Choppy graphics since Thunderbolt-Update

I hate to play devil's advocate here but I feel like I have to so someone new to the discussion doesn't think all machines suffer from the issue.

I just got done upgrading a dozen or so machines (8 of which were 13" i5 MBAs) and I'm not seeing any choppy/sluggish video behavior, screen tearing or other issues. I did confirm the version # to be 7.1.2 and fired up several different things to try and replicate the behavior (even played a 2v2 match in Starcraft II).

So I'm sorry to hear you're still having issues but it doesn't appear to be an issue that's consistently reproduceable with 10.7.2 and the mid-2011 MBA.

Fair enough.

I'd like to add though that so far, we have all been supplying evidence of the issue as 'my impression'. In other words, I personally notice a difference in video performance from stock 10.7 and > Thunderbolt update. Some people don't.

As part of my case that I did open - they asked me to take it to an Apple store. I did. The problem was that the guy that helped me, had nothing as a baseline to try to see the effects. He said 'I don't see anything'.

What we really need, is some kind of benchmark tool that can spit out a value for some operation on stock 10.7 vs. > TB update or 10.7.2. Otherwise we are all just saying that 'my impression is that graphics are choppy'. We really need some hard data. I've looked and not found anything for OSX that can do this. In Linux there are a handful of tools that can do benchmark tests and spit out the data I'm talking about, same for Windows. If someone knows of something for OSX to benchmark video, please let us know.

Screen captures/video won't work. The FPS is not high enough. It's a terrible medium. You have to see it for yourself. Even then, it's essentially a 'stereogram' picture (Remember those ? 🙂) Some people can see the dolphin, some people never do, and only see a bunch of dots.

So I do appreciate your feedback. But I think no one on either side of the discussion, myself included, has a firm enough footing until we have a tool that provides hard performance data.

I am SO fustrated. Have been living with this problem for a long time now. I need my Air to record screencasts and that is not possible as the situation is now. I called Apple support - they knew nothing about the issue and suggested that I turned the machine in for repair. What good will that do? I will get it back with a "no hardware problems found". And then I will have had no machine for a week :-(

10.7.2 did nothing good so now I really have no idea what to do. I tried a complete reinstall (wiped the disk before). That didn't make any difference.

Does anyone have any information about what's beeing done?

Do we know if Apple is even aware of this? If they don't know about it they won't be able to do anything.

Some computers are having different problems. My problems are with games and general performance. I guarantee until Apple fixes the faulty software most people will see an issue somewhere down the line. It is the software because I play a game on my MBP that has graphics issues. I deleted it, took the game back, bought it somewhere else and still had the same issues. The exact same issues. It is not hardware because if I install Snow Leapord back on my MBP the issues will no longer be there. If you need proof I will be more than happy to show you.