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Macbook Pro M1Pro always at 100% on efficiency cores - OS very slow!!

Hello everyone,

I'm not going to lie to you, I can't take it anymore. For months now, I've been struggling with my Macbook Pro M1Pro (10 cores) because it's extremely slow for basic tasks. This is mainly due to the fact that the two efficiency cores are permanently at 100%. Knowing that the processes that consume the most are WindowServer, kernel_task, coreaudiod, mds, etc. in short, mostly OS processes. And it's of course even worse when a TimeMachine backup is in run... As a result, as soon as I open an application like Mail or Zoom, it crawls to death and I can't open the system preferences window in less than 2 minutes for example. I've tried just about everything, including switching the application processes I need manually to the performance cores, using the taskpolicy -B -p command to change their allocation priority, but nothing works... It's really tiring... And the worst thing is that my Mac is permanently plugged in, but unlike the M3 Pro, there's no way of forcing performance mode... Grrr.

So if someone from Apple would like to take a look at this case, that would be great, because right now my computer is simply unusable. It's slower than my 2012 iMac core i5... A pity

Thanks in advance for your help,

Best regards,

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Feb 5, 2024 1:43 AM

Top-ranking reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

144,293 points

Posted on Feb 6, 2024 7:02 AM

Sécurité:

Gatekeeper: App Store et développeurs identifiés

Protection de l’intégrité ** système: Activée

Démarrage sécurisé:

Logiciel antivirus: Apple et F-Secure < -------that needs to GO!

Poisoning performance:

By far the easiest way to cause poor performance, instability, overheating and crashing is to install ANY third-party speeder-uppers, Cleaners, Optimizers, or Virus scanners. or a VPN that you installed yourself. The main reason is that they are relentless in scanning your files, non-stop, looking for things virus-like patterns in Everything. When completed, they do it all again.

The idea that a third party, with no special knowledge of the inner workings of MacOS, can somehow find a simple way to protect your computer — that is not already being done by MacOS itself — suggests that the MacOS developers are somehow "holding out on you". That is absurd.

You should remove any and all (other than Apple built-in) virus scanners, speeder uppers, optimizers, cleaners, App deleters or VPN packages you installed yourself, or anything of that ilk.

Third-party file Sync-ers such as DropBox, BackBlaze, OneDrive, or GoogleDrive can ruin performance, but are not inherently dangerous.

Effective defenses against malware and ot… - Apple Community

--------

MacOS shares a lot of the lock-down mechanisms developed for the iPhone. Applications are all sand-boxed with a list of the resources they require, and they cannot ask for anything outside their sandbox without crashing. Signed Applications are checked that they are from legitimate Developers, and Notarized Applications are delivered with the assurance that they have NOT been modified since their release by the Developer.

Recent versions of MacOS completely changed how you should think about malware.

From MacOS 11 Catalina onward, the system is on a Separate, crypto-locked System Volume, which is not writeable using ordinary means. Any unauthorized differences that appear to the crypto-locked volume are quickly detected and you are alerted.

So you could store just about every malware known to mankind on your Mac, and your Mac would not get infected spontaneously. Scanning for virus-like patterns might make you feel a little better now, but it is outdated nonsense.

Nothing can become Executable Unless/Until you supply your Admin password to "make it so".

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41 replies

Feb 6, 2024 4:42 PM in response to Egon-058

Your Mac is suffering from "death by a thousand cuts".

It is not one gigantic huge thing that is making it slow, it is the combination of so many things Readers have pointed out. Each is squandering some bits of performance, and in SUM are causing a BIG loss in performance.

Egon-058 Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 7, 2024 12:53 AM in response to riyo8

Hello Riyo,

Thank you for your comment! 🙂 I have to say it is quite more problematic when my 2 external screens are connected indeed. And as far as I could understand the M1 chip is not very adapted for external screens sadly (maybe that justifies the limitation to the number of screens). But That's a pity in my opinion.

Regarding downgrade, I had such issue. Sadly Apple doesn't allow (as far as I know) a simple method to downgrade your OS without the need to reinstall completely the Mac. If you know one, I might try :-)

Egon-058 Author

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Feb 7, 2024 1:05 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

BTW, I'm throttling right now, while having a Google Meet call, and here the processes that are effectively taking most of the computing power according to my EtreCheck report:

Vivaldi Helper (Renderer) (17) 37.10 % (Vivaldi Technologies AS)

WindowServer 34.06 % (Apple)

mds 21.80 % (Apple)

kernel_task 20.46 % (Apple)

Vivaldi Helper (GPU) 18.94 % (Vivaldi Technologies AS)

Vivaldi being my web browser (for Google Meet call), you cannot really say its my utilities that draw most of the power...

[Edited by Moderator]

Feb 7, 2024 6:32 AM in response to Egon-058

<<. you cannot really say its my utilities that draw most of the power... >>

I DID NOT say it was items that show themselves in the CPU section of reports, or any Utilities.

each of the add-ons cited eats away at CPU power, but not enough to show up as top CPU hog. when you have six of them nibbling away, you get a Mac that is overall less responsive.

--------

you are correct in that Time machine, and its mds_worker minions, while it is actively backing up, uses a non-trivial amount of CPU, and does a non-trivial amount of I/O. All those resources are consumed at very low priority, and are intended not to intrude on your foreground work. ...and then it is done and does nothing for an hour or more.

Time Machine is Not the cause of your lack of responsiveness.

Egon-058 Author

Level 1

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Feb 5, 2024 9:14 AM in response to Egon-058

Noteworthy, after 15 minutes (see uptime in blue in the capture) I'm still at 100% load.

Egon-058 Author

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Feb 5, 2024 12:50 PM in response to John Galt

Ok! But what for. Here are 2 captures of the 6 most active processes (that include my mail client)

Egon-058 Author

Level 1

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Feb 5, 2024 12:50 PM in response to Egon-058

If I take a capture of what iStat Menu gives me:

Egon-058 Author

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Feb 5, 2024 12:54 PM in response to Egon-058

P.S. Noteworthy, it is much worse when I have my 2 external screens connected. 😓

Egon-058 Author

Level 1

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Feb 6, 2024 12:41 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Despite I'd love this clock speed issue would be the explanation, if I check my actual clock speed after wake up, apparently I correctly reach 2064MHz as expected (after wake up) 😓

Egon-058 Author

Level 1

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Feb 6, 2024 7:31 AM in response to John Galt

In the mean time I programmed a little script to rapidly disable Spotlight indexing. I'll try to see if this help 😊

Egon-058 Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 6, 2024 2:18 PM in response to Egon-058

Interestingly enough, apparently TRIM might not be supported by many external SSD drive over USB depending on their enclosure. I'll check mine tomorrow and let you know :-)

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Macbook Pro M1Pro always at 100% on efficiency cores - OS very slow!!