does look, in part anyway, to be a release tailored to address some of the compromises inherent in Haswell.
 
i think the next upgrade of retina with HD4400 or maybe we get HD5000, with maveriks will be 0 UI lag
 
Running 15' rMBP with nearly 0 lag. I thing (and hope) that the final release of mavericks will be even better, solving this issue once and for all...
 
vindictum said:
Running 15' rMBP with nearly 0 lag. I thing (and hope) that the final release of mavericks will be even better, solving this issue once and for all...
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Have you tried the Google Maps Preview in Safari by any chance? Running the preview in Safari at the moment is driving me crazy. The performance is so unbelievably poor. It feels like using a 10 year old computer.
 
bkribbs said:
See these are the reports I like! I'll probably get one anyways since I have 14 days to return it if it really kills me.
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So did you ever do this? I'd be curious to hear your response also, as I'm looking to purchase one this fall after the refresh and also am very particular to lag. I've heard, that the cMBP gets 60 FPS scrolling through a normal safari site, but the rMBP gets something between 30-43 FPS doing the same thing, depending on the site.

^ This was likely before certain patches and updates came out. But that's pretty horrifying. I've tried it in the store, and noticed lag (a few weeks ago...) but I didn't do a comparison between the two as I was in a rush.
 
VanillaCracker said:
So did you ever do this? I'd be curious to hear your response also, as I'm looking to purchase one this fall after the refresh and also am very particular to lag. I've heard, that the cMBP gets 60 FPS scrolling through a normal safari site, but the rMBP gets something between 30-43 FPS doing the same thing, depending on the site.

^ This was likely before certain patches and updates came out. But that's pretty horrifying. I've tried it in the store, and noticed lag (a few weeks ago...) but I didn't do a comparison between the two as I was in a rush.
Click to expand...

Yeah I bought one and love it! I did get an original screen and have IR but will eventually get that replaced.

No lag that I see though.
 
No lag here. I think part of it is because Mavericks ups the video card memory from 512 to 1024. That's seemed to really help actually.
 
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