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Q: Do IntelHD chips in MacBook Airs just start underperforming?

So I have a Core i5 MBA. 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD and it's probably the weirdest machine I've ever owned.

 

The speakers just didn't work at all until yesterday when it just magically started working, which - as a 16 year senior technician - that actually mystified me, but whatever... audio works now, so I'm not questioning it any further.

 

The problem I'm here for is that it's all around sluggish. Moving through the dock, the magnification is extremely choppy, scrolling is choppy, moving the mouse around happens at a framerate so poor that I'd swear I was on a 20 year old Compaq.

 

To relate the experience I'm having - it feels like any Windows machine would if it were freshly restored without the graphics driver... except, on a Windows machine, I can just hunt down the device's hardware ID, find the graphics driver and everything is smooth again... but I'm not as well-versed in the language of Macish. From what I've researched, the graphics driver for my machine's Intel HD3000 is bundled in with updates so it would appear I have to rely on kext tools within terminal to *possibly* trigger my graphics extension.

 

None of that seems to get me anywhere. I've tried internet recovery multiple times, followed it up with every available update 10.7 has access to... and performed at least 15 search result pages' worth of tricks to no avail. Whatever's going on also seems to brick my machine if I try to update to El Capitan from the App Store. Tested the SSD to see if that could be the culprit, it all verified just fine. I'd think that the gfx being integrated would mean that if my gfx adapter were dead, I wouldn't be able to have it pass hardware diagnostics (or even turn it on successfully).

 

Only thing I haven't tried so far is getting the DMG for ElCapitan and creating a bootable drive to see if latest MacOSX just quick fixes everything (which I'll be doing tonight).

 

If that gets me nowhere... what could this problem be?

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Sep 14, 2016 4:16 PM

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Q: Do IntelHD chips in MacBook Airs just start underperforming?

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  • by BEASTthisIndustry,

    BEASTthisIndustry BEASTthisIndustry Sep 17, 2016 3:32 PM in response to dwb
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 17, 2016 3:32 PM in response to dwb

    dwb wrote:

     

    There is no logical reason to hop from 10.7 to 10.8 to 10.9 etc. I can tell you that I've upgraded several 2011 MBAs from early releases to later jumping over middle releases. I understand your befuddlement  at a machine that passes diagnostics but acts so...broken. I will say that Apple has diagnostics that are more robust than what consumers are given. Apple won't charge you for a diagnostic session and that may well be your best course.

     

    One thought...have you tried installing El Capitan on an external drive and booting from It?

    Our nearest Apple store is quite a ways away, but a trip out there may have to happen...

     

    I actually haven't successfully even got it to take me to a place where I could select a destination. Whether I start 10.11 from the Apple Store installer or the bootable USB, I'm taken to a gray screen with Apple logo and a dark gray bar that stops moving at about 5%… and if I clear NVRAM before doing it, then it'll *maybe* get to about the 50%~80% mark before it just stalls out. I've left it doing that for 18 hours with no avail.

  • by dwb,Solvedanswer

    dwb dwb Sep 17, 2016 3:48 PM in response to BEASTthisIndustry
    Level 7 (24,187 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 17, 2016 3:48 PM in response to BEASTthisIndustry

    Apple store time

  • by BEASTthisIndustry,

    BEASTthisIndustry BEASTthisIndustry Sep 17, 2016 3:58 PM in response to dwb
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 17, 2016 3:58 PM in response to dwb

    I was afraid of that. I'll give them a call.

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Sep 17, 2016 10:13 PM in response to BEASTthisIndustry
    Level 8 (49,154 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 17, 2016 10:13 PM in response to BEASTthisIndustry

    I try to load from the bootable USBs (made with Discmaker X)

     

    To create a bootable USB installer please read Create a bootable installer for OS X - Apple Support.

     

    Possible that I'll have to move from 10.8.5 to some iteration of 10.9 and knock out it's updates before I can move forward?

     

    There is no need to install intervening OS X versions. At this point you might as well wait a couple more days for macOS "Sierra".

  • by BEASTthisIndustry,

    BEASTthisIndustry BEASTthisIndustry Sep 25, 2016 4:23 AM in response to dwb
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 25, 2016 4:23 AM in response to dwb

    dwb wrote:

     

    Apple store time

    I just wanted to check back in with all the wonderful people here who tried to help me and confirm that what ultimately resolved it was a trip to the Apple Store. They connected me to their local update server, pushed Sierra and - while it still took nearly 6 hours of me sitting there - my MBA took the update.

     

    Of course, I ended up getting ridiculously choppy performance again (and having to jump through bigger hurdles this time since rootless likes trying to restrict what we can do), but the more I research this, the more I'm learning that horribly screwed up GPU thermal information is being baked into MacBookAir4_2.plist files that sends kernel_task to 99% usage and slows the machine to a crawl until the file is removed.

     

    I'm probably gonna have to fight to get to the grade of Apple staff that can talk on this level, but that'll be the last step to being 100% satisfied with this MBA.

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