Why is scrolling jumpy on web pages? e.g images are like mini speed bumps.

[RobertSix]

I'm hoping you can help me understand why on what should be a fairly well geared machine I'm getting chunky scrolling on web pages. e.g I don't get a nice fluid scroll, but like it struggles at bits... smooth for a bit and then jumps.

I'm using a logitech darkfield mouse that has smooth scrolling and in simple things like a text file it scrolls as expected. So I don't believe its the mouse.

So what is the hold up? Is my graphics card (radeon 5770) unable to keep up with the frames per second required to scroll down through a page or something like this?

It seems to me if I look closely, its when a new picture scrolls onto the page, it hits it like a speed bump. Note: this is when the page is fully loaded.

I'm on a 2 x quad-core 2.4ghz 2010 model. One would imagine I could scroll through a 500kb page like cutting through already melted butter with a fine carbon blade, but no, I feel like its not that way at all. What am I missing?

 

[jenzjen]

Try the 3 major browsers, I remember someone's post where IIRC safari would be very smooth Firefox and chrome less so

 

[RobertSix]

Try the 3 major browsers, I remember someone's post where IIRC safari would be very smooth Firefox and chrome less so

You're right - safari is definitely smoother.

But I just noticed I also get the same jagged scrolling just through my Applications folder.

Could it have something to do with hdd speed?

 

[Cindori]

I think something is up with the graphic drivers in 10.8.x, because I sometimes get the same thing and also the drop shadow of the window goes away. It's like quarts/core image is crashing.

Safari is always smooth because it's tuned to work fine without GPU accelleration. You can basically remove your graphic drivers and Safari still is smoother then Chrome, FF etc.

But I am running a hackintosh with GTX 670, so who knows.