Slow Graphics Performance MacOS High Sierra

Although it may be annoying to see the "I am not having any such problems" postings, it adds a little healthy skepticism to all the negativity on the issue. It SHOULD make readers think about what might the difference be between "my system with problems" and that guy's that seem to have none.

The "boilerplate" recommendation to re-install, produces an undamaged version of MacOS. That is a good first step toward debugging an intractable problem.

A good second step in a routine debugging process for a difficult problem would then be to Erase the drive first, then re-Install. This rewrites all the Bad Blocks on the drive, eliminates all third-party add-ons, and provides an new, undamaged system in place of one that may have been clobbered. But it requires you to HAVE a Trusted backup, and to restore from Backup, and that is a more complex procedure that requires a bit more explanation. This is a standard step the Genius Bar will ask you to complete while debugging an intractable problem.

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I continue to maintain what I have always said: Apple does not pay analysts to read the forums and looking for deep technical issues.

The analytical outlook required to read the many divergent posts here and filter and compile the useful signal from the huge amount noise is very high. In many cases, getting reliable complete background information is difficult. Readers here sometimes do some of that detective work, and sometimes a clear picture emerges that the next User can take to Apple (or elsewhere if the problem lies elsewhere) a a summary of the problem.

Apple relies on what parts come back in through the Genius Bar and other Service providers. Apple relies on reports of intractable problems that come in through second-level telephone support, the Genius Bar and National Support organizations. And they rely on Bug Reports filed by Users who have developer credentials. All of these produce thoughtful, written reports with enough background to attempt to replicate the problem.

In my opinion, the sources I listed provide a much clearer signal, and I believe these are what Apple uses as a basis to act upon.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

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.

Thanks for your reply.

Just for the record I have actually pursed this issue via official Apple channels ...

But the communication is very one side, I capture data, send it to them ... but not much info flows the other way.

I'm just left in the dark - wondering ...

Do I go back to Sierra, buy a Microsoft laptop or just wait for this issue to be resolved?

Do I go back to Sierra, buy a Microsoft laptop or just wait for this issue to be resolved?

If your bug reports were merged with others, that indicates Apple considers this a problem that they are working on. Do you really lose the ability to track it when merged? if true, that stinks, and I would file a Bug report about that issue. If they were instead closed, that indicates they do not think this is an issue worth pursuing.

A fresh update was just issued, 10.13.3. New NVIDIA Drivers were included. If 10.13.3 did not fix your issues, it would be prudent to go back to 10.12 Sierra, because it is usually a month or more before a new update appears. Since you appear to have good backups, that will not be too difficult, but a COMPLETE erase of your drive, including erasing the recovery partition (or substitution of a different drive) will be required to move backward to a previous version..

You could get into the Beta software system and get an early look at what is coming out, but they tell you up front NOT to commit your Production machines to Beta software.

No one here can honestly advise you about moving to microsoft instead (or in addition). Only you can decide, because only you are intimately familiar with your situation.

I finally rolled back to Sierra 10.12.6. Everything is really smooth again and I don’t have to deal with nasty bugs

The biggest new features of High Sierra (for my use) are in Safari, and you can install Safari 11 on Sierra too.

This is the first time ever that I had to rollback to a previous macOS version, and I use OS X since Tiger. Also Lion was slower than Snow Leopard, but it has nice new features and most bugs and slow down were solved with 10.7.2. I never felt the need to rollback.

High Sierra was advertised as a performance improvements and bug fix release, but…

APFS caused:

• Much slower boot time.

• Long delay in moving a file on desktop, dragging an attachment out of mail, saving a screenshot, if a finder extension in system preferences is active (like Dropbox or Google Backup and Sync)

Windowserver on Metal 2 caused:

• The bug we’re discussing in this thread, the OS is unusable on MacBook Pros with an nVidia GPU, when the discrete GPU is activated. The only way to get around this is to open no more than one App (between those that trigger the Discrete GPU, plus the browsers) at the same time. You can imagine the impact on workflow.

• Other bugs with external monitors (I couldn’t test this)

I had some other small bugs with fonts that were not present in Sierra, that were slowing my workflow too.

NONE of those bugs is solved in 10.13.3 or in 10.13.4 beta, and this is a first in my experience, 10.XX.2 versions were usually much more stable. I sent feedback for every bug I found since 10.13 is out, but I saw no improvements.

Not to mention the critical security bug that Apple had to face since the launch of High Sierra, luckily those were fixed in a matter of days.

Since I had to format the SSD, I obviously tried a clean install of 10.13.3 before rolling back to 10.12.6, but every bug was still there, as stated by everyone on this and other threads.

All of this (isolating the issue, testing and especially rollback) was a HUGE waste of time, and I sincerely hope that Apple will go back to a 2 years (or more, why not) release cycle. The quality control and beta testing is simply awful nowadays.

macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 on MacBook Pro Retina Early 2013, nVidia GeForce GT 650M (now on 10.12.6)

I discovered, that most of my lagging issues was caused by Safari. I moved to Firefox and now I'm able to work with macOS 10.13.3. I decided to upgrade because of planed features in 10.13.4 - Messages in iCloud.

Yes, using Firefox with hardware acceleration disabled was much better than Safari... anyway, I couldn't keep more than one app that trigger the GPU activation open at the same time... like Photoshop and Illustrator for example, or Lightroom and Chrome.

I formated my SSD and reinstalled El Capitan from a flash drive (the last download I had oin my App purchase).

Everythung is back to normal, but I am curious if anyone has heard anything from Apple people.

High Sierra is borderline useless to me with my 2015 non-TB MBP and my 4k Dell P21715Q monitor with "Scaled" resolution enabled. Using DP to MiniDP because if I use HDMI I'm stuck at 30hz.

If I use "Default Resolution", my 4k monitor only runs at 1080, which is unacceptable. No idea why "default resolution" chooses 1080.

If I change it to "Scaled Resolution", anything other than 1080 or the 4k resolution (which is too small for my tastes) my monitor shows me at 60hz but it's unbelievably slow on screen refreshes. Using programs like Premiere or Photoshop is a 15fps disaster. Minimizing a browser window is like a chug-chug-chug instead of a smooth slide down to the Dock.

Everything runs great and smooth when I'm only using my laptop screen. My guess is that Scaling is broken in High Sierra with Metal 2 or some other combination thereof. Activity Monitor shows windowserver with high CPU and memory usage which means it's Metal 2 and/or Scaling.

Everything worked perfectly fine in Sierra.

Tried everything, using the Nvidia Web Driver, turning off Hardware Accel in Chrome or Firefox, disabling graphics switching in power settings, even trying SwitchResX. It's a disaster unless I use either full 4k or 1080. I can't use any Scaled in between.

I can't use it and I can't downgrade back to Sierra so I have to reformat my whole system and reinstall Sierra which thankfully I still have on a bootable USB drive.

Hmm, I dont think so 😟.

then follow the directions and post a new Bug Report as they told you to do.

... and stop posting here about BETA software or the Hosts will be obliged to remove your posts, as they recently did other posts about BETA software on this Public forum.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

Hmm, I dont think so 😟.

then follow the directions and post a new Bug Report as they told you to do.

... and stop posting here about BETA software or the Hosts will be obliged to remove your posts, as they recently did other posts about BETA software on this Public forum.

I'll gladly take one for the team and get yelled at by the Forums Gods for posting Beta information in the Public forums if that only means that someone at Apple is actually reading these posts and thus actually paying attention to the issue.

High Sierra is clearly an abysmal release. I have it running on my iMac and I constantly run into problems (though the graphics work).

Let's see if this post survives, Mods are busy removing my posts...I'm sure others get censored as well...

I'm irritated because it feels like High Sierra is intentionally leaving behind many Macs by having performance problems.

My 2012 iMac took a serious step back in graphics performance upon upgrading it to High Sierra, but the two 2015 5K iMacs I have access to were unaffected and actually got a bit faster.

It's aggravating. Apple shouldn't be trying to use new GPU features that slow down tasks that ran fine using previous methods. The only positive thing I can say is that Apple is making it easier to stay on Sierra, including providing security updates. It makes me think they recognize there are issues.

I also have this exact problem on my 2012 retina macbook pro. I don't even do anything graphically-intensive but it's still unbearably laggy when the discrete GPU is in use. The only solution I've found for the time being is to use the gfxCardStatus app to force the use of the integrated GPU which doesn't suffer from any kind of performance problems. It's ridiculous that a less powerful GPU is less laggy than the more powerful one and it clearly looks to me like a driver issue which Apple has to fix ASAP but apparently couldn't care less about.

Well, there is something I haven’t mentioned before!!!

After erasing my HD and re-installing El Capitan, I wrote in this forum that everything was back to normal, which is almost the truth…

The lagging problem is all solved, but my MBP is getting too hot very quickly. Which wasn’t the case before.

I did all the different resets suggested, and nothing helped.

I was thinking perhaps this has something to do with a firmware update that happened while updating to High Sierra, which is not reversible anymore.

I am using an USB fan tablet just incase and all is good, but was wondering if anyone had a similar issues?