Slow Graphics Performance MacOS High Sierra

ParhamS wrote:

I purchased a Macbook Pro made by Apple. The software and drivers are distributed by Apple. I don't remember choosing NVIDIA vs any other graphics chip. If Apple releases updates to their software, compatibility is their responsibility.

Exactly. If I wanted to mess around with installing 3rd party drivers, I'd have bought a Windows PC. I have work to do. Dealing with esoteric driver issues is the best thing about using a Mac, or at least it used to be.

Jason Gerry wrote:

ParhamS wrote:

I purchased a Macbook Pro made by Apple. The software and drivers are distributed by Apple. I don't remember choosing NVIDIA vs any other graphics chip. If Apple releases updates to their software, compatibility is their responsibility.

Exactly. If I wanted to mess around with installing 3rd party drivers, I'd have bought a Windows PC. I have work to do. Dealing with esoteric driver issues is the best thing about using a Mac, or at least it used to be.

Installing 3rd party drivers is not the solution.

I decided to downgrade back to Sierra. In case anyone needs it, here's the guide I followed:

https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/how-remove-macos-high-sierra-down grade-3581872/

Since I don't use Time Machine* I had to download the Sierra installer and create a bootable drive on a USB stick. Those instructions are also linked in the article above.

After downgrading, I can attest that I am not experiencing any of the same graphics issues or overall sluggishness in High Sierra. I guess I'll be sticking to this macOS version indefinitely.

* In Sierra I used to use Crashplan. When I upgraded to High Sierra, I decided to give Arq + BackBlaze a try. Sticking with Arq + BackBlaze for now.

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

Installing 3rd party drivers is not the solution.

So it would seem. I went down the route of trying all the developer betas, hoping that Apple would have fixed it. I got to 10.13.2 Beta 2 before giving up.

If anyone has tried the recently released 10.13.2 Beta 3 I would be interested to know if there are any improvements for these graphics issues.

I have heard that the NVidia WebDrivers make things slightly better, and would be a relatively painless stop-gap solution until Apple releases updated drivers in an OS update that fixes this (especially compared to reverting to Sierra). Unfortunately, I could not test this myself as the drivers are bound to stable High Sierra versions (10.13.0, 10.13.1), and would not work with the Betas I was using.

I would encourage everyone with the issue to contact support and make sure that Apple is aware of this and is prioritising it. The machines with problems are 3-4 years old now, and so won't be getting priority testing internally (as demonstrated by the issue in the first place), worse some users might just think "Ah well, it's a few years old, was bound to slow down at some point..." and not report the issue at all. In my conversations with them last week, they seemed to think this issue didn't not exist, and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to convince them that it was related to the specific hardware used in my machine, and not a fault etc...

Hi all,

just popped in to say I've also been fighting with this (or similar) problem ever since the first release of High Sierra. Late 2013 MBP, GeForce GT 750M. Usually everything works just fine and then BAM massive slowdown. I just finally called Apple support and they suggested reinstalling the OS. Judging from the posts here, it's probably not worth the trouble doing that.

I have actually found a "fix", though:

Change the screen resolution to something else and then back. If you have an external monitor, you can just open & close the laptop lid. I'm now using QuickRes to quickly change into some other resolution and back. This apparently somehow resets the driver (or something) and everything works fine... for a while.

Thank you for this workaround Stakker! I've been frustrated with High Sierra graphics issues on my Late 2013 MBP for weeks and switching to another resolution and back immediately got rid of the graphics lag.

It seems that installing the NVIDIA driver works for me. Once installed you get a new NVIDIA preference pane where you can choose to use the NVIDIA driver or the bundled macOS driver. Worth a shot.

For macOS 10.13.0:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126157/en-us

For macOS 10.13.1:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126538/en-us

editkid solution seems to be helping

editkid wrote:

It seems that installing the NVIDIA driver works for me. Once installed you get a new NVIDIA preference pane where you can choose to use the NVIDIA driver or the bundled macOS driver. Worth a shot.

For macOS 10.13.0:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126157/en-us

For macOS 10.13.1:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126538/en-us

Can someone else confirm, that installing this drivers solves performace issues?

I have MacBook Pro 15" mid 2014 with GeForce GT750M as well and I had this perfomance issues too. Few days ago I downgraded to macOS Sierra 10.12.6 and now I have power of my MB back 🙂.

I don't want to upgrade and found, that those drivers isn't proper solution.

Thanks.

I just installed it but i can't tell if it's fixed yet. The lag just suddenly pops up so i will keep you posted (i use this machine 8 hours a day for work so i'll notice pretty soon). But i do already notice a significant improvement in the spaces switch animation.

Well I'm tempted to try it on my laptop, at least if the preference allows you to use the original driver too...

...I'l post my results later.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
2,4 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 1GB & Intel HD4000 1536MB

I installed the nvidia web driver last night, no improvement at all, in fact, running 'PredictWind' istat menu showed the frame rate as only 4fps compared to 6fps with the standard apple driver, so it looks like it was probably worse.

Uninstalled the nvidia web driver and I'm back to normal (bad).

Wait for the next update I reckon, if that's no good, try a clean install of 10.13, and if that's no better, back to 10.12.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
2,4 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 1GB & Intel HD4000 1536MB