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Lion graphics extremely slow with Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256MB

Made a clean install with Lion and it now turns out that the graphics (Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256MB) on my Core 2 Duo iMac are way to slow (or insufficient VRAM) for the Lion UI.


Especially fullscreen apps animations and opening Launchpad folders are extremely choppy. Not much fun the way it is.


I mean come on, a mac, which can play WoW pretty well should be able to push 2D Graphics around, right?


When booting up the UI is fast, but after letting the iMac on for a while or waking it from sleep the graphics are choppy again.


Anyone else having this problem?


Regards,

Kersten

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 10:23 PM

217 replies

Nov 4, 2012 1:10 PM in response to Community User

I have an Apple 30" Cinema HD display connected to a Radeon HD 5870 1GB in a MacPro3,1 running Mountain Lion. Changing the screen resolution did not restore OpenGL performance for me after waking from sleep.


I figured that if changing resolutions is supposed to fix the problem, then perhaps the thing the fixes the problem is that the Radeon timings (pixel clock) are altered/recalculated/reset/whatever whenever the resolution changes.


But all the resolutions for the LCD display are scaled resolutions which means the Radeon is always outputing 2560x1600. The framebuffer is of different sizes but the output timings are unchanged.


Therefore, the solution might be to create a custom resolution (using something like SwitchResX) which is not a scaled resolution. The EDID of the Cinema HD display says it supports 1280 x 800 @ 59.910Hz and 2560 x 1600 @ 59.860Hz. I used SwitchResX to add a 1280 x 800 @ 59.910Hz non-scaled resolution and restarted the Mac.


Now when I wake the Mac from sleep, I can use that 1280 x 800 non-scaled resolution to restore OpenGL performance. It works.


Note that the Apple graphics drivers will not allow both a scaled and non-scaled version of the same resolution. When I add the non-scaled 1280 x 800, I can nolonger use the scaled 1280 x 800. The difference between 1280 x 800 scaled and non-scaled is that for scaled, the graphics card does the scaling and adds filtering to the pixels making them blurry and outputs 2560 x 1600. Non-scaled outputs 1280 x 800 and the Cinema HD itself quadruples the pixels to 2560 x 1600 without filtering (making them very sharp and crisp).

Dec 18, 2012 8:12 AM in response to Roelof2

I have a 2008 Mac Pro (3,1). NO PROBLEMS until I upgraded to Mountain Lion. Now I have get weird pixel glitches followed by constant freezes. Looked at my crash log and sure enough its taxing the GPU too hard and its bugging out.


DO NOT upgrade unless you have to. Not sure if even an upgraded graphics card is gonna help my machine. And they are so expensive now anyway, not sure it's worth it.


One temp fix I've been using is downloading SMC fan control and monitoring internal temp of my Mac Pro and raising the fan speed. Its actually cooled it down so that I can work outside of safe mode. But obviously, not a good permanent fix.


Really frustrating they aren't supporting machines that aren't even that old. Trying to obsolete everything. So many mistakes from Apple lately. Very frustrating.

Dec 27, 2012 3:16 PM in response to Community User

Im pretty clueless when it comes to computers. I own a 2008 iMac with

Processor: 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory: 2 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB

Software: Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63b)


I had the Harddrive crash and replaced last summer, and had the graphic card needed to be replaced. I after the graphics card being replaced all everything graphic wise is slow/choppy. I don't want to buy a new computer unless i need to. Any help/suggestions would be nice.

May 8, 2013 2:32 AM in response to neslein

I'm getting nasty screen glitches even after upgarding straight from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. I now have ML version 10.8.3 but they are still there. My iMac is a Mid 2007 model with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB built in GPU.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11373233/MacDiscussions/Screen%20problems%20 post%20Mountain%20Lion/ScreenFault.pdf


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11373233/MacDiscussions/Screen%20problems%20 post%20Mountain%20Lion/Screen%20Shot%202012-12-11%20at%2010.39.54.png


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11373233/MacDiscussions/Screen%20problems%20 post%20Mountain%20Lion/Screen%20Shot%202013-01-08%20at%2023.22.49.png


My iStat shows this. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11373233/MacDiscussions/Screen%20problems%20 post%20Mountain%20Lion/Screen%20Shot%202013-01-08%20at%2023.21.40.png


Could my problem be due to overheating? Can anything be done about this?


Curiously the artifacts don't show up if I'm booted in Safe Mode.

Lion graphics extremely slow with Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256MB

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