Bad performance on Big Sur & Monterey

[ctih1]

Using more than a few applications at once causes most of them to "slow down", the dock still runs well, aka the framerate drops to about 20. This seems to be happening most in apps that use chromium.

To Reproduce

1. Install macOS
2. Use it

Expected behavior
For the Graphic Acceleration to be "fine"-Ish

Specs

• OS: macOS Big Sur 11.7.10
• CPU: i7-8550u
• RAM: 16GB 2133mhz
• Browser: Edge
• EFI Version: Latest

[ctih1]

Seems to go away after changing the resolution to 1500x1000

[tlefko]

@ctih1 this is I noticed for a long time, and I think it has to do with the graphic acceleration at 4K. I don’t think it’s a bug with the actual script itself, rather than an issue with MOS not being able to support those kind of resolutions.

if you actually run the Intel graphics benchmark utility, the score is actually very similar to what it is on windows and macOS. I found very similar behaviour across both operating systems, and having the system plugged in to some extent fixes is the issue, because it draws more power and fixes the performance.

however, I’m really not sure this is actually fixable but it’s something I’ve noticed a lot as well and I absolutely hate it. The easiest way to spot this is moving safari around the desktop on the main screen.

I would avoid using Safari, and stick to Chrome. But in general, I don’t have a one size fits all solution.

[ctih1]

I've found a way to mitigate the performance while having the display look "normal"-ish.

1. Install BetterDisplay (I used v1.x.x for this, I'm not sure if the 2.x.x has anything different)2.
2. Go to settings

3. Go to "Displays" tab and copy these options.

4. Tweak the settings accordingly, if you want more performance, change "Native Panel Display Resolution" to something less, and change "Custom Scaled Resolution" to Native Width / 1.5 and Native Height / 1.5

5. Boom, smooth-ish performance!

[ctih1]

I'll try to find a way to force a custom resolution, since putting anything in the custom native resolution seems to revert to 2560x1660

[tlefko]

@ctih1 hey, thank you for this I just tested out. Does seem to make things a bit better but I don’t know if it’s just because it’s less pixels to push around.

I’m curious what happens if you force an extra pixel, simply literally adding like 1601. With graphics cards, even natively, let’s say you’re running hdmi 2.0, you want to force widescreen 144 Hz. It would never work on the native widescreen resolution, windows just wouldn’t to allow it.

, Simply adding the extra pixel actually improved the entire performance and did allow you to dothe exact same thing on widescreen. I wonder if this kind of performance improvement would work with this.

[ctih1]

A quick update: this issue doesn't seem to happen on Catalina. The only issue(s) is that the trackpad works, but doesn't show up in the system preferences, and the WiFi doesn't work (even though it worked in the setup), I think both of these are caused by the fact that the smbios is too new? I'll try to test ones from a bit earlier
Nope, seems strange because the "about this mac" shows it as "MacBook Pro", and there is no battery indicator.

Here's a YouTube video on Catalina: https://youtube.com/shorts/kUD4yuDbZMI?si=7dC8wuvDwW9Wx3ku

[ctih1]

Performance seems to be much better on Sonoma compared to Monterey.

[ctih1]

Update: adding igfxrpsc=1 seems to improve performance by quite a bit. I'm not sure if this is placebo, but I'd recommend you to try it yourself.