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iMac 2020 / choppy scrolling in Safari / Chrome

Martius

Martius

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 12, 2008
587
1,902
Prague, CZ
Got my iMac 2020 (8-core, 5500XT, added 32gb ram) about a month ago and since day one I have noticed that the smoothness of scrolling (mostly in browsers) is not really good (Catalina, latest stable version). I have MacBook Pro 15 2015 (the base model) running Mojave and even though it is not faster in some tasks, the scrolling in Safari is much smoother / more fluid.

Tried SMC reset, reconnecting the mouse, but without any improvements. Everytime the website is full of images / links / videos (like Twitter), the scrolling just really drops FPS. I have tried Geekbench test to see the GPU score and it looks normal (the score is the same I found on the internet).

Is it normal for a 5K display? Can't really tell...
 
Not sure exactly what you mean by "choppy."
Other than it is a 60 fps display (which is more noticeable on a large screen), I haven't noticed any particular issues, unless the page is still loading content, ads etc
 
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wilberforce said:
Not sure exactly what you mean by "choppy."
Other than it is a 60 fps display (which is more noticeable on a large screen), I haven't noticed any particular issues, unless the page is still loading content, ads etc
Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply. Well I mean the scrolling fps drop significantly when scrolling through some embed content like images. If it's true that 60 FPS is more noticable on larger screens, maybe I'm just not use to it. Still I expected at least same smoothness like on my MBP because of the 5500XT.
 
Martius said:
Thank you for your reply. Well I mean the scrolling fps drop significantly when scrolling through some embed content like images. If it's true that 60 FPS is more noticable on larger screens, maybe I'm just not use to it. Still I expected at least same smoothness like on my MBP because of the 5500XT.
Click to expand...
Can you provide a link to a web page that is causing you problems so we can compare with our machines?
 
AZREOSpecialist said:
Can you provide a link to a web page that is causing you problems so we can compare with our machines?
Click to expand...

Well as I said, for example the Twitter feed with lot of embeded content is not as smooth as on my MBP / iPad. MacRumors home page is also quite laggy. You know, just scrolling down, it looks ok, suddenly some images and the FPS drops. It happens on my MBP too, but much less often.

I'm not sure if it's even possible to be a hardware failure...
 
Martius said:
Got my iMac 2020 (8-core, 5500XT, added 32gb ram) about a month ago and since day one I have noticed that the smoothness of scrolling (mostly in browsers) is not really good (Catalina, latest stable version). I have MacBook Pro 15 2015 (the base model) running Mojave and even though it is not faster in some tasks, the scrolling in Safari is much smoother / more fluid.

Tried SMC reset, reconnecting the mouse, but without any improvements. Everytime the website is full of images / links / videos (like Twitter), the scrolling just really drops FPS. I have tried Geekbench test to see the GPU score and it looks normal (the score is the same I found on the internet).

Is it normal for a 5K display? Can't really tell...
Click to expand...
I have the same issue after updating to Safari 14 on 2015 MacBook Pro 15 with the latest macOS 10.15.7. As you described, scrolling is not smooth for sites like Twitter or the new Facebook layout. Macrumors' front page scrolls very smoothly though. Not sure what caused this. Maybe Big Sur will solve the issue.
 
Try connecting your keyboard/mouse/trackpad to the iMac with a USB cable (or use a hard wired mouse).

I have had scrolling hesitation on 2020 iMac and it appears to be a bluetooth problem. Turning the mouse/trackpad off and on often (but not always) resolves the problem (or cycling the bluetooth connection).

A hard wire connection can help identify if this is the issue.

(Of course this does not help explain if the issue occurs on a Macbook with its built-in trackpad!)
 
I have exactly the same problem as the original poster on a mac book pro 2017 running safari 14. Sites that dynamically load content (ie facebook , Twitter, Reddit ) have a terrible choppiness/lag/low FPS when scrolling.

for reference, my 2013 MBA running a very old version of safari does not do this.
Moreover, I installed Safari technology preview version and the choppiness effect is not that bad but still there
 
I find the scrolling in Chrome and Chromium-based browsers to be really bad on this computer (same specs as OP).

Safari is noticeably better, Firefox is best but Firefox colours are completely wrong, way too saturated.

Interestingly, VS Code (which is also based on Chromium), does not seem to suffer from this problem. Perhaps because it only shows text?

I’ve found that disabling hardware acceleration in Microsoft Edge drastically improves the scrolling but comes with its own issues: some cursor ghosting in input fields and persistent scrollbars (?!) on web pages.

Is this an AMD driver issue? A Chrome issue? I’d lean towards the latter but it happens in other apps too, just not as regularly as in Chrome. Catalina and Big Sur seem to be affected equally.

Sadly, yet another in an ever-lengthening list of minor issues with these 2020 iMacs.
 
myjacob said:
I hate that smooth scrolling is only for Magic Mouse / Magic Trackpad.

Here is what u need: https://mos.caldis.me/
Click to expand...
I appreciate having this with my logitech G604, thank you for linking this!

I found this thread because my 2020 5K iMac with i7 and 5700XT was lagging with chrome on videos, and my new M1 Macbook Air does the same, forcing me to switch to Edge. The problem is, the iMac while in Windows 10 has no such issue. I don't know what the issue is but Chrome for Mac is a mess. I'd like to use Safari but the audio has echo or a tinny quality. I dont quite get why they're like this now.
 
I ‘ve heard that current macOS beta includes the current version of Safari technology preview, therefore most of our problems should be fixed with the next OS update. Still very ridiculous that we had to wait 4+ months for a fix
 
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