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2.4Ghz MBP - Poor performance on 30" screen

D

Don.Key

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 11, 2005
132
6
Hi,

One of the main reasons for my purchase of new MBP was its capability to work with my 30" screen (2560 x 1600).

It does indeed work but the performance is less then stellar, simple working with the machine in 2D apps is quite sluggish when compared to internal screen. I could imagine that the resolution is just too high for the gfx controller to handle efficiently but how can I speed it up?

The only thing I found out was to set "minimize using" to "Scale effect" which speed up minimization considerably but everything else is still quite slow.

Can I somehow disable the display of window content while moving it? This feature is available in Windows and number of Linux WMs, speeds up everything greatly.

What else can I do? Right now my MBPs Lid is open and its internal display is also working as additional desktop, will it be disabled if I close the lid AND speed up the things? (It certanly does not dissapear from display properties pannel)

Don
 
No, that's not a problem with your MBP being unable to drive that resolution. Years ago people were driving HD displays with their weak GFX cards so it's not a case of your graphics card being too weak if you're using simply applications. I really don't know what could be causing such sluggish performance. Also, putting it in closed lid mode will increase performance, but something is slowing it down, the MBPs should easily handle that screen.
 
Using your MBP in closed-lid mode should help. AFAIK you have to plug in the external, sleep the MBP and then wake it up with a peripheral such as an attached keyboard or mouse. As the graphics card will *only* have the 30" monitor to power performance will be better.

How much RAM do you have? Does Activity Monitor highlight any potential issues as to why things are going so slow? The MBP's graphics are pretty decent, 2D stuff should be fine...
 
it has nothing to do with your mbp being slow, its that dvi connector has bottleneck at 1920X1200 pixels ,that is the resolution a single dvi is capable to drive , u need to have two dvi ports to drive the resolution that u have on 30 incher, for instance every descktop gfx card comes with dual dvi ports so there .
 
the caveman said:
it has nothing to do with your mbp being slow, its that dvi connector has bottleneck at 1920X1200 pixels ,that is the resolution a single dvi is capable to drive , u need to have two dvi ports to drive the resolution that u have on 30 incher, for instance every descktop gfx card comes with dual dvi ports so there .
Click to expand...

to drive a 30" acd, you need a dual-link dvi port, a single port which the macbook pro has. because it does, it is, indeed, capable of driving the 30" acd. the regular macbook, on the other hand, is another story.
 
the caveman said:
it has nothing to do with your mbp being slow, its that dvi connector has bottleneck at 1920X1200 pixels ,that is the resolution a single dvi is capable to drive , u need to have two dvi ports to drive the resolution that u have on 30 incher, for instance every descktop gfx card comes with dual dvi ports so there .
Click to expand...

how the hell do people keep making the same ridiculous statement?
 
no compaints here

17" mbp 2,33 2 gigs no problems no lags runs smooth

i play HL2 in windoz at full resolution @ +-30 fps no problems no lags runs smooth
 
DoFoT9 said:
from my understanding, when you ahve 2 monitors the RAM from the gpu is split??? 128mb on a 30'. i donno
Click to expand...

nah it wont do that,

the 8600GT should easy cope with driving the LCD and the 30 incher.

not sure, but i think the latest cards on the desktop come with at least 1 dual-link dvi, maybe (at least on the higher end) they come with dual, dual-link DVI outs so you can run 2 of the 30inch monsters.

the majority of the desktop is 2D with some wizzy effects, that is all, it should easily cope.

probably just in need of some driver optimisation for use with dual monitors is all.
 
the caveman said:
it has nothing to do with your mbp being slow, its that dvi connector has bottleneck at 1920X1200 pixels ,that is the resolution a single dvi is capable to drive , u need to have two dvi ports to drive the resolution that u have on 30 incher, for instance every descktop gfx card comes with dual dvi ports so there .
Click to expand...

Absolutely False
 
Thanks for replies.

Here is some info:

This machine has 4Gb of memory, it is used by about half, 2gb are free, CPU is at about 10%.

The performance on internal screen is very nice, everything is fast.

I managed to disable internal screen entirely and have only external monitor, performance is unchanged / poor.

I tried to change the color depth and this did not help at all.

I will try to compare it to X1600 MBP tonight and post my findings.
 
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