Slow Graphics Performance MacOS High Sierra

High Sierra Graphics Performance Issue (Nvidia GPU)

After months of suffering, I found a remedy: Nvidia Web Drivers. Basically an Nvidia maintained version of video card drivers.

For some reason, video card drivers on macOS is in Apple's hand. Apple does not release stand alone video card drivers, they include this in macOS releases. However, Nvidia does have its own version of drivers, and they are called Nvidia Web Drivers. It has nothing to do with Web. It's just a differentiator from the Apple-provided driver.

Nvidia does not list these drivers on its website. But if you search for 'nvidia web driver mac' + macOS version (aka. 10.13.3) in Google, you will find a bunch of download links listed in various blogs, posts, etc, which really are links from Nvidia's website.

After installed this driver, my performance issues were completely gone. Everything runs perfectly just like it did in Yosemite era. It even resolved the freeze issue when sometimes my MacBook Pro awakes from sleep when my 4k external monitor is connected.

If you have a Nvidia GPU model this is definitely worth trying. Hope this helps. Thanks.

I have also been experiencing the same type issues on on my 2012 MacBook Pro (9,1) and just spent a day restoring to a Sierra. My MacBook configuration:

2.6 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB

Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD

The overall performance improvement and system stability has been significant going back to Sierra. The other significant discovery I made was that High Sierra was the root cause for a problem I had been struggling to resolve associated with some software I had developed using Xcode that uses custom map overlays (MKTileOverlay) which worked fine in iOS but was experiencing all kinds of performance issues in MacOS.

Bottom line, I am so glad that I invested the time to go back to Sierra and at the same time very disappointed to find an OS (High Sierra) that was touted primarily as as performance/stablity release is riddled with so many SIGNIFICANT problems (including the root password debacles).

A couple other interesting pieces of information from my experience

• Sierra was able to see a read from a APFS drive (Note, I didn't actually use this capability in my restoration)
• Sierra was not able to delete a APFS volume. I had to boot from a High Sierra clone to remove the APFS volume so that I could create the HFS volume

For anyone interested, the following was my process to recovery

• Created a full bootable clone of High Sierra using CCC
• Restored from a previous CCC clone (which was actually a 6 month old El-Capitan CCC image.... I am normally fairly conservative upgrading to new OS on my production machine....)
• Upgraded E Capitan to Sierra
• Upgraded my apps to the latest versions
• Restored my key critical data that is synced via Synology Cloud Station and Dropbox and the few remaining items such as VMWARE Fusion VM's from the High Sierra Clone
• Created a new full clone of the newly restored system.
• Kicked myself for not having a more recent clone with Sierra... Kicked myself twice for not following my process of waiting 6 months after a new release of an OS before upgrading.

My bottom line recommendations

• If you haven't upgraded to High Sierra, DON'T.... There have been way too many critical issues. This is especially true if you use your Mac for any type of critical activities.
• If you are using High Sierra and are experiencing some of these same issues AND you have a recent clone, then strongly consider testing, restoring and recovering....
• If you are using High Sierra and are experiencing some of these same issue AND you have a don't have recent clone, then weigh the options... It is definitely a huge investment of time... but based on the slow response from Apple specifically on this issue and with the other issues that have recently been highlighted, in the long run, it may be your best alternative.

Good luck (and Happy Holidays!)

I've been having this exact issue since updating to High Sierra:

Hardware:

• MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
• 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
• 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB
• Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

I've just updated to High Sierra 10.13.4 Beta (17E170c) and it's completely fixed for me!

Can someone else update to that version of the beta to check?

Mid-2014 15" Macbook Pro with Nvidia 750m.

With High Sierra 10.13 - 10.13.2 - symptoms:

• I was seeing constant UI judder in nearly any Application running in macOS, including macOS itself which would be evident when swiping between desktops. If not familiar with the aesthetic, I'd describe it as the interface looking like it's running at about 2 - 5 frames per second rather than 60+.
• Some Applications would present mouse cursor judder and my pointer would stop/start incrementally while performing actions. If I switched to different software the problem wouldn't be there until I returned to the original program. The problem would not always occur in the same software, nor would it be guaranteed to occur in the software each time I ran it. Sometimes switching software back and forth fixed it, other times it took a restart.
• Occasionally the entire UI, including pointer, would freeze for about ten seconds then return. Console logs would report GPU errors.
• Occasionally software would show triangulation glitches, usually coinciding with short, temporary freezes. I'd see triangle patterns flicker in the corner of the screen and could always fix it by swiping an exposé command and back, which would return everything to normal. This would happen most frequently in Applications using OpenGL and Safari.
• Very rarely, the freezes wouldn't return and the system would reboot itself.

Installed and used Nvidia Web Drivers around the release of macOS 10.13.2

This appeared to stop most of the mouse cursor judders but other UI judders and stutters remained. It was certainly more functional, overall, but not ok.

Upgraded to 10.13.3

• Problems remained but now Safari would become so unresponsive when scrolling that it moved far beyond the threshold of usable. I cleared out everything, removed extensions etc. to make sure it wasn't something peripheral. Scrolling would stop for up to five seconds at a time and I'd see no 'busy' cursor or anything. The system wasn't frozen as I could switch to other software but Safari was insisting on dragging its heels and I switched to Chrome, despite concerns about battery hogging.
• Using external monitor as a desktop extension so I know that I'm using the 750m discrete card 100% of the time now. There's no switching (it won't use the built-in GPU in this setup) and symptoms are exactly the same.

Upgraded to 10.13.4 5 days ago

Using regular mac driver for 750m as Nvidia haven't released their web driver yet. Most of the symptoms gone. The system is vastly smoother and I would say it's about 70% of the way to how it was in Sierra. Swiping between desktops still shows the slight judder remaining so I wouldn't call it smooth yet but it's certainly workable. I can't comment on the performance of the 750m under pressure vs Sierra yet.

Upgraded to Nvidia Web Driver for 10.13.4 2 days ago

No difference noticed between system drivers yet.

Note:

This same system (mid-2014 Macbook Pro with 750m) appeared to have crippling GPU driver related issues back in El Capitan also. An embedded YouTube HTML5 video in Safari would often cause the entire system to freeze indefinitely if a new tab was opened while playing. It was fixed (quietly, no release note mention) in 10.11.6 and appeared to only affect this system.

This is highly unusual after an upgrade of the OS.

Something is wrong, but without any information it is difficult to point to a solution.

That is why you got the "generic response".

Instead of us scratching our heads and ask you questions about your mac and software, why not make it easier for us to help you: make an etrecheck list and post it here:

etrecheck.com

- Parallels12 kext, leftovers?

Virtualbox and LittleSnitch should work in HS, both are not my favourites.

Boom2 may not be fully compatible, not my favourite either.

You could clean up a bit.

- Windowserver needs unusual much of the resources.

Download gfxCardStatus2.3 and start it after startup and set it to irisPro: how does the mac behave;

when not better startup and set gfxCardStatus to Nvidia and see how it behaves.

the firmwares may have been irreversibly updated

At least in the case of the Mac Pro desktop silver tower, the firmware upgrade appears to be completely compatible with all older things. it does not have to be reversed -- it is backward-compatible.

I'm experiencing very similar problems. Video performance is very very poor since I updated to High Sierra. Using an external monitor is virtually impossible as the system freezes up very quickly.

The update to 10.13.1 seemed to fix a memory leak in the WindowServer process in 10.13 (which was hogging more and more RAM) - I was hoping this would be the main culprit, but apparently not. In spite of that fix I'm *still* having significant graphics performance issues - and I don't even use any graphics-intensive apps (Photoshop, FCP etc).

Simple things like resizing windows is very laggy, watching videos on Youtube or similar periodically freeze/jump. Typing on this forum page is lagging too...!

I have filed a bug report with Apple hoping that they will see enough complaints to be able to do something about it, but haven't received any acknowledgement from them (4 days and counting). I encourage you to do so too, though I believe you may need a developer account: Bug Report - Apple

Posting here so that others might find this and add their specs if they are experiencing similar issues (or report on improvements in upcoming betas of 10.13.x etc...).

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

2.8 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB

Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

Further to my previous post, I've tried to run some GPU-related benchmarks. Looks like the on-board graphics (Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB) is out-performing the GPU (NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB).

Has anyone else tried to run GPU benchmarks or come up with another way of measuring this?

For ref:

Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/compute/1358920

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/compute/1358929

Except for power, the discrete GPU has more more memory.

The GPU's are switched automatically when necessary (e.g. when starting Adobe Lightroom or such).

I don't believe in these benchmarks.

edit: and be aware that discrete Graphics can be repaired, for on board GPU the whole board has to be replaced, which is extremely expensive.

I use a 4K external display which must be driven by the NVIDIA GPU, and I'm seeing the performance degradation all the time on High Sierra. The whole OS is very jittery and laggy: resizing windows, switching tabs in web browser, etc... Having looked through a few forums, it seems like quite a number of people are also experiencing performance issues using the same or similar MacBook Pro (mid 2014) with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M GPU Card.

I realise that these benchmarks may be something of a gimmick but "my UI is jittery, youtube videos aren't playing as smoothly as before" is quite vague and there are quite number of explanations for those symptoms. I'm trying to find some repeatable way to demonstrate that the problem exists, and also hopefully some way of quantifying the effect on performance. That way it should be easy to get everyone with the same problem to file bug report/support requests that are actionable.

So... I've just taken the plunge and switched back to Sierra to run some tests. Graphics performance is back to normal, and everything is running smoothly - so it doesn't look like a hardware issue (at least not for me).

In the spirit of attempting to compare "like for like", I ran the same GPU benchmark on the same laptop on Sierra 10.12.6: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/compute/1359623. From a quick scan of the results:

* High Sierra gets better numbers for the tests that it can run (Metal2 is supposed to bring improvements over Metal).

* High Sierra can't run one of the tests (though Sierra can run it). Given that these tests are normally designed to cover a wide range of functionality between them, this could indicate that there is some feature implementation missing for this GPU on High Sierra, or the implementation isn't sufficient to run the test.

So not absolutely conclusive, but it does show the difference between the GPU performance on the two systems.

I'm interested if anyone has any other ideas of tests/benchmarks that might help narrow this down. Now that I can switch between 10.12.6 and 10.13 it's relatively easy for me to try things on both and compare. If we can find a definite way to show that it's an issue, it should be much easier for Apple to fix. My support requests and bug reports have not gotten me anywhere so far but I'm going to add this latest benchmark and hope for the best!

I did the exact same thing: switched back to Sierra and everything is smooth again. Unfortunately I didn't run any tests but Im pretty sure you're on to something here. BTW I have a Late 2013 Macbook Pro which is using the same GeForce 750M graphic card.