Stuttering screen saver... any easy fix for it?

[Ungibbed]

A weird issue with a late 2012 Mini (core i5, 16GB, factory original SSD).

After a fresh install of Catalina with just Office installed along with the regular Apple apps, my music and photos copied to Photos.app and Music.app to fresh libraries. I noticed that when the screen saver runs (any screen saver including the very basic “Flurry”.

they stutter so bad that they average about one or two FPS. When on the display preferences pane previewing in full screen, they run like butter. What is going on?

The OS is extremely fast and responsive and I feel that barely pushing this thing but “Flurry” can’t be possibly taxing this merry old Mac Mini.

 

[batsai]

I’ve noticed this with a late 2014 Mac mini I just purchased off eBay- 256 GB SSD and 8 GB of RAM running Catalina. Screensavers run fine for a while and then ‘hiccup’ and stutter. My machine is also fast and responsive. I would imagine it has to be some sort of power saving ‘feature’ that’s kicking in; it runs flawlessly for about 10 minutes before it starts to sputter every now and then. I’m not sure what the answer is...

 

[Ungibbed]

Okay, so this proves that I am not insane.