Slow Graphics Performance MacOS High Sierra

Like many others here, I have the same problem.

I think the issue is High Sierra's use of HEVC for video encoding. HEVC, aka H.265 compression, creates higher quality videos at 40% smaller file size, but decompressing the files needs more power. Unless you have one of the latest models, your CPU and graphics card won't have the adequate power to use this compression smoothly, so it causes lags especially when watching videos while your audio works fine. If you have an older MacBook Pro like mine (mid-2010) it's really bad...hope they will come with an update to fix this issue soon.

My MB Pro mid 2014, High Sierra 10.13.2, NVidia GT 750M is simply lagging at whatever occasion. I made etrecheck and it showed me my computer's performance is below average. I tried to investigate what's the pitfall, no process/third party apps did that. I found out that few folks tried the nvidia's web driver. Things got litlle better with it, but for my daily dev life, Xcode & building takes probably 2-3x times more than it did on Sierra. And try to explain this ****** to your managers that are awaiting delivered code by the end of the day.

+Web driver is not perfect driver for your graphic card, so watch out! Ive experienced couple of glitches and bad renderings for which even couple of restarts didnt work. Im starting to be worried about the nvidia graphic itself.

Apple pushed me to this update, so I blame them. Why they pushed us to update from Sierra, when they knew there are some compatibility issues with NVIDIA graphics vs Metal 2? I need to downgrade back to Sierra to live normal life.

Apple screwed it this time. Similar as they did it with iPad 3 and iOS 9. Thank you for wasting my time.

Would you care to share that Etrecheck report?

Like I said before, I have the exact same mac.

I never had Etrecheck report it as "below average" - including in High Sierra.

It can't just be the OS. Either there is a problem with the machine, or (much more likely) a software conflict.

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 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 updated nvidia webdriver to 387.10.10.10.25.161 and it's slightly better, but still far from acceptable.

I can not recommend to update to macOS 10.13.3 if you have a nvidia driver! You have been warned ⚠😟

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?

I'm having the exact same issue and I've discovered the performance issues either go away(or is at least masked) when I set my display to "Default for this display" instead of "scaled and more space". Switching to default and then back to scaled improves performance considerably in my case but it slowly starts to deteriorate once after a short while.

Keeping all displays at default is however not an option for me as I need as much workspace as I can get.

Hi guys, I've been lurking here for few months.

I have mid 2012 MBP 15" with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M

10.3.4 update improved the performance significantly, I can no longer see difference between the two GPUs in desktop operations. No lagging when switching screens, or changing tabs in Safari.

Unfortunately the GPU benchmark shows Nvidia GPU is still a bit behind Intel's. Check results here:

Edit: Ah, and the list of tests is short with Nvidia because it crashed on some :/

I updated to 10.13.4 and i can confirm, that it still is very laggy with the dedicated nvidia graphics card. Need to manually switch to intel gpu, otherwise, the os is extremly laggy.

10.13.4 additionally breaks duet display (using ipad as external screen)

it is a horrible situation

Hi Gents,

I am having all of the issues presented in the thread so far, using Retina late 2013 with TB Display.

Tried NVIDIA WEB DRIVER with no visible success. Update to 10.13.4 did not help.

The driver updated itself today (revision number seems the same minor 360, which is strange) but it works much better now (2-3 hours so far).

I installed 10.13.5 and it is considerably smoother than 10.13.3 / 10.13.4. I have Sierra running on an external drive for comparison and it is still a tad smoother than 10.13.5, but this is definitely an improvement. I still do get a short lag whenever an application that uses the G750M takes focus, but it's not too bad.

Mid 2014 15" MBP with Nvidia 750M with external 2560x1440 display (similar to the Cinema Display if I'm not mistaken). Everything was buttery smooth in 10.12 as you describe. Then after upgrading to 10.13 it started lagging. After 10.13.3 I gave up and reinstalled 10.12 and everything was back to buttery smooth again.
I installed 10.13.4 on an external drive and it was just as bad as the previous versions. But 10.13.5 was better. It might not be quite as "buttery" as 10.12 but it's close enough to where I decided to upgrade my main partition. I did install the Nvidia driver in addition - although I can't tell for sure whether that had an effect or not. So bottom line: for me it's definitely much better in 10.13.5 than it earlier 10.13.x versions.

(especially annoying operations includes swiping between screens with Spotify on one screen and Visual Studio Code and Chrome on another, or switching between window/full screen 1080p (or higher) video playback in Youtube).

Oh I almost forgot - just like you - I only notice the lagging when using an external display.