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

I thought I was going to return my rMBP until I actually miraculously fixed mine!

• So I was suffering from the usual choppy laggy scrolling, when I decided to connect my rMBP to a Thunderbolt Display (I was lucky to have access to one at work).

• I closed the clamshell lid, restarted the machine and entered into the Restore partition from the Display.

• I ran Disk Utility and ran disk repair 3 times, on the second repair it revealed that it had serious error.

• I fixed those repairs on the run and ran it a fourth time to make sure there were no more errors (keep in mind this is off the Thunderbolt Display)

• Then I ran the permissions repairs 3 times, until no errors appeared.

• I exited out of Disk Utility and proceeded on Reinstalling OS X.

• After restoring the laptop I disconnected it from the Thunderbolt display, ran the Supplemental Update 2.0, the lagginess returned, but I repeated the entire process from above and restored OS X a second time, and ran the Supplemental Update while connected to the Thunderbolt Display. After disconnecting the display, SUCCESS! I swear to the gates of heaven above my laptop is healed!!

I have been running it for the past 6 hours running test after test after test, from Photoshop, to iPhoto, to browser scrolling, there is absolutely no lag! Unigen Heaven 3D test is at a staggering 48 frames per second (I got 8 or 9 before) and Photoshop has that legendary inertia scroll that we all love. Most importantly, when every time I restart my laptop, the screen no longer blacks out before it smoothly scrolls its way onto the Desktop! I'm like WOOOOOO!!!!

If you have access to a Thunderbolt Display, give this procedure a try, and let me know if it has helped you or not.

So the fix is to buy a Thunderbolt Display and reinstall? Was it a clean install or restore from backup?

I just reinstalled over my existing OS X. If you don't have a Thunderbolt display, try from an external monitor.

OK. So you kept all the files and settings.

I have a TD at work, but fail to see how this can help. Before one of the updates for my mid-2012 rMBP, things actually ran smooth on that display.

I'm also guessing that by plugging in the TB Display I may have shut down the Intel Graphics 4000 HD GPU while installing OS X, leaving the discreet Nvidia GPU running during installation. I don't know for sure, but maybe by doing so, certain elements within Mountain Lion 10.8.2 software were finally able to perform essential updates to the Intel GPU itself.

Sounds like a Voodoo fix    Let us know if it holds up after a few days.

Hey Wayne, a bit off topic but... what resolution did you run the Unreal Benchmark at?  Also, what were your other settings?  (Anistropy, anti aliasing, ful screen?, etc.)  I want to compare it against my Mac Pro that I installed a GeForce GTX 570 2.5GB into.

Open GL

Res: 2560 x 1440 (Fullscreen - Mac LED Cinema Disp.)

Shaders: Medium

Anti Aliasing: Off

Score: 865

Average FPS: 34

Min:14

Max: 79

Thanks,

Kevin

I did not test with an actual Thunderbolt Display, but I have my old Apple Cinema Display 30" connected through a Thunderbolt Display. I followed your steps, and acknowledge that it does indeed seem to somewhat improve performance.

The speed is not super (yet) everywhere. However, performance in Safari 6.02 and even Chrome and Firefox seems to have improved somewhat (although the Webkit nightly version of Safari is definitely still a lot faster in scrolling) on websites such as TheVerge and ArsTechnica. Various window animations in OS X are also definitely faster. The Eclipse development environment (Juno version) also seems somewhat faster in showing text.

I have Photoshop CS5 (non-retina version), so I cannot check performance there.

Of course, all of this seems somewhat subjective.

The scrolling speed in displaying heavy PDFs in Preview has also improved.

When my external monitor is connected via HDMI to my rMBP, gfxCardStatus tells me: Dependance: External monitor. So I guess for your operation, a TB display is not required, a "classical" screen should be enough

As long as you use the Discreet GPU to install Mac OS X 10.8.2, and as long as all errors have been removed and permissions have been repaired, I think this may be a good solution. As of this typing, my rMBP (16 GB, 2.6Ghz i7) is still running very smooth with no screen blackout during startup.

guys, here were written many many times about lagging issue. You could use TB display or anything else, BUT if your screen is not "retina" then almost everything becoming ok. With descrete card situation coming better, but integrated graphic card totaly can't normally work with Retina display.

for test purpose, Turn on Integrated graphic card and repeat the same what I did here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHC-6bW0dI4

do you have the same issue with your hardware ?

What exactly happened there? You dragged an app into a folder and it froze momentarily? As I said earlier, I think I created a new element by installing 10.8.2 with the discreet GPU (in my case, the Nvidia 650GT video card). By connecting the rMBP to an external monitor, thereby forcing the discreet GPU to run (even during the reinstallation of OS X) allows the Intel GPU to be turned off, allowing the Intel driver elements to take effect. It's kinda like repairing your hard drive with Disk Utility while running your operating system; you can't. Only when you isolate your OS by starting up from the Restore partition or Restore DVD can you effectively repair your hard drive. Make sense?

on the video happened the next: when I'm dragging app, top line of screen is blinking (take a look one more time).

when you turning on external display it's not retina display, you do the same if you will choose non-retina resolution on your notebook, for example with help SwitchResX.

I'm such a noob....the screen was set to "Best for Retina Display"........go back to HiD 1900 x 1200 and I'm back to square one....sorry folks

THIS had better not be the permanent fix for the MacBook Pro Retinas http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/01/07/intel-shows-off-4th-gen-core-processor s-bound-for-apples-macbook-lineup