Q: Mountain Lion UI Lag on rMBP !!! (Let's Make this thread serious and hope for a fix)

I've been getting lags while switching spaces using the control arrow method, funny thing is that when I only get lags/stutter when switching from either fullscreen app to desktop or dashboard to desktop. No lag while transitioning from desktop to Full screen apps or dashboard. the lag is improved when I use the Nvidia card but does not disapear completely, Is this the stutter lag that every one has been talking about?

Anyone tried his rMBP with Lion? Went to a reseller today and tried their rMBP 2.3/8/256 and it looked like it didn't have any lag. Tried several things, expose, lot's of chrome windows, quicktime etc but almost no noticable lag.

I got my rMBP 2.6/16/256 delivered with Mountain Lion, and having quite some lag. Quite curious and might even try

installing Lion if that helps?

If i hide the dock the lag almost dissapears (still there), if i change very fast it becames a little more notacible...
my rMBP:

Processor  2.3 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory  16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

SDD        256 GB

Hey mate could you please tell me more about it ? i returned ine cuz of the lag! now i might get it again if it is fixed, please respond ASAP

Same problem for me on brand new MBP retina, varing degrees of lag when switching between spaces or activating misison control or the dock or even the Applications pop up. At its worst it can sometimes it can hang for 5-10 seconds.

So far I have found that Disabling 'Automatic Graphics Switching' in Energy Saver preferences seems to help a little.

Processor: 2.6GHz i7

Memory: 16GB

Graphics: GT 650M

OSX ML 10.8.1

Hi all i've read on another forum that a clean instal from a bootable usb stick has greatly improved their overall UI performance, has anyone tried this? Also went to the local apple store today and had a look at the rmbp in the store but some stutter and others are smooth, which must prove that it is a software problem rather than a hardware. anyways really intrested to hear back from those with the 10.8.2 update.

Yes, I've tried but I have the same problems than before (before I did simple update from Lion to ML).

I wouldn't dare saying that one software configuration or scenario is better than another (clean install vs. upgrade etc.) simply due to the fact that the problem level changes rapidly. Sometimes Launchpad stutters for a few seconds, sometimes it works smoothly. First attemp to Mission Control causes lagging, second is a bit better and third is smooth as it should always be. There are long minutes when I do not observe any problems at all. So it is hard to tell whether particular rMBP is OK or not just by a few seconds play in the store.

It reminds me however of a serious problem that first SSDs had with random writes of small amounts of data (refer: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738). I wonder if whole case isn't simply related to buffering/caching.

kuba.wryostek, you are totally right. Unrelated to specific computer or OS install method. I've got two rMBPs with the same exact problems, and you described it perfectly... first transitions are rough, while subsequent transitions are smooth, making me think it's a caching / buffering issue. I would love it it they pre-cached transitions.

I'm curious if anyone else is experiencing slow wake up times? Sometimes after a few hour sleep, the screen will go blue for a minute, and take up to 20 seconds to become responsive and allow password to be typed in. This happens on both of my retinas on occassion. It will also show the time at the point where I put it to sleep, and takes a moment for everything to update.

Yes same thing for me, and that's maybe the most annoying thing, much more than laggy mission control or safari scroll...

I think that you may need to change the sleep mode of the mac, before changing the sleep mode, my mac has a slow wake up time when slept for a long time, so I typed "sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0" into terminal and it's much faster now, and i don't know if power nap makes wake up time slower since I unchecked that option. http://www.macworld.com/article/1053471/sleepmode.html

I have a 2.7 GHz Retina MBP running Lion (10.7.4). There is an annoying amount of lag in scrolling, not just in Safari (Version 6.0 7536.25), but also in Firefox (14.0.1) and Chrome (21.0.1180.89). I also encounter lag when swiping between full-screen apps and with the animation of entering/exiting Mission Control.

I'm running at the "Scaled: More Space" display setting, which seems to be a bit slower than the "Best (Retina)" setting. But given that it's this setting that offers me the most "virtual pixels", I use it.

I suspect that the lag has not much to do with the web page content, but it's really the hardware+OS that's not fast enough for that many pixels.

I had a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo MBP before, with Leopard, and never encountered so much lag. It's truly painful to upgrade to a brand new Mac after about 3 years and get a much worse perceptible performance than before.

That said, the Retina display looks awesome. But, I'd wait buying a Retina MBP until they release a new MBP that is powerful enough to drive it at an acceptable speed.

Also: I truly hope Apple will soon allow setting the display resolution directly (1:1 scaling, giving applications all 2880x1800 pixels): this would probably be faster (the OS wouldn't have to scale, not even at the currently "best" 1:2 factor) and would allow me to fit even more text/GUI on the screen (of course the text and GUI elements would become rather small, but that's ok).

It IS faster in 2880x1800 resolution indeed. You can check for yourself using this: http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tiki-view_blog_post.php?postId=51 Unfortunately this resolution is unusable in the long run. :-(

Having installed gfxcardstatus almost as soon as setting up the machine in Lion (as shipped) I have noticed that in Moutain Lion (internet updated version) the lag is really noticable when the dedicated card is set. Switching to integrate only: SOLVES the probelm of UI lag in sweeping and scroll (e.g. going to dashboard with swipe, scroll in safari etc).

This is most noticable when the dedicated card is hot, i.e. after gaming or extended use. When attempting to run modern games such as Diablo 3 on low or high settings in native res the performance does seem to have degraded since Lion (although this is purely a subjective observation) in terms of raw frame rate when setting on full. In conclusion either a thermal issue with heat (any only notice that double tapping fn stops the fans so the mic can hear voice commands?)  could the update have slowed the noisy fans too much or is the cooling insufficient for a 600 series nvidia? Other posibility driver issues... only time will tell.

Otherwise very impressed with retina mac.

Hope this helps..

I am considering to buy a retina MBP, however, during gathering information about it the last couple of days I have noticed a lot BASE MODEL owners complaining about it, whereas people owning a maxed-out model seem to not have major UI issues. This is just an impression, that I got, I cannot guarantee, but I have not found anyone with a maxed-out model complaining about UI performance issues (at least on Mountain Lion).

On youtube you will find some videos where people show UI issues having with their retina-MBP, and those who show that they do not have any (maxed-out models).

Can someone confirm?