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Apple Maps very low 3D performance on Ventura/Sonoma on Intel Macs

M

maccan

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 22, 2019
100
41
Hi,

The 3D performance of Maps in Ventura/Sonoma on Intel Macs is very low!
If you switch to 3D Satelite View (New York for example), dragging, rotating etc lags very much! Even if you have powerful hardware! I observe this on a Mac Pro 12-Core with AMD Pro Vega II. By looking at the Activity Monitor while rotating the scene (with ALT-Arrow left or right), Just ONE CPU core is at about 100% load while the powerful Vega II GPU is down to 2% and the display stutters and is very laggy. This was not the case in Monterey where rotating a complex 3D scene was very fluid what one expect on this powerful GPU.

So my questions are:
Can anybody confirm this observation?

I observed this in Ventura 13.x and hoped it would be better in Sonoma 14.1.1, but it is not!

Best regards!
 
I can see satellite view lagging in NYC but once everything loads in, it's much better. CPU usage goes up to 170% and drops down to 0. In other less dense areas, it's fine.
 
saudor said:
I can see satellite view lagging in NYC but once everything loads in, it's much better. CPU usage goes up to 170% and drops down to 0. In other less dense areas, it's fine.
Click to expand...
What macOS version are you running?
What is the percentage of GPU load?

Best regards!
 
It's "fine" on my 2020 iMac with 14.1.1, with a little bit of lag as things render but it's certainly not "very low" performance. Maps does exceed 100% CPU, but I'd never have even considered looking if you hadn't told me to.

I did these tests while also running a game, and I suspect the performance would be better if I wasn't.

Edit: Looking at NYC.
 
Nermal said:
It's "fine" on my 2020 iMac with 14.1.1, with a little bit of lag as things render but it's certainly not "very low" performance. Maps does exceed 100% CPU, but I'd never have even considered looking if you hadn't told me to.

I did these tests while also running a game, and I suspect the performance would be better if I wasn't.

Edit: Looking at NYC.
Click to expand...
Is this an Intel or Apple Silicon Mac?
 
maccan said:
What macOS version are you running?
What is the percentage of GPU load?

Best regards!
Click to expand...
13.6.1
I also have a partition with big sur so i can do some cross checking.
GPU load is <10% on a sapphire nitro+ rx 580 but it jumps around. Once the buildings load in, it’s smooth again.

I think maps is mostly CPU bound as I moved it over to a monitor powered by the UHD 630 iGPU and it performed very similar.

EDIT: just tested it in big sur.. maybe a bit better but it does struggle in the same way until the buildings all load in. CPU usage goes above 100% as well too (loading the financial district area in NYC)
 
Last edited:
saudor said:
13.6.1
I also have a partition with big sur so i can do some cross checking.
GPU load is <10% on a sapphire nitro+ rx 580 but it jumps around. Once the buildings load in, it’s smooth again.

I think maps is mostly CPU bound as I moved it over to a monitor powered by the UHD 630 iGPU and it performed very similar.
Click to expand...
If you compare against Google Maps, it is like day and night! I mean just running Google Maps in a web browser. If you switch on satelite view and 3D, everything is super smooth. 3D performance is imply on another level. It surprises me that an applocation specifically designed by Apple for Apple hardware performs worse compared to a web browser driven app.
 
maccan said:
If you compare against Google Maps, it is like day and night! I mean just running Google Maps in a web browser. If you switch on satelite view and 3D, everything is super smooth. 3D performance is imply on another level. It surprises me that an applocation specifically designed by Apple for Apple hardware performs worse compared to a web browser driven app.
Click to expand...
I get the feeling that Apple is just doing the bare minimum for the Intel machines.
 
maccan said:
If you compare against Google Maps, it is like day and night! I mean just running Google Maps in a web browser. If you switch on satelite view and 3D, everything is super smooth. 3D performance is imply on another level. It surprises me that an applocation specifically designed by Apple for Apple hardware performs worse compared to a web browser driven app.
Click to expand...
Yeah the technology is different. Even the old days, an iphone 4 could run google maps ok but would struggle big time when 3D maps was enabled with a jailbreak on iOS6.

Also it does seem to struggle with big sur in the financial district area of NYC. However, once everything loads in, it gets smoother. There's probably just so much it needs to load in so it struggles
 
saudor said:
Also it does seem to struggle with big sur in the financial district area of NYC. However, once everything loads in, it gets smoother. There's probably just so much it needs to load in so it struggles
Click to expand...
I have an M1 MacBook Air, but I'm curious myself about performance and to check it out myself. Where's the Financial District of NYC? I'm not familiar with NYC, so I'm not sure about the neighborhood (districts? counties?) names. I pulled up the map for Bangkok, Upper Sukhumvit Area, and on my computer maps use about 50%, and so does Window Server when it's rendering.
 
JustAnExpat said:
I have an M1 MacBook Air, but I'm curious myself about performance and to check it out myself. Where's the Financial District of NYC? I'm not familiar with NYC, so I'm not sure about the neighborhood (districts? counties?) names. I pulled up the map for Bangkok, Upper Sukhumvit Area, and on my computer maps use about 50%, and so does Window Server when it's rendering.
Click to expand...
search for the world trade center and pan east and west. That's where I've been running the tests. I reckon you'll be fine since it runs good on the iPad.
 
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saudor said:
search for the world trade center and pan east and west. That's where I've been running the tests. I reckon you'll be fine since it runs good on the iPad.
Click to expand...
Get the same! But more or less in all areas with complex building structures.
 
saudor said:
search for the world trade center and pan east and west. That's where I've been running the tests. I reckon you'll be fine since it runs good on the iPad.
Click to expand...
Thank you. I did that, and on my M1, it almost uses nothing for the CPU when I pan the map. I did use the flyover feature (neat!!) and that does cause about 40% CPU usage. How does Apple decide which buildings get the flyover feature?
 
JustAnExpat said:
I get the feeling that Apple is just doing the bare minimum for the Intel machines.
Click to expand...

This is almost certainly true. They have bet the farm on Apple silicon so why invest more than they need to on legacy platforms? I'd put money on the fact that there's only 1 or 2 versions left before Intel is dropped from new versions of MacOS.

Plus - they really want to get everyone on Apple silicon. That's why most of the marketing still compares the new chips against Intel. They are trying to twist the arms of those who a still using Intel Macs.
 
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CalMin said:
This is almost certainly true. They have bet the farm on Apple silicon so why invest more than they need to on legacy platforms? I'd put money on the fact that there's only 1 or 2 versions left before Intel is dropped from new versions of MacOS.

Plus - they really want to get everyone on Apple silicon. That's why most of the marketing still compares the new chips against Intel. They are trying to twist the arms of those who a still using Intel Macs.
Click to expand...
I bet there'll be one more update to Mac OS for Intel, and it'll be a very glorified bug fix. I just expect a handful of new under-the-hood "features".

I'm going to be stunned if there will be two more updates for Mac OS for Intel.
 
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There is no problem on Apple Silicon Macs. I think there is no GPU support for Intel Macs. My AMD Vega II Pro is always at 0%. It is clearly not an issue of loding things.
 
Just to show how bad the performance actually is:

Apple_Maps_3D_Performance.gif
 
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