Too much troubles with 780M !!!

[IA64]

I can't believe that my iMac 2009 4850HD feels smoother than Nvidia 780M one.

This thing is causing me laggy/slow animation under Windows 8.1 pro and Windows 7 ultimate. Even with latest drivers installed, the OS feels like using onboard GPU !!

I have run many benchmarks and I'm getting very good FPS. Games also run with High FPS ( 400-500FPS ) but they aren't smooth !!

I decided to reset everything and clean install OS Mavericks and test it out; benchmark scores are great but again, dragging Finder windows isn't very smooth. I can see slight tearing.

One thing I also noticed, if I open disk utility, the popup is laggy

I booted from OSx repair utility... dragging / moving the disk repair utility will show unbelievable lags, slow animation or tearing.

On normal boot it's not as bad as that, but it's not 100% gone, GPU is still stuttering.

I ruled out hardware issue because I'm getting good FPS performance.

Now what ?



Specs :

Core i7 3.5GHZ - 32GB RAM - 780M - 512 SSD

 

[ckeck]

Seems like it's mostly related to Mavericks and GPU driver issues. Going to have to wait for 10.9.2 (or even later updates). Should have been resolved by now but who knows how long it will be.

Went through 3 rMBPs and finally gave up. Stuck with my MBA.

 

[MacsRgr8]

I have almost the same Mac:

Core i7 3.5GHZ - 32GB RAM - 780M - 1 TB SSD

Everything is absolutely smooth here. Running 10.9 and 10.9.1, no issues.

You said that FPS is good, so OpenGL (3D) is working fine.
But isn't the 2D "acceleration" (Quartz Extreme) the issue with your Mac?

 

[IA64]

I have almost the same Mac:

Core i7 3.5GHZ - 32GB RAM - 780M - 1 TB SSD

Everything is absolutely smooth here. Running 10.9 and 10.9.1, no issues.

You said that FPS is good, so OpenGL (3D) is working fine.
But isn't the 2D "acceleration" (Quartz Extreme) the issue with your Mac?

Exactly, it's the 2D acceleration. Hardware issue ?

Can you please check if your OSX recovery partition ( disk utility ) lags while dragging it ? stuttering and tearing.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Exactly, it's the 2D acceleration. Hardware issue ?

Can you please check if your OSX recovery partition ( disk utility ) lags while dragging it ? stuttering and tearing.

No lags. Super fast dragging. (Recovery is 10.9.0)
It does "tear" a little bit, but that's when trying to move the window as fast as possible.

 

[IA64]

No lags. Super fast dragging. (Recovery is 10.9.0)
It does "tear" a little bit, but that's when trying to move the window as fast as possible.

Now that's very sad news....

Man, I paid more than $4000 for this freaking machine and I get this....

Too much heartache....

 

[thekev]

Seems like it's mostly related to Mavericks and GPU driver issues. Going to have to wait for 10.9.2 (or even later updates). Should have been resolved by now but who knows how long it will be.

Went through 3 rMBPs and finally gave up. Stuck with my MBA.

They seeded 10.9.2 just a bit after they released .9.1. I've been waiting for a stable version to upgrade.

 

[IA64]

Mine was shipped with Mavericks pre-installed btw...

Apple Diagnostic test finds nothing. There is no Genius or Apple servicing center where I live. I bought it from a reseller... So if it's a hardware issue, I'm pretty much done. Anyone can confirm by testing his Mac ?

 

[yjchua95]

I can't believe that my iMac 2009 4850HD feels smoother than Nvidia 780M one.

This thing is causing me laggy/slow animation under Windows 8.1 pro and Windows 7 ultimate. Even with latest drivers installed, the OS feels like using onboard GPU !!

I have run many benchmarks and I'm getting very good FPS. Games also run with High FPS ( 400-500FPS ) but they aren't smooth !!

I decided to reset everything and clean install OS Mavericks and test it out; benchmark scores are great but again, dragging Finder windows isn't very smooth. I can see slight tearing.

One thing I also noticed, if I open disk utility, the popup is laggy

I booted from OSx repair utility... dragging / moving the disk repair utility will show unbelievable lags, slow animation or tearing.

On normal boot it's not as bad as that, but it's not 100% gone, GPU is still stuttering.

I ruled out hardware issue because I'm getting good FPS performance.

Now what ?



Specs :

Core i7 3.5GHZ - 32GB RAM - 780M - 512 SSD

Either NVIDIA hasn't fixed the 780M drivers properly in the latest drivers, or...

Have you tried using the beta drivers? I haven't tried on mine (I'm out of the country and have no access to it).

 

[silvetti]

IA64,

Can you make a video showing the issue ?

I have the same model as you as you know. I haven't noticed anything like you are saying but maybe my vision is not so sensitive.

If you can upload a video for me to compare I can give you some feedback if it's a hardware issue or software.

 

[leman]

If its the same issue in both Windows and OS X, you might have a defective GPU. Did you try resetting the SMC? Maybe its a power states issue.

P.S. There is no such thing as 2D acceleration anymore. Both OS X and Windows use 3D hardware to do their desktop drawing.

 

[IA64]

OK I reproduced the issue under Recovery mode ( Hold option key and boot from recover 9.0 )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJO4wnRMCYg

Under Mavericks, I don't have this, It rarely happens and barely noticeable but I could feel that overall, animation isn't perfectly smooth.

Under Windows7, it's unbearable, no matter what driver I use, EFI or Legacy Boot, it's unusable.

Under Windows 8, it's much better. All perfectly smooth if the latest drivers are installed. With the default generic driver, tearing is similar to the one in this video ( could be normal )

All benchmark scores are perfect. SSD read/write speed is 745/738 MB/s

Small screenshot attached of 1000+FPS although not native resolution by my laptop couldn't get more than 230.

=========================================

I don't know what to do really.... Hardware Test doesn't show anything wrong. I don't have any idea if Bootcamp at some points messed up things.

Here's partition inspector report :


*** Report for internal hard disk ***

Current GPT partition table:
# Start LBA End LBA Type
1 40 409639 EFI System (FAT)
2 409640 293378375 Mac OS X HFS+
3 293378376 294647911 Mac OS X Boot
4 294649856 977104895 Basic Data

Current MBR partition table:
# A Start LBA End LBA Type
1 1 977105059 ee EFI Protective

MBR contents:
Boot Code: Unknown, but bootable

Partition at LBA 40:
Boot Code: Windows BOOTMGR (Vista)
File System: FAT32
Listed in GPT as partition 1, type EFI System (FAT)

Partition at LBA 409640:
Boot Code: None
File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
Listed in GPT as partition 2, type Mac OS X HFS+

Partition at LBA 293378376:
Boot Code: None
File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
Listed in GPT as partition 3, type Mac OS X Boot

Partition at LBA 294649856:
Boot Code: Windows BOOTMGR (Vista)
File System: NTFS
Listed in GPT as partition 4, type Basic Data


=======================================


Appreciate your help.

 

[xraydoc]

OSX's recovery partition does not support full video acceleration. This is due to the reduced subset of drivers. The test is to see if it works properly with a full OS installed and running.

Same deal with Windows. If the driver isn't loaded, there will be little to no acceleration.

Why does it matter how fast windows animate while in the recovery partition? How does it work when OSX is booted??

 

[Tjosansa]

Torchlight 2 is a game that should handle all max graphic well.. Over 100 fps and 60 in fights but sometimes i get around 30 and in fights 10 fps..

Something is wrong.. Worth checking up also?
On gtx 780m in Windows..

 

[IA64]

OSX's recovery partition does not support full video acceleration. This is due to the reduced subset of drivers. The test is to see if it works properly with a full OS installed and running.

Same deal with Windows. If the driver isn't loaded, there will be little to no acceleration.

Why does it matter how fast windows animate while in the recovery partition? How does it work when OSX is booted??

Hi,

Indeed, HW acceleration is a must but I never experienced so much tearing under Recovery partition. Some members here stated that their Recovery Partition is very smooth so I'm ruling out any possible issue with my system.

Under Mavericks, it's Ok. I've seen a smoother OSX ( 10.8.5 on my late 2009) not sure if it's my machine or Mavericks since it came pre-installed.

Under Windows 8.1, it's a complete mess. Bootcamp is not really helping. I installed the drivers manually by searching for Hardware IDs because drivers are very old ( couple of months ago )

Animation isn't smooth nor dragging Windows is. It looks like Microsoft updated the WDDM lately to version 1.3 and mouse pointer is now hardware accelerated. The 60FPS Panel of the iMac is a bit outdated for the current version of Windows ( works better for 120Hz as I've tried it with an external Monitor )

Games get a lot of tearing ( horizontal and vertical ). Setting Vsync to On or adaptive and enabling triple buffering will help but the mouse pointer will be much slower for some reason ( even with all updates installed from MS )

SiSoftware Sandra reported that CPU microcode update available. Check for an updated System BIOS with updated microcode.

Bootcamp 5 is buggy... AppleHFS and AppleMNT drivers cause crash or BSOD. They don't display file details correctly if "view" is set to details for external HFS Disks and thumbnail generation is not possible. I had to delete the drivers and services to install MacDrive 9; works great.

Apple KeyAgent ( KeyAgent.Sys ) also cause excessive paging in the background causing slow downs with some applications ( I made a thread about it in the Windows/linux section ) I had to uninstall it.

I am still troubleshooting but so far the performance has improved significantly. Not as smooth as Windows 7 tho.

It's not possible to install Windows 7 for some reason. I tried to install it the traditional way ( using boot legacy on next reboot to get the USB3 working and finalize the installation ) but acceleration is awful. I cant bear it. Feels like using a 1997 machine.

I also installed it in EFI mode but things also didn't work well. Windows Aero is painfully slow.

Now I don't know what really to say. I might try Windows 8 and see if it works for me.

 

[xraydoc]

If there's no malfunction under OSX, then the issues you're seeing in Windows have little chance to be anything but a driver conflict or something odd about the way your Windows installation is set up.

The official Apple Bootcamp drivers aren't helping? They may not be the latest versions of equivalent Windows hardware but should be reasonably well supported.

 

[IA64]

If there's no malfunction under OSX, then the issues you're seeing in Windows have little chance to be anything but a driver conflict or something odd about the way your Windows installation is set up.

The official Apple Bootcamp drivers aren't helping? They may not be the latest versions of equivalent Windows hardware but should be reasonably well supported.

Bootcamp 5 does handle Windows 8 well but not Windows 8.1 for some reason.

Something I also noticed. The SSD and Nvidia are sharing the same PCIe port ?

IRQ 16 Broadcom SD Host Controller
IRQ 16 Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core processor PCI Express x16 Controller - 0C01
IRQ 16 PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge
IRQ 16 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M
IRQ 16 PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge
IRQ 16 PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge
IRQ 16 Standard SATA AHCI Controller
IRQ 16 Intel(R) 8 Series/C220 Series PCI Express Root Port #1 - 8C10
IRQ 16 Intel(R) 8 Series/C220 Series PCI Express Root Port #5 - 8C18


So any activity or SSD usage will impact the video performance and cause FPS drop ??

 

[yjchua95]

Bootcamp 5 does handle Windows 8 well but not Windows 8.1 for some reason.

Funny. BC 5 seems to run well with Windows 8.1 on my 27" iMac, but I still have screen tearing issues in BF4.

I'm going to try it on my 21.5" iMac tonight when I get home.