Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
The entire screen freezes for about half a second about once every 1-5 minutes, it gets worse if I use it actively, switching applications, interacting with the menues alot etc.
I believe this is an issue with the automatic graphics switching. When I turn it off and run it off the dedicatied GPU, the issue seems to go away. Has anybody else experienced anything similar?
MacBook Pro 16", macOS 10.15
masterkarolyi wrote:
You not seeing it does not make it nonexistent, just an anecdotal evidence.
Arguably your seeing freezes is the same, anecdotal.
If you can reproduce it, I would recommend you contact Apple, either via a Genius Bar appointment or via the Internet.
I simply don't see it; do you notice it on some workloads more than others?
I read email, web surf and edit photos and don't see anything like what you describe.
As always, be sure to notify Apple directly of your concerns so they can investigate them; posting here is not an official channel to Apple support, it's for Apple users to help each other.
Contact - Official Apple Support
Thank you. I will definitely try that.
I called up Apple support, and as expected they are not aware of the issue. The support engineer asked me to try the following two solutions and report back.
When I shared the forum link, he also asked me to try the solution you have mentioned.
Will update here again.
UPDATE:
It seems to me that this is an issue with the refresh rate of the display. I changed the refresh from 60hz to the 59.94hz, which is the default, and the issue seems to have resolved. Still an software issue apple need to fix with driver updates.
I've still continued to experience this even when on the default refresh rate (59.94Hz). I have gfxCardStatus installed and haven't seen a correlation between card switching and freezes. But the integrated graphics card does seem to be the culprit, as I only experience momentary freezes with it. I ran all day yesterday on the discrete graphics card and experienced no issues. Back on integrated graphics today and I see a few glitches a few times an hour.
More info:
UPDATE 2:
This did not solve my problem after all.
I have tested 2 different models of the new MBP: base i7 and top spec i9. Both has the exact same issue.
I made a post about this on reddit as well. It gained some attention:
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/e8ap54/several_issues_with_my_16_macbook_pro/
The issue is solved by running off dGPU as some people here has mentioned. But this introduces another isssue for me with the cursor jumping around when switching cursor types.
https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/ei2q0i/macbook_pro_16_issue_with_jumping_cursor_when/
I really hope these issues can gain some attention from Apple soon.
Same here. !6' Macbook Pro, intermintent freezes, sometimes can be solved with sending the display to sleep (and locking the screen), sometimes the entire display hangs and only a hard reset helps.
Apple, please fix this. This machine is way too expensive to have such a pathetic failure.
The problem is, it's not just microfreezes. sometimes the screen hangs and only a reboot helps.
Another, at least unlockable freeze is, when I can lock the frozen screen (with an icon placed to the touchbar), and that will send the screen to sleep and I can unlock and use again.
But sometimes that doesn't help either.
This is a $5000 machine. Ridiculous.
Yeah, reproducing it is the hard nut to crack, because it's totally sporadic and I couldn't see a pattern other than 'moving around the mouse after interacting with a UI' to it, and even then it's 1 of a 1000 times.
That is, I can't reproduce it with a 100% probability.
But I wouldn't complain about it if it wouldn't happen at all, would I.
I have the same issue on my 16" MacBookPro with AMD Radeon Pro 5500M.
For me the duration varies, the display freezes anywhere from for 10 seconds - 2 minutes. If I am watching a YouTube video the sound will continue to play and the touch bar is responsive even when the display is frozen. It does recover automatically, but I have noticed that once I have the issue it will freeze again within within next 1-2 hour.
What I have found out is that if you go under Display settings and disable switching between the cpu graphics and the AMD 5500 so that it keeps running graphics using the AMD, you will not notice these freezeups anymore...
So I have disabled the switching and hoping / waiting for the next Catalina release version which hopefully solves this :)
BR
But this introduces another issue for me. The cursor is jumping when it switches between pointer, hand, text selector. It is not an issue with the integrated graphics. Both modes is a nightmare for me...
After the most recent update 10.15.3, I have not experienced any freezing/microstutter issues (about 2-3 hours of use). The system definitely seems more stable, so I am holding my breath that this did the trick. I read the update notes that this release featured new intel and amd drivers, so that that might have been the issue all along, but time will tell.
+1 I've the same exact issue on my macbook pro 16 inch and it all goes away once you switch to the dGPU only.
Same problem here. Something is really wrong with the MBP 16 iGPU on Catalina :(
Intermittent microfreezes/hiccups on 16' Macbook pro
