Bad Desktop Performance with Dell P2715Q

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suffix90 Author

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Bad Desktop Performance with Dell P2715Q

Hi everybody,

I'm using a 15" Mid 2010 Macbook Pro with the following specs:

- 2.4GHz i5

- 8GB 1067 MHz DDR3

- Samsung Evo 850 (250GB) as Startup Disk

- GeForce GT330M 256 MB

- External Dell P2715Q with MiniDP to DP cable at 2560x1440

- Yosemite 10.10.2

- External Keyboard and Mouse, both wired

Unfortunately (apart from my Graphics Card being unable to output 4K but I accept that, this machine is almost 5 years old) the performance when using normal desktop operations is really bad on the Dell monitor. Some things like scrolling in Finder and Safari work fluently, but most not. Here's a list:

- Minimizing and maximizing, moving and opening windows is lagging

- Horrible video performance when watching Youtube HD videos, especially in fullscreen. Sometimes nothing happens for more than 5 seconds, screen simply freezes

- Lags when using some third-party apps even when only scrolling through text (for example Matlab)

When the issues above appear, the process WindowServer has a very high CPU usage, my computer starts to heat up and burn enormous amounts of energy, gets unusable. I googled the issue with the WindowServer and followed the advice, reducing the transparency helped a little but especially the issue with Youtube videos is unchanged. Even when doing nothing, the CPU usage of the WindowServer never drops below 0.5%. In general, the experience when working on the external monitor is kind of slow and really unsatisfying, different then what I'm used to from the Macbook. From the 8 GB of RAM I have, 5.7GB are used when simply typing this text in Safari apart from having Outlook and a terminal open (plus some background apps like Dropbox).

Things are a little better when working in closed-clamshell mode (mostly the issues with handling windows, HD video in fullscreen still *****).

The only things I haven't tried is resetting the SMC & PRAM since users reported that doing so doesn't help at all.

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Edit: My Yosemite Installation is a fresh and clean installation, nothing was transferred/proted from an older Mac OS installation, apart from some documents of course

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), null

Posted on Mar 5, 2015 12:03 PM

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Answer 1

my ginger

Level 5

4,904 points

Mar 5, 2015 12:18 PM in response to suffix90

In system preferences display, what resolutions have you tried? have you tried any stretched resolutions? You might also try messing with the refresh rate of the monitor.

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Answer 2

suffix90 Author

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Mar 5, 2015 12:26 PM in response to my ginger

So far I only tried the 2560x1440 and it won't let me change the refresh rate (at any resolution, is fixed to 60 Hz). Gave it a try: Anything lower than this resolution looks really bad on the monitor, although it helps with the video issues. So is my computer simply not capable of handling decent resolutions? That would be really sad as we're talking about simple 2D-applications..

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Answer 3

my ginger

Level 5

4,904 points

Mar 5, 2015 12:48 PM in response to suffix90

Is this monitor new? Do you have the problem only with the external monitor? I have read report where ti works great and reports that it does not. I do not and have not used an external monitor in some time. My daughter has, but she's not hear to ask. I don't know it this would apply to you as I don't know the year of your MBP. Apple has a recall on some MBP for video problems. https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

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Answer 4

suffix90 Author

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Mar 5, 2015 2:13 PM in response to my ginger

Yes, the monitor is brand new. I used a 22" 1680x1050 external monitor occasionally and had no problems there, also with the Dell it looks like the problems come from the high resolution.

As written in the original post, my model is a mid 2010 and therefore not eglibile for the repair program you posted, I just checked. Thanks for posting it, didn't know about these troubles.

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Answer 5

my ginger

Level 5

4,904 points

Mar 5, 2015 2:48 PM in response to suffix90

The problem could very well be the high resolution. My though was that the MBP with retina display could handle higher resolution. So this is a monitor white HD video capabilities. You might have to look up the spec on the graphic card in your MBP to see if it can do HD.

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Answer 6

suffix90 Author

Level 1

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Mar 5, 2015 2:55 PM in response to my ginger

Well it obviously supports the resolution (also according to the datasheet) and playing HD video at lower resolutions works fine.. I just saw this:

2014 Macbook Pro 15" doesn't work well with 4k @ 60hz, obvious lag due to high WindowServer CPU utilization

which makes me think that it's not really a performance thing but more a bug in Yosemite.

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Answer 7

my ginger

Level 5

4,904 points

Mar 5, 2015 3:41 PM in response to suffix90

Yes I read some of the same things. Some guy found and downloaded a program to work around this, but since I could not verify it I didn't give you a link.

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Answer 8

Aug 18, 2015 4:28 PM in response to suffix90

I have the exact same monitor configuration and performance issues that you're reporting, albeit it on a new MBP Retina 15" (Mid 2014 model) w/Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB graphics card.

Moving windows around or switching between applications causes the WindowServer process to spike to 80% and just crush the system. It's basically unusable.

Definitely seems like a bug that Apple needs to fix and push out in an update.

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Answer 9

Aug 19, 2015 12:04 PM in response to prdonahue

I tried this with my personal laptop -- nearly identical config except it has the additional, higher performance graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M).

The CPU usage for WindowServer only spikes to ~20% and there is no negligible performance degradation. Night and day difference.

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