MP 6,1 MP 6,1 laggy under Monterey 12.7.4

[Calaveras]

My maxed out cylinder was fine when I first updated to Monterey.
But at some point it started getting really laggy.
Like sometimes its almost a whole second from when I press a key and it shows up on screen.
I'm rather alarmed by this. I've had this Mac for almost 10 years (its birthday is next month!)
and I've upgraded it to 12 core, 64GB ram and 2TB Aura Pro 2 SSD.
(it already had dual D700)
Cinebench it's neck and neck with my M1 laptop.
Sadly when I did a minor rev update a little while back it hosed the firmware and I had to jump through some hoops to get the firmware happy and a system installed. In the process of rescuing it I ended up on Monterey. I already attempted to downgrade the OS and it wouldn't let me go lower than Monterey!

Anyone else having this?
Tried searching but only got unrelated topics.

 

[Bigwaff]

Have you reviewed Activity Monitor to see if any processes are consuming CPU or memory?

 

[Calaveras]

Have you reviewed Activity Monitor to see if any processes are consuming CPU or memory?

yeah, that was the first place I looked. Nothing is popping up. Firefox is using a ton of ram (of course).
But with 64GB I'm nowhere near the ceiling. And FF is just sitting on a a pretty static, if large amount of ram. It's not a leak, just lazy programming.

I have suspicions about the Drobo software on there for the one Drobo I still have.

 

[bax2023]

Any PCIe SSD performance degradation ?
Please post Blackmagic Speed or AJA Disk test results here.

 

[Calaveras]

getting 1200 MBs writes and 1300MBs reads.
Pretty sure the Aura Pro x2 isn't the limiting factor here.
It's also only 3 years old. It was the 2nd to last thing I upgraded.
The 6 to 12 core upgrade came a month after that. And right after I got my trashcan maxed out, pandemic lockdown and I didn't see my studio for months.
2020 was wild.

Checked to be sure and yes I'm the only person logged in.
Doing an update right now to 12.7.2 from 12.6.9 to see if that shakes the laggy off.
Going to finish copying my old Drobo to the newer Thunderbay and remove that old unsupported extension.
The Drobo is only working by USB after Catalina or Big Sur. So it's uselessly slow and honestly, I was never in love with it. It just managed to last 10 years without losing data so points for durability?

 

[Calaveras]

Interesting, it took quite a long time to go from 12.6.9 to 12.7.2 like an hour. And it restarted at least 3 times.
It seems a little less laggy. At least so far.

 

[Calaveras]

Ok nevermind it's still laggy.
Now I suspect Firefox may be at the root of this.
So I am migrating to Safari for a while to see if it's better.

 

[avro707]

Ok nevermind it's still laggy.
Now I suspect Firefox may be at the root of this.
So I am migrating to Safari for a while to see if it's better.

I use Firefox on mine (also maximum spec) and no issues. Firefox does use a lot of memory.

Have you tried a complete fresh install of macOS?

 

[Calaveras]

It was a fresh install a couple months ago after a minor revision upgrade of Mojave hosed the firmware.
I had to do a complicated re-install of the whole system from scratch to get the firmware fixed. At least I know how to use Configurator now!
Curious, what version of Firefox are you on?

 

[Calaveras]

Well so far it's been fine for about a week just using Safari instead of Firefox.
Problem is that Safari sucks too. Youtube has all kinds of problems scaling from default to full screen. And Hulu kind of flails on ad pylons. (which is almost entertaining)
Not to mention the Safari version of ABP sucks.

 

[Calaveras]

Ok I think I have this licked but I am surprised this hadn't been mentioned.
It was GPU.
Monterey disabled rendering video via GPU. I'd have Youtube or Hulu playing a video and activity monitor would show very high CPU usage for such a trivial task. And GPU was at 0% utilization.
I installed GFXCardStatus and set it to Discrete only.
Suddenly my old Mac Pro is back!

So really. Am I the only person that has upgraded a 6,1 Mac Pro to Monterey and got my GPU neutered?
I'm now wondering if there is a better way to make sure the GPU is enabled and being utilized.

 

[tsialex]

Am I the only person that has upgraded a 6,1 Mac Pro to Monterey and got my GPU neutered?

Seems so, never had or read about that before your post. Something very weird happened to your macOS install.

 

[Calaveras]

ran pmset -g and I get a result that GPUSWITCH was set to 2.
"Use Integrated video on battery or AC"
Xeons do not have integrated video.
Since using GFXcardstatus to force it to use GPU it's been fine.
I'm going to try disabling that extension and using pmset to configure it when I have time.

 

[tsialex]

ran pmset -g and I get a result that GPUSWITCH was set to 2.

gpuswitch: 2 is the correct value:

alexandretorres@MacPro61 ~ % system_profiler SPHardwareDataType && pmset -g
Hardware:

    Hardware Overview:

      Model Name: Mac Pro
      Model Identifier: MacPro6,1
      Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Xeon E5
      Processor Speed: 3,5 GHz
      Number of Processors: 1
      Total Number of Cores: 6
      L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
      L3 Cache: 12 MB
      Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
      Memory: 64 GB
      System Firmware Version: 481.0.0.0.0
      OS Loader Version: 540.120.3~37
      SMC Version (system): 2.20f18
      Panel Illumination Version: 1.4a6
  

System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
 standby              1
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 womp                 1
 autorestart          0
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             1
 gpuswitch            2
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 standbydelayhigh     86400
 sleep                1 (sleep prevented by caffeinate, sharingd)
 autopoweroffdelay    259200
 hibernatemode        0
 autopoweroff         1
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         10
 highstandbythreshold 50
 standbydelaylow      86400

 

[Calaveras]

gpuswitch: 2 is the correct value:

alexandretorres@MacPro61 ~ % system_profiler SPHardwareDataType && pmset -g
Hardware:

    Hardware Overview:

      Model Name: Mac Pro
      Model Identifier: MacPro6,1
      Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Xeon E5
      Processor Speed: 3,5 GHz
      Number of Processors: 1
      Total Number of Cores: 6
      L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
      L3 Cache: 12 MB
      Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
      Memory: 64 GB
      System Firmware Version: 481.0.0.0.0
      OS Loader Version: 540.120.3~37
      SMC Version (system): 2.20f18
      Panel Illumination Version: 1.4a6
 

System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
 standby              1
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 womp                 1
 autorestart          0
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             1
 gpuswitch            2
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 standbydelayhigh     86400
 sleep                1 (sleep prevented by caffeinate, sharingd)
 autopoweroffdelay    259200
 hibernatemode        0
 autopoweroff         1
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         10
 highstandbythreshold 50
 standbydelaylow      86400

are you sure?
Because from what I found on some site (stack exchange I think?)
Gpuswitch 2 means integrated
gpuswitch 0 means discrete
gpuswitch 1 means use discrete on AC power only.

Checked the man file fro pmset and it was no help of course.
The 6,1 has no integrated graphics, so I wonder if it's a similar case to numbering network interfaces and storage volumes? The first one detected is the 'integrated' and anything after is discrete?

 

[tsialex]

are you sure?
Because from what I found on some site (stack exchange I think?)
Gpuswitch 2 means integrated
gpuswitch 0 means discrete
gpuswitch 1 means use discrete on AC power only.

Checked the man file fro pmset and it was no help of course.
The 6,1 has no integrated graphics, so I wonder if it's a similar case to numbering network interfaces and storage volumes? The first one detected is the 'integrated' and anything after is discrete?

Yes, I'm sure. Screenshot:

 

[Nightrogen16]

Seems so, never had or read about that before your post. Something very weird happened to your macOS install.

I agree with tsialex. My 6,1 has been running Monterey since I've owned it (about 18 months now); currently it's on 12.7.4.

"pmset -g" shows "gpuswitch" with a value of 2. Running videos absolutely does show the Slot 2 AMD Radeon GPU active (per the Activity Monitor/GPU pane).

 

[pischu12]

I agree with tsialex. My 6,1 has been running Monterey since I've owned it (about 18 months now); currently it's on 12.7.4.

"pmset -g" shows "gpuswitch" with a value of 2. Running videos absolutely does show the Slot 2 AMD Radeon GPU active (per the Activity Monitor/GPU pane).

Not that it matters... but I wish that once in a while for the majority of casual computing one could switch between the 1st and 2nd video card for the life of the computer ?