Macbook Pro Retina 13" late 2013 (Haswell) UI Lag

That video is pretty smooth for me on Mid 2014 15" Base Model. Even on 1080p60fps.

Apart from the Dock's Grid Folder view animation everything is fine. Only there I'm getting a slow animation. this might be something to do with the OS. on mavericks it was fine.

the video is smooth, but when you use the the 1920x1080 HiDPI mode you will probably see high system load. I don't know how the Iris Pro in the 15" performs, but the Iris in the 13" pretty much maxes out in 1680x1050 HiDPI playing that vid, even choking every few seconds while system load is only half of that in native 1680x1050.

Yosemite might makes things worse with transparency etc, but the underlying issue is a too weak GPU for the massive resolutions, especially in scaled HiDPI modes. The lag and high load might not be noticeable by everyone and it's not super bad, but it's there.

Yeah the video for me is laggy as well at full resolution. It is very noticeable by the way. It is pity how new laptop cannot handle HiDPI videos though especially when you pay shedloads for it.

The problem is the unique way in which Apple handles HiDPI scaling. Each frame is basically rendered in 2x resolution (so 3360x2100 for virtual 1680x1050) and then scaled down to the native resolution of 2560x1600. The more pixels that have to be updated (a lot when playing back a video, especially in 60fps) the bigger is the extra work the GPU has to do with rendering and scaling.

This approach results in crystal clear images, even in scaled resolutions, but when exploiting the weaknesses of the approach by having large parts of the screen updating 30-60 times per second the lag is visible. Most of Apples users who mainly surf the web or do office work on their machines will hardly notice it, however power users probably will.

Currently there is no integrated GPU that could handle this usecase, so either Apple would need to sacrifice quality and avoid scaling, or stick with this approach and wait for better hardware, which is what they do.

Even using an app like Display Mode doesn't do me any good. My Facebook is so choppy at the moment. lol I hate this:) But strangely, watching that GT5 video that was posted seems to work pretty **** solid. I noticed no " choking." I am assuming that is another word for " choppy"?

I have a 13" rMBP 2013 (16/256)and it works generally well in this respect. There is some choppiness when resizing windows, even native OS X applications like Safari. Also, scrolling in the applications menu (I have it aliased in my Dock displaying as a List) is sometimes choppy. Showing Mission Control is also sometimes uneven and choppy.

The thing is, even with Retina Display Menu active and set to the non-HiDPI equivalent of what I normally use (1440x900) these symptoms persist.

I agree that this is rubbish for such a machine, particularly since interface smoothness has been a hallmark of OS X for a long time, but at present I am accepting it. If things get worse with Yosemite (I'm currently on 10.9.5) then I will probably make a fuss.

I'm having some GUI lag and I got a (Late 2013) Retina MacBook Pro -- 10.10 (Yosimite) -- i7 2.3Ghz Quadcore -- 16GB RAM -- nVidia 750M 2GB DDR5 -- 512GB SSD

A little question.

Someone with a Thunderbolt display can try the performances of the macbook? If I put my mbp 13 retina at 2560x1600 animations are not so smooth... what happens with an external monitor??

Very good question. I've been noticing with my 1080p HD LED TV that I do get a small frame drop. (but that's on the TV it's self and not on the Macbook Retina screen.)

Hi, I agree on that. Have the MBPr 13" mid 2014 w/256GB SSD, and it often lags when I´m using the integrated display, especially in notification center and mission control, as well as when minimizing windows. Whats interesting though, is that it never lags when I hook it up to my Dell U2711 display, at 2560x1440, which is just short of retina resolution. Seems like its a software problem, considering it runs Guild Wars 2 and Portal 2 fine, even when the OS X UI is lag as ****. Has anyone noticed the trackpad being unresponsive as well?

I think I found out what the issue is? I think apple is under clocking the graphics cards to help keep the laptops cool and to reduce fan noise.

Here is a link to a fix that worked for everyone but it makes the laptop run hot.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1386070&page=13

Looks like removing AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext fixes the issue.

I did not try this on my retina macbook but you can if you would like. I just don't

want mine to overheat.

I've had this lag issue since I got my Late 2013 15" base model rMBP in June. I saw the lag throughout multiple versions of Mavericks and I've now seen it through multiple versions of Yosemite. Looking back at threads like this, and other threads from even earlier, people have been complaining about the lag since Lion, so I really don't think it's worth expecting Apple to fix it in an update.

I haven't taken mine to an Apple store yet because the nearest store is very far away, and I also use this laptop as my primary work machine (if they took it from me for repairs or w/e, I'd be screwed). I'm going to book an appointment next week though as I'm taking time from work. Have people had success doing this? I'm going to go regardless because I want to see if the issue exists on their display models, but I'd just like to know if there is actually a positive outcome in doing so.

punkmanmatthew wrote:

I think I found out what the issue is? I think apple is under clocking the graphics cards to help keep the laptops cool and to reduce fan noise.

Here is a link to a fix that worked for everyone but it makes the laptop run hot.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1386070&page=13

Looks like removing AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext fixes the issue.

I did not try this on my retina macbook but you can if you would like. I just don't

want mine to overheat.

Thanks for sharing this.

Apparently that fix is only for discrete GPUs, and not for late 2013 and mid-2014 13'' and low-end 15'' models with integrated gpu only. Because, for instance in the below thread you may see that a user benchmarks three scenerios (integrated graphics vs discrete graphics vs discrete graphics with kext deleted):

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1554168

Basically that fix is about obviating the downclocking imposed by Apple on the discrete gpu in the expense of higher thermals and lower battery life.

Your post urged me to find if there is such a downcloacking on the integrated graphics card which can be overcome with a similar fix. In this regard I've found the following post where a user says Iris Pro 5200 has the downclocking issue:

"http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1ps904/scrollinggui_lag_on_13_inch_haswel l_retina/cd8hmfu"

If Iris Pro 5200 has this issue, I assume Iris 5100 would certainly has the same problem.

Unfortunately despite my efforts I could not find a fix for this available on the Internet.

Perhaps this may be the right step in the right direction... someone with technical knowledge may contribute with his opinions??

After updating safari in new version, the outcome was impressive. All lag is gone. This alone shows tha apple knows and has the abilty to optimise parts of yosemite... i hope someone from apple is reading this thread... 8 years ago i was a microsoft winows fan but everything changed after purchasing my first macbook pro. Dont ruin user experience as Apple's first priority... i hope 10.10.2 roll out soon and fix all this lag, high cpu usage and high battery consamption in macbook pro's with retina display, apple's best notebook yet....

I have the latest Safari and have noticed no difference. Are you saying that installing 8.0.2 fixed lag system wide?

I mentioned above that I saw this lag when my computer was new and running Mavericks, so I decided to reinstall Mavericks on a new partition to compare. Honestly, I can't believe I even complained at that performance. I'd see maybe a single dropped frame in Mission Control at its worst. If I resize a Finder window (in column view) on Yosemite, I'd be lucky to see 2 frames per second. Have a few windows and a couple of spaces and MC is dropping frames. I don't see how an update to Safari is supposed to fix stuff like that. Let's not congratulate Apple too quickly, their OS still stinks.

If they weren't so unreasonable about letting people downgrade, I'd be all over Mavericks, but as this is my work computer I can't risk anything going wrong so I'll have to wait it out. Stupid policy.

EDIT: Removed the word d.a.m.n as it was censored, which makes it look like I actually said something rude.