Slow Graphics Performance MacOS High Sierra

I’m being told that the high Sierra upgrade has permanently overwritten some firmware or something like that without the option of being able to revert.

Even if the firmware was updated, there have been no reports that the firmware upgrades are anything other than fully backward-compatible.

So the stuff you are hearing is a half-truth, and does not apply to the Hardware problem you are experiencing.

If the problem persists after reverting to Sierra, it is an unfortunate coincidence that it chose that moment to fail. But there is no evidence of a cause-and-effect.

Yeah I see what you are saying. It’s logical.

To put plainly. MacBook Pro was fine before high Sierra upgrade. MacBook Pro wasn’t fine after upgrade.

That’s pretty straight odds.

Then wiping and reverting to Sierra, whilst viewing a distorted screen - as the installation completion bar filled....the static / gpu distortion suddenly disappeared like it had been over ridden. Over the course of 2 weeks it worked perfect in Sierra. I did apply some Sierra updates in that time though.

Something has happened since the original install of high sierra. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that £1250 MacBook Pro has suddenly decided to malfunction in 2 years.

Jimmyshortarms wrote:

This is driving me insane.

i installed high sierra a few weeks ago - it totally grinded my CPU to a halt and then completely scrambled the display on boot up so I couldn’t see anything but layers of coloured frantic ‘static like’ distortion.

I painfully reverted back to Sierra again and it went better but only only for 2 weeks. It’s now completely screwed on boot up, doing the same distortion screen every time.

However, I can boot up in safe mode. I’ve done everything I’ve read online to troubleshoot. I’ve Reset all the NVRM , SRC etc. I even did a hardware check to see if the Mac picked up on that....everything was reported fine. I’ve even tried to reduce the ‘windowserver’ tasks and it’s still screwed.

Ps I’m on an early 2015 MacBook Pro 13” retina with intel iris 6100

The fact that you can boot in Safe Mode strongly suggests that you have ****ware installed that is wreaking havoc on your system.

I recommend you make a full backup or two, then erase and install a clean system on your mac.

If you like, just do a clean install on an external drive, and try it out.

If your mac works correctly that way you will know that there is no hardware problem, but a software one.

No.

I am saying that your hardware may have coincidentally failed at the time you installed High Sierra.

Correlation does not imply causation.

I know many people running High Sierra without issue. I have it on two of my macs, of different ages.

It would seem. But MacBook was fine before high Sierra was installed. Only 2 years old.

It slowed up my CPU, - mouse could barely move - then I started getting worse display issues. There’s a huge thread on ‘high Sierra freeze’.

I’m not sure if the installation has caused my components to over heat or something. I just don’t know. Have wiped and started again.

It’s just weird how all this has happened during an update.

I’ll now have to take it in to get fixed. Apparently got to wait 3 weeks. Merry Christmas!

Just want to add to this thread that I'm another Late 2013 15" MBPR w/ discrete graphics user experiencing graphical slow downs whenever the discrete graphics kicks in. Submitted a bug report to Apple so I hope it gets fixed as it's a bummer to have previously nicely working hardware obsoleted by a software update.

Also as an update .....as mentioned if I tap f4 in succession ....the screen comes back on for 1 or 2 seconds before going to being scrambled again.....doing this I have a slim window to move the mouse and open programs.......I managed to open up EtreCheck and for some reason the screen /display stayed on without scrambling ....and when it ran its process.....the screen/display stayed on ....when EtreCheck completed the processs.....the screen went back to being scrambled.

( this is in normal boot mode by the way ....I can only use the weird f4 tapping option when logged in as a user on the MacBook )

It’s almost as if the /GPU of being distracted by other processes.

Just to follow up, the bug I filed with Apple detailing the slow-down of graphics in 10.13 on my 2014 MBP (specifically the Nvidia GT 750M card), has been now marked as "resolved in macOS 10.13.2".

I'm still running on Sierra, and unlikely to switch over to High Sierra until I see people reporting the issue has actually been fixed. If anyone is still experiencing this problem on a 2013/2014 MBP (NVidia GT 650/750 respectively), then I would recommend you report this to apple via customer support and bugreport.apple.com (if you have a developer account).

No, its not fixed in 10.13.2.

I already sent bug over Feedback app and now bugreport too. I already contacted my local repair center with ask to MacBook replacement as I have it still in warranty. Will see what happned next.

Hi,

I followed some of the hints here and on the internet, so that i arrived on http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us. As you may have read, despite the fix offered end of Sept, the CUDA driver for Mac are still pending.

On the link above there is the section "Beta, Older drivers and more." The fifth bullet point is the solution (even only as beta), i downloaded and installed the newest one (released on Dec 8th): CUDA 387.99 driver for MAC.

The installation was successful and so far it seems to have dramatically improved the situation at my end (iMac Late 2013, 8GB Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1 GB).

Let's hope, fingers crossed!

I have a few MacBook Pro's of various sizes and ages, so I have nVidia and Radeon both suffer under High Sierra. It's not an nVidia only issue.

When you do a full Shutdown / Reboot does your machine go fast? I haven't seen the issue after a full Shutdown.

I only see it about 60% of the time after a sleep - on both nVidia and Radeon ...

I have done a full shut down and a total wipeout of the memory reset the mac to factory settings then reinstall high sierra, there is still an issue with the slow graphics. Computer is running a little bit faster due to the big cleaning of the memory.

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.

thank your for your insights in what seems really to be a major problem with High Sierra. How this issue is handled by Apple is outrageous to say the least. The agents at the phone desk are not aware of (or possibly even worse: seem not to know, because they have been told to behave like this).

I can confirm: on my iMac (built late 2013, though sold to me as new in October 2015) I have the problem, and let the activity monitor running in the background. The WindowServer, the kernel_task, Skype and Skype helper, Flash Player with Safari (to run a specific chat with video and audio conferencing) as well as Zoom (again an audio/video conferencing) shows up as very high % CPU values. Specifically, Zoom, a very "light" software may risk to run to up 200% CPU. The consequence is: the traffic deriving from the chats (both the one over Flash Player in Safari as well as Zoom) will hold back incoming traffic (for as long as 3 or 4 minutes), sometimes the two applications I have running are holding up the other one, to then suddenly release the cumulated traffic in a"fast forward mode". The application may eventually catch up with the live chat, though you can imagine how detrimental such a behaviour will have on a chat or video conference: you expect a feedback and then for minutes you don't get any, you see the video on hold, and then you see your chat partner having left the chat (most likely for lack of reply).

In reference with HEVC and video encoding, if I remember correctly, I saw the process running at very high % CPU.

As an additional possible consequence, downloads of relatively big files (3 to 5 GB) despite having a high download (500 MBits) will relatively often fail.

A last symptom: also Mail (used with a Gmail account) is extremely slow, downloads at every new start hundreds of email and move as many around (e.g. delete).Whether this is a consequence of the above problems or an additional problem related to the same root cause I don't know, though I don't remember to have had such situations in the past (i.e. turning down my iMac would leave in the clouds not the absolute current state of the email box, using it from an iPad or MacBook would not give the same results. I've noticed this by coincidence last week.

Needless to say, that before HIGH Sierra none of the above symptoms were occurring. Actually a MacBook bought at the same time (October 2015, though also built in 2015) has no issues whatsoever with HIGH Sierra. It was actually the successful pilot on my MacBook that mislead me to a premature HIGH Sierra upgrade in my iMac.

The soft resets have been performed as per instructions, there have been some improvements, the nightmare of downgrading I'm not considering.

Since it was Christmas time and a retailer had a promotion, I bought yesterday a new 21,5' iMac with I7 Processor, 16GB, 1 TB Fusion drive and Radeon with 2GB Video (since not available as such, let's see whether it will be build early 2018 ...) for approx. USD 2000. As per sales support, this configuration should be actually already too good for very standard applications (Office, Mail, Browsing), the 27' with I5 Processor would have been a more than viable alternative. Considering the bottlenecks in performance, I decided to go for I7.

Let's see whether I'll still have the issues once my new iMac in the second half of January should be delivered.