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MBP 16 M3 Max - stuttery/low fps animations?

S

Sptzz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 13, 2024
140
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Hi everyone,

I've been away from Apple for well over 15 years. I've decided now was the right time to give it another go as I've read as much as possible about Apple's silicon etc.

I just wanted to ask if this is the expected experience everyone else is getting. I got a new 16" m3 max 14core 36gb ram.

What I've noticed is that the UI experience on Sonoma seems to suffer from framerate slowdowns. For comparison sake, I do have a 7800x3d + 4090 desktop and Huawei 4900H laptop and on both instances, with vastly different specs, Win11 is incredibly smooth, there's never a lack of fluidity etc.

With this MBP / Sonoma I'm a bit dumbfounded as Apple has always been the "king" of visual language, fluidity etc. This isn't something that is occurring at all times but it occurs way too many times. Minimizing/Restoring windows/apps isn't smooth at all, opening the widgets pane sometimes looks 120fps sometimes there's pretty severe framerate drops and it's not like an initial drop then it resumes, it's the entire animation from start to finish. Scrolling through webpages as well etc.

The whole experience doesn't feel 120hz to me at all, not even close. Not unlike the 120hz experience you get on any windows machine that isn't 10 years old.

Am I crazy though? Is this expected? Did I expect too much from this? I definitely did since the prices are exorbitant, but I wanted to get back to the Apple ecosystem.

(btw obviously the laptop is only a few days old, so it's "fresh" from the store)
 
My 5k iMac feels locked at 60fps and my M1 Max and Pro laptops feel like solid 120 on Sonoma unless I turn on low power mode or do something that is expected to lower performance like render video play games or completely fill memory with large code compiles
 
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casperes1996 said:
My 5k iMac feels locked at 60fps and my M1 Max and Pro laptops feel like solid 120 on Sonoma unless I turn on low power mode or do something that is expected to lower performance like render video play games or completely fill memory with large code compiles
Click to expand...

There's something wrong here then... Should I do a fresh install?
 
Just an update. Did a full fresh install. Format drive, download Sonoma, install it.

As soon as it went to desktop, noticed these issues by just even opening the widget pane, stuttery and low framerate...
 
Bigwaff said:
Is your display set to "ProMotion" refresh rate?

Change the refresh rate on your MacBook Pro or Apple Pro Display XDR - Apple Support

You can switch between refresh rates on your 16-inch MacBook Pro, 14-inch MacBook Pro, or Pro Display XDR.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
Click to expand...

Of course. It's on by default. This isn't a low refresh rate issue. Been building desktops for 20 years. As I noted I have 1 high end desktop and a laptop and have experiences from CRTs to 50 60hz to 165hz to vrr + gsync etc. This is literally frame rate drops on doing basic tasks like scrolling through websites etc. Not sure if it's Sonoma or the hardware or both.

If you have 2 spaces right now on your mac, open mission control and with mission control opened move to the next space. That's similar to what I'm seeing, low framerate.

This doesn't happen 100% of the time btw, sometimes it's really good and fluid.
 
I would say take it to an Apple store and have them look at it. What you're describing shouldn't be happening. I've got a new m3 and everything has been smooth. And that that definitely includes some more intensive tasks than opening widgets and scrolling though webpages.
 
ObsidianIce said:
I would say take it to an Apple store and have them look at it. What you're describing shouldn't be happening. I've got a new m3 and everything has been smooth. And that that definitely includes some more intensive tasks than opening widgets and scrolling though webpages.
Click to expand...

Have you used win11 on a 120hz screen on a decent / medium specc'd laptop?

I just googled about this and there's tons and tons of talk about this on Apple's forums. I don't believe there's anything wrong with the laptop itself, it's the OS that is unoptimised bloated garbage.

Are you honestly telling me that scrolling through YouTube comments, reddit, or even the "add widget" that shows at the bottom is sustaining 120 fps with no drops?
 
OS Animations have always lagged on my Macs. Opening a folder full of apps in Launch Pad reveals the stuttering quite easily, even on my 14" M2 Max using a 4K monitor. No idea why Apple can't fix this. It is all about perspective. Some users are not sensitive to it or have not experienced a buttery smooth OS to compare.
 
I believe macOS and also Apple native apps behave like an iOS with ProMotion, that is, the refresh rate of the display and also the animations are not locked at 120Hz, they drop low as much as possible, sometimes down to 10Hz.

A prime example is using Safari vs Chrome, go to testufo website you will see a bunch of high refresh tests simply not working on Safari. Apple's logic of tuning this way is to conserve battery for the generic user.

developer.apple.com

Optimizing ProMotion refresh rates for iPhone 13 Pro and iPad Pro | Apple Developer Documentation

Provide custom animated content for ProMotion displays.
developer.apple.com developer.apple.com
Here is a link to a developer documentation when ProMotion was new on iPhone 13 Pro and iPad Pro. I can't find the corresponding doc for macOS dev but you can get the gist from this one.

Another factor could be the rather slow grey to grey response time of the MBP panels. By easy math you can tell a smooth 120Hz animation needs 8.33~ms response per frame. But almost all calibration tests of the MBP displays show a response a few times longer than that. This may be fine for slower moving scenes but a drastic change in the image in quick secession will just lag behind. The M1 Pro gen had an infamous cursor ghosting issue because of that, the M2 then M3 gen chopped the response by half but still in the ballpark of 25 to 35 ms I believe.

Now of course it is also possible that your specific machine / instance of Sonoma is having extra UI lag for other reasons as well. The above is just to note that by comparison, a Win11 desktop with display settings locked to 120Hz will *of course* be smoother than a MacBook with ProMotion, because Apple designs it this way.
 
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Might be Sonoma. I got an older M1 on Ventura still and everything is super smooth. I cannot notice if 120Hz are enabled because the panel response times are too slow, it's somewhere around 30ms grey to grey. So ProMotion doesn't work on these anyways. Due to the resulting smearing you won't be happy with the 120Hz. In any case, there are zero lags or issues, nothing like in the linked videos. I tried scrolling through youtube fast on Chrome and it's just fine.
 
I don't know why this would be the case, but please check that your machine is not set to run in low power mode by any chance (go to Settings / Battery, the option should be at the top).
 
I have mostly fixed this issue. There's still one or two framerate drops but overall it's MUCH better.

And what I did was literally do a full ssd format and reinstall Sonoma from scratch.

okkibs said:
Might be Sonoma. I got an older M1 on Ventura still and everything is super smooth. I cannot notice if 120Hz are enabled because the panel response times are too slow, it's somewhere around 30ms grey to grey. So ProMotion doesn't work on these anyways. Due to the resulting smearing you won't be happy with the 120Hz. In any case, there are zero lags or issues, nothing like in the linked videos. I tried scrolling through youtube fast on Chrome and it's just fine.
Click to expand...

I fixed the majority of the issue as described above but just wanted to chime in on this, yes, the MBPs screen is absolutely AMAZING in terms of colors but response time.... as soon as I moved the trackpad the dreaded feeling of regret washed all over me, the input lag is an abomination as well as the pixel response time, but since I'm using it in clamshell with my ultrawide at 144hz 90% of the time then it doesn't really matter. Plus the UI transitions / animations are way way smoother locked at 144hz on my monitor. Even when rendering at 6880x2880 (Betterdisplay, just selected HiDPI res) which is 2x my native resolution. It's super sharp, super smooth, looks amazing. I have the option to use VRR (48-144) but since I don't game on mac not sure of the actual benefits here. Always have it on on my Desktop PC of course but on the mac not sure if there'd be any benefit.

When I use it on the go, the smoothness for the most part is miles better than when I first got it before formatting. Still, due to input lag and G2G response times, iphones and ipads look 100x better than the MBPs in terms of motion.

Just also a bit dumbfounded I had to use mac mouse fixer to be able to scroll properly with a mouse lol, the default wheel scrolling behavior felt like I was back in 1998.
 
Sptzz said:
as soon as I moved the trackpad the dreaded feeling of regret washed all over me, the input lag is an abomination as well as the pixel response time, but since I'm using it in clamshell with my ultrawide at 144hz
Click to expand...
144Hz gaming monitors have much faster panels. In a direct comparison I am sure the Macbook's display is terrible. For Macbooks you really need to be okay with 60Hz as that's all you'll ever get effectively. In return the Macbook offers you fantastic HDR performance as well as a very bright screen for working outdoors up to 1000 nits though that requires a paid third party app and reduces battery life considerably (I am happy with Vivid but there are a couple more that all work fine).

This will remain until Apple can replace the Macbook screens with OLEDs, they seem to be doing that for the iPads this year, and once that tech works well enough for Apple to put it in the bigger Macbooks they will hopefully switch over.
 
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Hello there, I completely resonate with you—I have almost the exact same feeling. I also think that the transition animations on Mac never truly reach 120Hz and often experience frame drops. It lacks the smoothness of iOS or even Windows PCs. This performance really doesn’t live up to the high price of a Mac. I’ve noticed this issue on models from the M1 Pro to the M2, M3, and even M4. After each new model is released, I always visit the Apple Store to check if the frame drop issue has been resolved, but it clearly persists and seems widespread. However, others often respond to our concerns with confusion, suggesting our Macs have issues like ProMotion not being enabled or Low Power Mode being on. Do they really not notice such obvious frame drops?
 
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Rumoriver said:
Hello there, I completely resonate with you—I have almost the exact same feeling. I also think that the transition animations on Mac never truly reach 120Hz and often experience frame drops. It lacks the smoothness of iOS or even Windows PCs. This performance really doesn’t live up to the high price of a Mac. I’ve noticed this issue on models from the M1 Pro to the M2, M3, and even M4. After each new model is released, I always visit the Apple Store to check if the frame drop issue has been resolved, but it clearly persists and seems widespread. However, others often respond to our concerns with confusion, suggesting our Macs have issues like ProMotion not being enabled or Low Power Mode being on. Do they really not notice such obvious frame drops?
Click to expand...

If you only experience one thing you think that thing is perfectly normal.
 
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okkibs said:
144Hz gaming monitors have much faster panels. In a direct comparison I am sure the Macbook's display is terrible. For Macbooks you really need to be okay with 60Hz as that's all you'll ever get effectively. In return the Macbook offers you fantastic HDR performance as well as a very bright screen for working outdoors up to 1000 nits though that requires a paid third party app and reduces battery life considerably (I am happy with Vivid but there are a couple more that all work fine).

This will remain until Apple can replace the Macbook screens with OLEDs, they seem to be doing that for the iPads this year, and once that tech works well enough for Apple to put it in the bigger Macbooks they will hopefully switch over.
Click to expand...

For latency yes, but the stuttering and fps drops is absolutely software
 
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Sptzz said:
For latency yes, but the stuttering and fps drops is absolutely software
Click to expand...
I completely agree. The performance of the M4 is already very powerful, but as Mac users, we still have to put up with occasional frame drops and stuttering. For example, swiping between desktops in Mission Control stutters so badly it’s unbelievable. I can replicate this issue with the frame drops on all the Macs I’ve used! This is clearly an optimization issue, but Apple engineers have yet to fix it. I long for the day when I can truly experience iOS-level smoothness on macOS...
 
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