4 ms·

I have a brand new 2013 model MBP (Retina display, 16GB RAM, Apple SSD) running Mountain Lion. I actually upgraded because my 2011 model was getting these freez

I have a brand new 2013 model MBP (Retina display, 16GB RAM, Apple SSD) running Mountain Lion. I actually upgraded because my 2011 model was getting these freezes, and I assumed it was a hardware problem. But my new MBP has been sluggish from day one. That is, from the moment I migrated my user files from my old box. It's possible that I got some stuff that affects performance. Three things helped: * First, disabling the dynamic pager [1]. This one has a dramatic effect on performance. In theory, it will prevent OS X from swapping out apps unnecessarily (which it will do even when the apps are active and there is plenty of RAM). I did have some, but not much, swapping going on, but it still improved performance. * Secondly, I uninstalled iStat Menus. I can't be sure that this contributed to the performance problems, but I won't risk reinstalling to find out. It seems to have helped a bit. * Thirdly, I disabled Spotlight indexing of my home directory. This way Alfred will still autocomplete apps. Some apps lose their search functionality, but I never use Spotlight, and I find that I can live without it. I tried the sandbox config fix, but it made no difference to me. The remaining sluggishness seems to come from the graphics layer. For example, doing the Exposé "reveal all windows" command takes 3-4 seconds on my box and has a frame rate of approximately 1 fps. It's not great. I notice the reduced graphics performance when scrolling pages in Chrome, whereas Safari is smoother. I suspect this is Retina being a bit too ambitious compared to actual current graphics card performance. As an aside, I believe OS X's I/O system has traditionally been its weak point, being a Mach-based hybrid-microkernel architecture. You can cause GUI scheduling problems by overloading the I/O system, and it's possible that this is exacerbated by having a SSD.

habosa 14y ago
It must be something else going on. The Expose features should not be nearly that slow. My mid - 2010 Macbook with wayyyyy too many applications installed is still butter smooth on most animations.
- rangibaby 14y ago
  When you are trying to push 100% more pixels with only around 20% more GPU grunt, you're going to have lag. I have a feeling that the animations would be a lot smoother (and battery life a lot shorter) if the GP forced their laptop to use the dedicated graphics card. [1] GT330M benchmark (2010 Macbooks) http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+330M http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+330... [2] Intel HD4000 benchmarks (2012~ Macbooks) http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+4000 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+4000
  - arrrg 14y ago
    Nah, Expose is not that slow on a rMBP. Some dropped frames (three, four), maybe, but perfectly smooth otherwise.
    - lobster_johnson 14y ago
      This is a recording of the "show all windows" command (cmd+F9) on my machine: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/slow_expose.mp4 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/slow_expo.... It's that choppy.
      - arrrg 14y ago
        Well, for me it isn’t and I also have a rMBP. I believe you, it’s just that you are likely looking at a software issue. (No doubt that this software issue is likely exacerbated by the requirements of the screen and it sucks either way, but in principle the graphics hardware is up to the task.)
        lobster_johnson 14y ago
        If I close Chrome, Sublime Text and Terminal it gets close to normal speed. Exposé seems to scale very badly with the number of apps running. It's also possible that some of these apps are badly optimized redrawing themselves in some way that slows down Exposé.
  - hmottestad 14y ago
    Isn't it 400% more pixels. Retina should be 2x the width and 2x the height. Anyway. Mine is slow too. With the nvidia card everything is mostly fine, with the integrated intel card everything is mostly sluggish. There was a review of the 13" retina when it came out saying that the intel gpu was terrible and that he sent the laptop back and was going to wait for the next generation.
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  This is a recording of the "show all windows" command (cmd+F9) on my machine: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/slow_expose.mp4 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/slow_expo.... It's that choppy.
ewillbefull 14y ago
Warning: as soon as you run out of memory, without that dynamic pager everything will crash. That said, I also did this when I was on Mac.
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  With 16GB RAM it's a non-issue at the moment. But it will be interesting to find out what exactly happens. Kernel panic? Does the app that can't allocate crash, but everything else works? Does everything just start to crash randomly?
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    Depends on who is asking for the RAM and what is going on in the system. It could be any of those.
driverdan 14y ago
Per your graphics issues, try installing gfxCardStatus[1] and watch for if/when it switches between integrated and discreet. I've found the integrated Intel graphics to be slow for OS GUI stuff like "reveal all windows" but discreet video is fine. It will also let you choose which GPU to use which is useful for testing. [1]: http://gfx.io/ http://gfx.io/
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  Thanks. I always run with the automatic graphics card switching disabled.
ggreer 14y ago
It's possible that I got some stuff that affects performance. It's almost certain that migrating something from your old mac caused this. Clean installs of OS X do not have the problems you describe, even on the 13" rMBP's weak GPU. First, disabling the dynamic pager [1]. I don't know what you tried to link to, but I'm guessing it's similar to this blog post from a while back: http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/20464780085/something-is-deeply-broken-in-os-x-memory-management http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/20464780085/something-is-de... . The author changed his mind after 10.8 came out: http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/28556080639/mountain-lion-seems-to-have-partially-addressed-the http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/28556080639/mountain-lion-s... Disabling dynamic_pager disables swap, and that's not a good idea on OS X. Any perceived difference in performance is likely placebo. Have you tried a blind test? Have a friend disable/enable swap and see if you can guess correctly. You might be surprised at the results. Instead of risking the instability and performance degradation that is likely to occur when changing low-level OS settings, you should figure out what you migrated that's causing the issue. Do some science. If you create another account and log in, do the issues persist? What if you boot off the restore partition? Are there any specific errors in the system console? If you backup, erase, and install a clean OS X, do the issues persist? What if you copy your dotfiles over to this clean install? What if you copy your old ~/Library to it? Etcetera. Once you reproduce the problem, you can use time machine to restore to an unaffected version. You might as well upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7, hack a bunch of registry entries to change kernel behavior, and then complain that Windows is buggy and slow. Blaming the operating system is easy, but it won't fix your problem. The cause is something you copied from your previous set-up. Find it and you'll be a much happier camper.
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  > but I'm guessing it's similar to this blog post from a while back That's the link. He didn't change his mind, he merely upgraded and got better performance. That did not happen in my case. > Have you tried a blind test? No need. Before the change, my mouse pointer was freezing up every few seconds, and I got "IOHIDSystem cursor update overdue. Resending." in the system log very frequently. This disappeared completely after disabling the pager. The difference in performance is stunning. For example, previously, opening a new tab in Chrome would not animate the tab line correctly, resulting in a weird "jolt" as the tab came into place. Now it's smooth. > Do some science. The problem is that these things take a lot of time. Time that I don't have. At some point I might create a new user and see if that helps.
lobster_johnson 14y ago
My [1] link was supposed to go here: http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/20464780085/something-is-deeply-broken-in-os-x-memory-management http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/20464780085/something-is-de...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
wamatt 14y ago
Same here. 2012 Macbook Pro, 16GB Ram, SSD etc. Pretty sure the issue relates to thermal throttling. It's particularly bad when in clamshell mode, plugged into the Thunderbolt display. kernel_task CPU usage shoots up when CPU throttling kicks in. I suspect however GPU throttling also is affecting performance. At times the GUI just feels really slow and laggy. Seriously considering ditching OS X altogether.

habosa 14y ago

It must be something else going on. The Expose features should not be nearly that slow. My mid - 2010 Macbook with wayyyyy too many applications installed is still butter smooth on most animations.

rangibaby 14y ago
When you are trying to push 100% more pixels with only around 20% more GPU grunt, you're going to have lag. I have a feeling that the animations would be a lot smoother (and battery life a lot shorter) if the GP forced their laptop to use the dedicated graphics card. [1] GT330M benchmark (2010 Macbooks) http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+330M http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+330... [2] Intel HD4000 benchmarks (2012~ Macbooks) http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+4000 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+4000
- arrrg 14y ago
  Nah, Expose is not that slow on a rMBP. Some dropped frames (three, four), maybe, but perfectly smooth otherwise.
  - lobster_johnson 14y ago
    This is a recording of the "show all windows" command (cmd+F9) on my machine: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/slow_expose.mp4 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/slow_expo.... It's that choppy.
    - arrrg 14y ago
      Well, for me it isn’t and I also have a rMBP. I believe you, it’s just that you are likely looking at a software issue. (No doubt that this software issue is likely exacerbated by the requirements of the screen and it sucks either way, but in principle the graphics hardware is up to the task.)
      - lobster_johnson 14y ago
        If I close Chrome, Sublime Text and Terminal it gets close to normal speed. Exposé seems to scale very badly with the number of apps running. It's also possible that some of these apps are badly optimized redrawing themselves in some way that slows down Exposé.
- hmottestad 14y ago
  Isn't it 400% more pixels. Retina should be 2x the width and 2x the height. Anyway. Mine is slow too. With the nvidia card everything is mostly fine, with the integrated intel card everything is mostly sluggish. There was a review of the 13" retina when it came out saying that the intel gpu was terrible and that he sent the laptop back and was going to wait for the next generation.
lobster_johnson 14y ago
This is a recording of the "show all windows" command (cmd+F9) on my machine: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/slow_expose.mp4 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/slow_expo.... It's that choppy.

ewillbefull 14y ago

Warning: as soon as you run out of memory, without that dynamic pager everything will crash. That said, I also did this when I was on Mac.

lobster_johnson 14y ago
With 16GB RAM it's a non-issue at the moment. But it will be interesting to find out what exactly happens. Kernel panic? Does the app that can't allocate crash, but everything else works? Does everything just start to crash randomly?
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  Depends on who is asking for the RAM and what is going on in the system. It could be any of those.

driverdan 14y ago

Per your graphics issues, try installing gfxCardStatus[1] and watch for if/when it switches between integrated and discreet. I've found the integrated Intel graphics to be slow for OS GUI stuff like "reveal all windows" but discreet video is fine. It will also let you choose which GPU to use which is useful for testing. [1]: http://gfx.io/ http://gfx.io/

lobster_johnson 14y ago
Thanks. I always run with the automatic graphics card switching disabled.

ggreer 14y ago

It's possible that I got some stuff that affects performance. It's almost certain that migrating something from your old mac caused this. Clean installs of OS X do not have the problems you describe, even on the 13" rMBP's weak GPU. First, disabling the dynamic pager [1]. I don't know what you tried to link to, but I'm guessing it's similar to this blog post from a while back: http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/20464780085/something-is-deeply-broken-in-os-x-memory-management http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/20464780085/something-is-de... . The author changed his mind after 10.8 came out: http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/28556080639/mountain-lion-seems-to-have-partially-addressed-the http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/28556080639/mountain-lion-s... Disabling dynamic_pager disables swap, and that's not a good idea on OS X. Any perceived difference in performance is likely placebo. Have you tried a blind test? Have a friend disable/enable swap and see if you can guess correctly. You might be surprised at the results. Instead of risking the instability and performance degradation that is likely to occur when changing low-level OS settings, you should figure out what you migrated that's causing the issue. Do some science. If you create another account and log in, do the issues persist? What if you boot off the restore partition? Are there any specific errors in the system console? If you backup, erase, and install a clean OS X, do the issues persist? What if you copy your dotfiles over to this clean install? What if you copy your old ~/Library to it? Etcetera. Once you reproduce the problem, you can use time machine to restore to an unaffected version. You might as well upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7, hack a bunch of registry entries to change kernel behavior, and then complain that Windows is buggy and slow. Blaming the operating system is easy, but it won't fix your problem. The cause is something you copied from your previous set-up. Find it and you'll be a much happier camper.

lobster_johnson 14y ago
> but I'm guessing it's similar to this blog post from a while back That's the link. He didn't change his mind, he merely upgraded and got better performance. That did not happen in my case. > Have you tried a blind test? No need. Before the change, my mouse pointer was freezing up every few seconds, and I got "IOHIDSystem cursor update overdue. Resending." in the system log very frequently. This disappeared completely after disabling the pager. The difference in performance is stunning. For example, previously, opening a new tab in Chrome would not animate the tab line correctly, resulting in a weird "jolt" as the tab came into place. Now it's smooth. > Do some science. The problem is that these things take a lot of time. Time that I don't have. At some point I might create a new user and see if that helps.

lobster_johnson 14y ago

My [1] link was supposed to go here: http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/20464780085/something-is-deeply-broken-in-os-x-memory-management http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/20464780085/something-is-de...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

wamatt 14y ago

Same here. 2012 Macbook Pro, 16GB Ram, SSD etc. Pretty sure the issue relates to thermal throttling. It's particularly bad when in clamshell mode, plugged into the Thunderbolt display. kernel_task CPU usage shoots up when CPU throttling kicks in. I suspect however GPU throttling also is affecting performance. At times the GUI just feels really slow and laggy. Seriously considering ditching OS X altogether.