Slow Graphics Performance MacOS High Sierra

It's sad that the solution is to buy a new device, and as you suspected, fall into the trap

I ended up selling my device that was thrashed after High Sierra, luckily, Apple devices hold their value even as spare parts ...

I hope this recent phone battery scandal spreads a bit to our side, for some reason, these High Sierra issues aren't getting any attention

It’s bull that it’s a coincidence and that it ‘might be’ a hardware issue that’s just so happened to have started at the same time. My early 2015 retina MacBook has had to be sent to the store to be repaired due to the MacBook becoming completely slow and then the screen malfunctioned and scrambled at boot. This was after high Sierra upgrade. So I reverted back to Sierra and the screen fixed for 2 weeks but then started malfunctioning again. It could boot in safe mode, so to say not a hardware issue. I tried other Mac OS to stop the issues but no joy. I tried to reset everything - did hardware test on boot - everything fine.

I personally think that the high Sierra update has overridden / updated something key and it’s not been able to go back to how it was. And the fact it’s been 2 months (and I’d say hundreds of thousands of posts on this forum in various other threads ), apple have not realised or been able to resolve it themselves.

It’s a lot of money for a door stopper and the hassle.

I was informed by an Apple representative that High Sierra changes battery dynamics, I would assume a SMC update, I don't know whether it's a separate system with a separate firmware

The representative mentioned Sierra re-assessing the battery, but it wasn't a very lengthy conversation

I pushed the issue as much and as hard as I can, to no avail, then gave up

My ultimate issue is the lack of information, for example, other than our issues, High Sierra automatically converts the file systems to APFS, I was going to restore my system to an external hard disk for example, I couldn't do that because APFS only works on SSD's etc.

All in all, with the recent iPhone scandal, and our more isolated issues, I believe the culprit is the lack of information (There could have been a small digital pamphlet that explained each disruptive feature)

If I knew High Sierra was going to be this disruptive, I would never update

My ultimate issue is the lack of information, for example, other than our issues, High Sierra automatically converts the file systems to APFS, I was going to restore my system to an external hard disk for example, I couldn't do that because APFS only works on SSD's etc.

First, the fact that High Sierra would convert the file system to APFS was well publicized.

Second, and most importantly, the fact that your internal uses APFS does NOT impede you from restoring or cloning to an external hard disk.

You can perfectly well clone an APFS volume to an HFS+ one.

I do this every day.

I haven't tried it with Disk Utility, but I do so, as part of my backup strategy, using SuperDuper!.

You can use it for free to do that, too. (The paid version, which I have, adds useful capabilities, like incremental backups, but you can do a full clone for free).

The only point at which being APFS poses a difficulty is if you want to install an older OS on an external drive; you can't use the APFS volume as a source for migrating your stuff. But you can first make the above mentioned clone, then install the older OS on a separate partition or drive, and use the clone as a source for Migration Assistant.

You know how they intentionally placed a bug in their last iPhone update to make the older models slower, so people are forced to upgrade their devices...it could be the same happening here.

I have a 2010 - 27" imac with i7 Quad Core and 32 GB ram. When I upgraded to Yesomite it got so extremely slow (slow only by start up, shutdown and starting and quitting any program). Then I replaced the hard drive with a solid state (in 2010 they didn't have that yet), and it runs fantastic, but I am scared of updating it to High Sierra.

I am sure your new imac will just work perfectly. It's not only about the processor, etc. the whole structure of motherboard and the graphic card is different.

Happy New Year everyone,

Well, over Christmas I decided to reinstall my MacBook Pro, I have a Sierra install USB, so I backed up, wiped, reinstalled and waited.

All problems are gone. running Sierra that is, GPU both discreet and onboard are back to full speed, it's amazing how much slower everything was under High Sierra.

I am sure that illustrates the fact it is not a hardware`re issue but a software issue where High Sierra is not actually fully compatible/optimised for the hardware it is meant to be compatible with.

I'll be sticking with Sierra until the issue is sorted out.

Early 2013 rMBP, 15", intel HD4000 and Nvidia GT650m GPU, quad core i7, 16gb ram and 256gb ssd.

Since i haven't seen alot of non nVid people chiming up:

I thought I'd throw out my symptoms:

10.13.2

MBP - 17in, Early 2011

2.3 GHz Intel Core i7

8GB Memory

Intel HD Graphics 3000 512Mb

AMD Radeon HD 6750M

All my owes happen with plugging in any external monitor.

When I let it boot, - it's fine.

Sleep and wake up - it's fine

Hook it up to a TV or 24' External Monitor - ....not fine.

it take about 2-3 mins for a noticeable slow down, but the Computer Fan starts "taking off" pretty close to the actual plugin moment.

While running Activity Monitor, I can see the kernel_task sky rocket.

- idle becomes 600%

- But when I start trying to acomplish anything, I've see the Kernel sit at 2000. (Doesn't this defeat the purpose of Percents?? How can one actually achieve 2000%?? *SMH* I digress... )

- if you then unplug the external, then the process will come back down, but the fan never stops over rev'ing. The only way I've found to shut the fan up is to reboot. (And sometimes that didn't help. I do suspect that this was because of the computer was actually running hot. I was trying to run all different scenarios, (attempting to be systematic). It was likely actually running hot when I was done testing. - I attempted a few other tests later, after it had been shut off a while, and the fan didn't kick back on immediately.

Hope this ends up helping someone:

I CAN live without a external for a while, it's just not very convenient.

It isn’t a bug, it’s a feature (where have I heard that before?). This feature manages performance when a non-optimal or older battery is used, less drain from CPU/GPU to get longer times before charging and in some cases to prevent the phones from turning off due to lack of battery power.

They have slashed the price of replacement batteries, so if you replace the battery the device should run at full speed again.

alexkay99

your reply above, concerning iPhone battery replacement, is clearly not on the right thread. The subject under discussion is the graphics performance of MacOS High Sierra, which has nothing to do with iPhone performance.

If you got external monitor plugged external graphic card (NVIDIA) is active, without external monitor internal graphic (Intel) is active (mostly)

try Releases · steveschow/gfxCardStatus · GitHub

intel graphic is without performance issues, nvidia not

Sorry you are right - iPhone battery replacement does not have anything to do with this thread directly - but - if Apple have publicly stated they are deliberately slowing down the performance of iPhones, for whatever reason..., then by simple logic people can infer "well - if they slow down iPhones ... the same could be happening here". Where "here" can be any performance related thread - including this one.

Mind you - I was just trying to say - sure they might be slowing down iPhones but this does not automatically mean they are doing the same to Mac's and that that is the explanation for the current macOS High Sierra performance issue.

Which is of course totally on topic and I should've added that part in - then it would've been clearer.

Battery-operated Macs ARE known to slow down when on power adapter AND battery is depleted (or absent) AND intense processing requires the Mac to "borrow" power from the battery to work at top speed.

But that is an obscure case, and only applies when the battery is depleted. I do not think it is the cause of the graphics performance shortcomings users are reporting specifically with High Sierra (and when reverted to Sierra all is as normal).

The cited software, gfxcardstatus, does not support using an external display AT ALL. It allows the user to turn off Discrete graphics (which would turn off the external display). gfxcardstatus is a solution to a very different problem.

i'm sorry for misunderstanding,

i mention gfxcardstatus only for information purposes, it's not solving performance issues

if external monitor is plugged, it's not possible turn of external (nvidia) GPU