Mountain Lion UI Lag on rMBP !!! (Let's Make this thread serious and hope for a fix)

[VacantPsalm]

You don't seriously believe Apple is reading this forum.

You should do a targeted message out by going to:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

Only then Apple may by stroke of luck know of the issues you are experiencing.

This. I actually dropped them a feedback right after making my post. I second that everyone with this problem should do that.

By the way, it also seems to be related to the "more space" resolution setting. When I switched over to true 2880 it does seem a lot smother.

 

[basesnow]

I have not had any problems with lag when switching between full screen apps, or while using Mission control. I have 16G RAM, but when I look in activity monitor it always shows at least 11G free

 

[dsciel]

I have not had any problems with lag when switching between full screen apps, or while using Mission control. I have 16G RAM, but when I look in activity monitor it always shows at least 11G free

Not sure if more memory would help, but animation UI should not be lag as it does not uses much of memory

 

[AzN1337c0d3r]

Not sure if more memory would help, but animation UI should not be lag as it does not uses much of memory

There is some slight choppiness on my base-model rMBP in Mission Control on the Integrated as opposed to the Discrete. This is likely because of the way Apple has implemented the "Looks like 1920x1200" resolution. The GPU has to render the thing at 3840x2400 resolution and then scale it down.

That's a LOT of pixels to draw on an integrated GPU like the HD4000.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

I see it on my iMac.

 

[AzN1337c0d3r]

For those who can do a little arithmetic

3840*2400 pixels * 32 bits/pixel = ~281Mb / frame. Animation is usually considered smooth at above 30 frames per second, so that's ~8 Gbps of bandwidth just to move all those pixels onto the GPU.

 

[a3vr]

For those who can do a little arithmetic

3840*2400 pixels * 32 bits/pixel = ~281Mb / frame. Animation is usually considered smooth at above 30 frames per second, so that's ~8 Gbps of bandwidth just to move all those pixels onto the GPU.

Agree its a lot of bandwidth, but shouldn't it be choppy all the time then? If I minimize or maximize its fine. Swiping back and forth its fine. But resizing a window its not. That's not very consistent. Seems more like a coding issue to me.

 

[AzN1337c0d3r]

Agree its a lot of bandwidth, but shouldn't it be choppy all the time then? If I minimize or maximize its fine. Swiping back and forth its fine. But resizing a window its not. That's not very consistent. Seems more like a coding issue to me.

Swiping is actually a very cheap operation if you're smartly implementing it, it's nothing but moving a pointer.

 

[Achernar]

The rMBP has many times more pixels to render than previous generations of MBP's, with only incremental updates in graphics and CPU. Of course UI is not going to be as smooth as previous generations.

If you want to get the best possible UI performance on the rMBP, then use the "Best (Retina)" display option. This is because Apple handles the non-native resolutions by rendering the display at a higher resolution than the default 2880x1800 then scaling it down. Thus, the non-native scaling will yield even more UI lag.

Even with the Best (Retina) option, your rMBP will lag more than the MBP because at the very least it is playing with 4x as many pixels. No doubt apple will attempt to tweak things to get maximum performance out of the hardware, but there is only so much they can do.

 

[The night fox]

Installed ML today and couldn't regret it more. I was experiencing no lag in Lion. Surely a speced out rMBP can handle some simple UI features. Apple need to sort this out asap.

 

[pianodude123]

important

Hey,

I just switched the resolution of my display (I had it scaled to the highest resolution and was getting lag) to the "Best for Retina" option, and I'm getting instantly noticeable better scrolling and performance throughout mountain lion. This sucks because I really enjoyed having the ability to have like 3 windows open all on the same screen since I have good eyes.

 

[Gonza211]

When upgrading to ML was experiencing lag on Mission Control and changing between desktops. Did a clean install after that and the Mission Control issues were solved but there is still a bit of lag while changing desktops and inside some apps, e.g. Mac App Store. I believe it is an Intel HD 4000 driver configuration/bug.

To way someone told me and it worked to solve the lag between changing desktops is to hide the dock. I'm on a 2012 Air.

 

[Lvivske]

I've noticed lag with mission control but this can all be alleviated by hiding the dock

the dock is the problem here. it's being processed by the CPU and not the GPU, and on top of being a dynamic process in of itself, it's got high dpi graphics and animations and all that.

i hid my dock and MC lag went away.

 

[rfnv]

having the same problem on a non-retina high end mid 2012 15 inch! i've got pretty laggy launchpad and mission control performance on the HD4000 but fine with the GT650M. strange thing that it was fine up 'til yesterday

 

[CollinCarter]

iMac 2011

I have 2 iMacs 2011 model. One has terrible lag moving between desktops and the other does not. Interestingly enough, moving between full screen applications causes no lag.

 

[danwestbrook]

hated the lag on the rmbp too open Terminal and run the following two commands much faster now

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.15

killall Dock

 

[barrettj]

I only experience Mission Control lag when I have a fullscreen app (or additional space). If I have no apps fullscreened and no additional spaces everything is smooth (with the exact same number of apps/windows).

 

[wutang55]

I definitely have seen this too. Running on a clean install of ML on a 2.6/16/512, lagging gets pretty bad in Mission Control with only a few windows open. Usually running at 1900x1200 but it's noticeable even at lower resolutions. Dock hiding and everything hasn't help me too much. Forcing the discrete GPU to stay on does seem to help, but obviously that's not ideal... really hoping it's a software/drivers issue and Apple gets a fix out soon. Anybody have any more info on what exactly the problem is?

 

[MikhailT]

You guys might see smoother animation switching between spaces if you turned off stacks on your docks. I can totally confirm this on my rMBP.

Set all folders on the docks to show as folders and you'll see MC and Space animations improved quickly.

 

[dsciel]

I definitely have seen this too. Running on a clean install of ML on a 2.6/16/512, lagging gets pretty bad in Mission Control with only a few windows open. Usually running at 1900x1200 but it's noticeable even at lower resolutions. Dock hiding and everything hasn't help me too much. Forcing the discrete GPU to stay on does seem to help, but obviously that's not ideal... really hoping it's a software/drivers issue and Apple gets a fix out soon. Anybody have any more info on what exactly the problem is?

No one really does, but i hope that it is the driver bug of integrated card. so that it can be fix with updates

 

[rfnv]

No one really does, but i hope that it is the driver bug of integrated card. so that it can be fix with updates

seems that way... UI is perfectly smooth on my GT650m on my non retina but choppy on the HD4000

 

[jabalczar]

You don't seriously believe Apple is reading this forum.

You should do a targeted message out by going to:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

Only then Apple may by stroke of luck know of the issues you are experiencing.

Actually they do read the forum.

I had a phone call and an email from Apple engineers in Cupertino after posting about Time Machine problems and Mountain Lion on Macrumors a couple of days ago. They told me they cross referenced my Macrumors details with my Apple ID and pulled my number. It was interesting to speak to them and hear how eager they were to learn of the problem.

They did mention that the engineers read the Macrumors forums (I guess especially after a hardware or software release) and Apple discussions. So it is worth posting.

I was impressed with the efforts they made and interest they showed.

 

[NAYo2002]

Seems like us Macbook Air 2012 people are having the same problem:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1413700/

Might have something to do with Intel 4000 graphics and SSDs. I had no issues with Lion.

 

[slrandall]

I had no issues with Lion.

I think this is the most important piece. I had no issues with Lion either on my rMBP, so it's clearly not a hardware problem.

 

[jtcedinburgh]

It would be interesting to do a poll to correlate perceived lag with screen resolution in use. I would wager that most of the people who are experiencing lag are running at one of the non-integer HiDPI settings (e.g. 1920x1200) rather than 1440x900 HiDPI or 2880x1800 native.

My preference is 1920x1200 but it is a bit choppy from time to time. It is NEVER choppy at 2880x1800 native (via SwitchResX). I find the 1440x900 to be a bit 'Fisher Price' for my tastes, but I would imagine it's buttery smooth.

Also, in my case I am using the gfx switcher add-in, with integrated graphics set for battery use and discrete set for mains powered. What seems to be an issue is the slow switch between one to the other, which is likely what is causing a lot of the perceived choppiness.