My retina MacBook Pro has had terrible graphics performance problems for a couple of weeks. I searched all over various forums and tried everything: resetting SCM, manually selecting discrete/integrated graphics card, deleting graphics kexts, etc. Nothing helped until I found this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4391500
Now my rMBP has silky smooth graphics again!
The directions in that post are a little hard to understand so I cleaned them up here:
Step 1: Delete system windowserver preferences
- In the Finder, from the menu bar, select "Go -> Go to Folder..."
- Enter: /Library/Preferences/
- Delete the file called com.apple.windowserver.plist
Step 2: Delete user windowserver preferences
- In the Finder, from the menu bar, select "Go -> Go to Folder..."
- Enter: ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/
- Delete all files that start with com.apple.windowserver (On my rMBP, there was one file called com.apple.windowserver.12AFB147-95D6-5C70-8F62-C1E4F2BE81BE)
Step 3: Reset the PRAM
(These instructions are from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379)
- Shut down your Mac.
- Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (⌘), Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
- Turn on the computer.
- Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys before the gray screen appears.
- Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
- Release the keys.
Hopefully this helps others with bad graphics performance on retina MacBook Pros.
For anyone that wants to check out the problematic plists from my rMBP, here are the files:
http://jherrman.com/slow-rmbp-2012/com.apple.windowserver.plist
http://jherrman.com/slow-rmbp-2012/com.apple.windowserver.12AFB147-95D6-5C70-8F6 2-C1E4F2BE81BE.plist
Jeremy Herrman