Slow Graphics Performance MacOS High Sierra

I am NOT and never have been on Apple's payroll, in any way. I am a user just like you.

This is a user forum and I come here daily to ask for and to give help.

Maybe a thousand people have the same problem. I sympathize. I am not saying it is their minds or anything. It is real.

But it sure does not prove it is this or that.

Maybe it is a driver problem. Maybe it is an OS problem, or a hardware problem.

There are millions of macs similar to yours.

What about the millions more who do not come to this forum, and just keep on enjoying their macs? Does that prove anything?

If Sierra works best for you, fine. I loved it too.

I backed up my mac and installed High Sierra on day one.

There were issues, yes, but for me not enough to erase and restore Sierra, which I could have done.

Now at 10.13.3 my mac works as well as it used to with Sierra. I am not saying it proves anything. Just a data point.

Good luck.

Hi Luis,

I'm sorry but I can confirm it is NOT a hardware issue, certainly in my case.

Using High Sierra, I found many websites using WebGL very slow, most application using OpenGL very slow, Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign all to be impossible to use, although not all of the time, just most of the time. using iStatMenus I was able to see the frame rate of whichever GPU my laptop was using, when things were slow it would drop to one or two frames per second. Unusable.

Over Christmas I backed up, reformatted and reinstalled my laptop with Sierra. Installed the same software I have been using, everything was faster, iStatMenus showed frame rates of 40-60 frames per second. This was using the same hardware. The problem was caused by High Sierra.

One site I found to be terrible, under High Sierra, was windy.com, for predicting wind/weather and routes for sailing, this would drop the frame rate down to 2 frames per second, in Sierra, it averages 45 frames per second, animations are smooth, compared to having to wait for the pointer to move so I can wait for it to respond to a click. I also use a similar app from the Mac App Store 'predict wind' which gave similar problems, but under Sierra, it performs great, same with Adobe apps too.

I have an early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro 15" with 16gb ram and an SSD, it has an intel HD4000 onboard gpu and Nvidia GT650m with 1gb ram, the machine spec is certainly within the parameters for running High Sierra, and the graphics cards although both are slower than those in current gen laptops, are more than capable of the spec required by apple for utilising the Metal2 architecture.

The latest update didn't help.

To refresh the memories, I have a 13 inch Macbook pro mid 2010 with solid state harddrive and 8 GB ram.

Sometimes I couldn't even move the curser...videos were lagging badly, etc.

I just created a bootable flashdrive, wiped clean my harddrive and re-installed Yosomite (I'm sure it would work as well with El Capitain or Sierra, but I always liked Yesomite with my old MBP).

Everything is back to normal, as fast as always.

I like my MBP. System loads now in twenty seconds (thanks to solid state hard drive) and no more issues with videos. etc.

Hi Luis,

I am now intruiged that your machine is not seeing the issue.

I presume it has a 2nd graphics chip, either Radeon or Nvidia.

You routinelin put the machine to sleep (any length of time will do, doesn’t have to be hours) not full shutdown/reboot?

When it sleeps you are definitely on integrated Intel graphic (this means all intense graphics apps are closed, games, chrome, all are closed right?

You can use gfxCardStatus to tell you which GPU is running or look in the Console search for AGC it’ll say PEG powerup and PEG powerdown

You have Automatic switching ... checked. (To allow integrated chip to run).

You might need something like 5 or more sleep/wake cycles. Sometimes happens 1st time, sometimes it might take 5.

Please let us know, after so many sleeps, if your graphics is going slow or not.

I test mine with a little game, it shows FPS.

Thanks.

Don’t worry Boris, it’s not your hardware, I am seeing that issue on a brand new MBK 15” 2017 - as well as a couple of older MBPs.

In a rush of madness I upgraded all my machines (what was I thinking?), I use a couple, family has the others ...

Graphics was slow on all of them - they didn’t all suddenly have hardware issues.

I reverted back to Sierra on a couple, now graphics is nice and fast.

I still have one on High Sierra hoping I can push forward with that one - but Apple have not acknowledged the issue, we don’t even know if they admit to its existence, in the past they have denying what is obvious to everyone else.

I obviously really like Apple gear but I wish bug reports were more open - I lodged one they ask for data, information, questions, but there is no feedback like “ok we can replicate the issue”, or “it’ll be fixed in the next version” ... I am just left in the dark which is a big bummer. That is a bigger bummer than the issue!

Anyway don’t worry you are not the only one, plenty of us have it.

I have had this issue too since High Sierra 10.13, and it didn’t get better with updates (still present on 10.13.3). I have a Early 2013 MacBook Pro (Intel HD 4000 + nVidia GT 650m).

I did some testing, using iStat Menus to check which GPU is active and how much GPU memory is used.

So, in my experience:

1. When the integrated GPU is active, everything is fine.

Scrolling and every other macOS transition (changing space, opening mission control, etc…) are smooth as they should be and smoother than they was on Sierra.

iStat Menus show a GPU memory usage of around 25-40%.

2. If the discrete nVidia 650m GPU is active (because Photoshop and/or some other software that trigger discrete GPU activation are open) and Safari or another browser are open, the GPU memory usage is between 115% and 175%! and every transition is sluggish, and macOS is almost unusable. Multitasking between apps is very slow and you have to wait a second or two at every front app focus switch. Scrolling down in a webpage in browsers is awfully jerky.

3. If the discrete nVidia 650m GPU is active, but Safari is closed or I disable hardware acceleration in Chrome or Firefox, the graphic memory usage is still high, between 75% and 105%, but the general feel is waaay better, much less sluggish.

I don’t have game benchmark from when I had Sierra installed, but full screen games are still playable, maybe there is a performance hit but is much less noticeable than the macOS transitions and browsers scrolling.

I tried to install nVidia Driver but I didn’t see big improvements, same very high GPU memory usage. But I had a lot of graphic glitches so I reverted to original Apple driver.

I also tried a clean install of 10.13.3 on a separate partition, no luck, the bug behaves exactly the same.

So I suggest to use Chrome or Firefox with hardware acceleration disabled when the discrete GPU is active, until the bug is fixed (if it will ever be).

Do someone know if hardware acceleration can be disabled in Safari?

Can someone with a AMD GPU and iStat Menus installed do the same tests I did, just to know if the bug is present for them also?

Hi iLCerbero,

I can't do exactly those tests right now but I have done many similar ones already.

I have 4 MacBook Pro machines of various ages - they all suffer under High Sierra. It's just that the 2017 model machine hides the pain better.

From what I can tell Safari does not have a simple hardware acceleration on/off switch, it's automatic - on the newest machine it just choses Integrated graphics, it does not force the Radeon 555 to be engaged. But if I'm running a game which does engage the Radeon then the FPS is impacted if there are too many other apps open, closing Safari speeds the game up.

In all of this I have learned you can upgrade Mac's one version too far.

I have learned, the hard way, you must keep a good backup before "upgrading" the OS.

The 2012 MBP 13" non-Retina was a brilliant little machine before High Sierra - then it became too clunky and jerky - unusable. I put Sierra back - nice machine again.

The 2010 MBP 17"/Nvidia struggles with Sierra let alone High Sierra, that's definitely one OS too far for it.

The 2015 MBP 13" Retina works with High Sierra but the graphics is about 20-25% slower than Sierra as measured by FPS on various games.

Sierra was nice, High Sierra not so much.

Cheers.

MBP 15" 2017 - Radeon 555. os:10.13.1

MBP 13" 2015 - Integrated os:10.13.1

MBP 13" 2012 -Non-Retina - Integrated os:10.12

MBP 17" 2010 - Nvidia ... os:10.12

Hi ilCerbero

Cool, thank you so much. I just disabled hardware acceleration on chrome, and my computer went from barely usable to a bit sluggish but ok. Let's see in the long term, I may be able to work correctly again, until apple maybe react. Sorry, I can't run the tests you mention.

Since I'm here, I would confirm that most people who have this issue may not remark it:

On my home user account (just mail, safari, and evernote) it's fine. Same machine but on my work account (development work, phpstorm), it's barely usable after one day of work.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)

2,3 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

Another victim here, High sierra, late 13 MBP with Nvidia 750m, I patiently wait for updates but every time there is no fix.

I think I have to find some time to roll back to Sierra, what a waste of time! Seems Apple is doing what they always have done with their phones and this is really sad.

I have followed this and other discussions, tried everything, Nvidia drivers, Nvidia CUDA but nothing, as soon as I connect my external monitor the fans starts spinning and I'm back in the 90s with a computer that seems to be running a 486 CPU, this planned obsolescenty game from apple is a shame, for the first time I'm actually considering not to buy a Mac next time, I really feel swindled by Apple.

Thaidax wrote:

Another victim here, High sierra, late 13 MBP with Nvidia 750m, I patiently wait for updates but every time there is no fix.

I think I have to find some time to roll back to Sierra, what a waste of time! Seems Apple is doing what they always have done with their phones and this is really sad.

I have followed this and other discussions, tried everything, Nvidia drivers, Nvidia CUDA but nothing, as soon as I connect my external monitor the fans starts spinning and I'm back in the 90s with a computer that seems to be running a 486 CPU, this planned obsolescenty game from apple is a shame, for the first time I'm actually considering not to buy a Mac next time, I really feel swindled by Apple.

Two questions:

1) Did you update to 10.13.3?

2) Did you at any point in time try a clean install of High Sierra?

I have a machine with the same Nvidia GPU and use external monitors and projectors just about every day without a second thought.

Hi Luis,

Yes I have updated to 10.13.3, no fresh install, I have read that a fresh install of high Sierra doesn’t help so if I have to go through the harassment of a reinstall I would go for Sierra.

The problem is still happening with a secondary monitor, especially if I try to play videos from the browser, two 1080 videos playing simultaneously on each monitor is now became impossible plus there is a general feeling of lagging when I try to zoom and scroll.

What resolution are u using on your secondary monitor or projector? Mine is 3440x1440

I wish more resources were directed towards quality control.

In my opinion, a LOT of resources WERE directed to Quality Control. Unfortunately for owners of previously-shipped Macs, a lot of that effort seems to have been focused on the new File System, APFS, introduced in High Sierra. It appears that regression testing did not get as much attention as needed this time around.

This release has been pretty stable, but there have been a few features, like this graphics performance, that are not quite ready for Prime Time in their current state. I expect that will improve steadily as time and minor revisions go on.

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The person you talk to may honestly have never heard of your problem. There are a lot of different reasons for this -- none of them are diabolical or the result of a conspiracy.

Apple First Responders handles a wide variety of problems. So many, in fact that they honestly have not heard of any symptoms resembling yours. Their main mission is triage -- to get you referred to the appropriate second level experts, or to an Apple Authorized service provider. Only if your problem is simple do they expect to solve your problem themselves.

The symptoms they heard from a user yesterday may not sound much like the symptoms they heard from you today, so they simply may not have made the connection. It is only through a deeper understanding of what might be happening inside that technicians might make the connection between problems whose symptoms descriptions may be wildly different.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

... but there have been a few features, like this graphics performance, that are not quite ready for Prime Time in their current state. I expect that will improve steadily as time and minor revisions go on.

You've said "graphics performance ... not quite ready for Prime Time..." I agree with your statement but I would dearly like to know Apple's position on this issue. Sorry to ask but is that your personal opinion or are you an employee at Apple and hence privy to the company's stance?

Has it even been acknowledged as an issue? Can they replicate it? Has it been assigned a priority? Is there an estimate of when it will be resolved?

Or maybe this is another case of denial? (This is happened before).

I raised a bug report but then they merged it with someone else's now I'm out of the loop. I have now idea what they are doing, if anything at all.

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I write software for a living, if we have an issue we need to acknowledge it and then provide some sort of estimate for when a fix will be released in order to manage expectations. Anyone not doing so would be labeled as being completely unprofessional!

We cannot just disappear in a cloud of mystery for a few months, then magically appear with a solution from nowhere.

People need to make plans and employ workarounds - this lack of information only makes a bad situation worse.

Meantime we are all left speculating, wondering and wasting lots of time. Hardly MacBook "Pro" it's more like MacBook TrialAndErrorWasteAllMyTime.

No one who post here can speak for Apple, Inc, unless they are clearly identified as an Apple employee. what I posted above is my opinions.

Has it even been acknowledged as an issue? Can they replicate it? Has it been assigned a priority? Is there an estimate of when it will be resolved?

The only way to know that is if someone has filed a problem report, been given a ticket number, and they have heard back from Apple about proposed resolution.

I don't think Apple denies real problems so much as they are not quick to acknowledge that a users symptoms are the same as a system problem.

What tends to happen instead is that folks post here, never follow up using official Apple channels, and no one knows whether Apple has taken it on as an issue that needs solving.

So if you have access to developer tech support or National (big customer) tech support, or educational tech support, pursuing this through official Apple channels can be worth doing. If you are selfish, and push your own problems, it helps everyone.