MacBook Pro :: Major Drop In Video Performance With 128 GB SSD
Aug 23, 2009
I've had my brand new 13" MBP with 128GB SSD for a month or so and love it. However in the last day, performance has dropped dramatically while watching video. I was on Hulu watching a high-res show, and about 15 minutes in, it started getting very choppy -- audio was OK, but video performance dropped. I quit, restarted, tried again, same problem immediately. System load was around 2.79. I tried in both Safari and Firefox, no dice. YouTube seems to have dropped now as well (I'm playing a video in another tab now, and again the audio is great but the video is choppy). I'm currently hooked up to a 22" LCD through the DVI output (the laptop itself is closed).
Is this normal? I mean I've got 4GB of RAM and 2.53GHz CPU with a solid-state disk! There should be 0 latency and this dual-core beast should tear through video no problem, and here I am closing off iTunes and other apps to try to spare some CPU (this doesn't work though). I've even switched to standard-res for both hulu and youtube but it's not much better. I am shocked that a brand new 2.53GHz CPU with 4GB can't handle this. I also installed and am now running Hulu Desktop to try to get better performance. The really weird thing is a week ago I was a on a flight chewing through YouTube while on Skype and using Entourage and iTunes all at the same time, and it was blazing fast. Now I'm crawling along like an old 1.6GHz with 512MB RAM. WTF, mate?
Before the update I was gaming perfectly fine on pretty much Medium - High settings. The only game I have been playing lately is HON - Heroes of Newerth. Everything ran exactly as it should and I never had any problems. However, a couple of days ago I booted up the game and tried to play and noticed my FPS dropped by a lot. I even tried cranking down everything to low, and all it does is make everything pixelated, but my fps does not move at all.
I then realized the day before, I ran Software Update and ended up bumping up to 10.6.5. I honestly cannot think of what other reason in why performance would drop. I ran both a disk permission repair and a verify disk repair. Ran onyx to do a clean up scan. Flash online, video files, music, everything else I have tested is performing as it should. Anyone else having issues with the recent osx patch?
Since updating, my computer is barely usable. Geekbench score fell from ~5400 to ~ 2300, so it's not just my imagination. I was exporting video and the processor didn't even feel warm, but Activity Monitor reported that it was giving it all the power it had. Anybody else seen this? I'm on a 13" mid 2011 Air with the i7 nad 256GB SSD.
I am not sure if it only my macbook, but I notice a slight performance drop when I run on the battery v the AC. I notice that my application load slower, folders open slower and expose and spaces response is also slow as well.
My macbook was running at basic, normal speed, nothing too serious for a year-old laptop, but suddenly one day, my performance dropped sharply, to the point where it would take up to ten minutes to attempt to get to a page, and songs would freeze for about a minute about 3 times per song in iTunes. It all started when I attempted to import a CD into iTunes (it was downloaded onto my HD, not imported directly from a CD), and I got the message "attempting to copy to the disk macintosh hd failed. The disk could not be read from or written to." About this time, my computer started acting unusually slow, (the problems mentioned above).
I did some looking into this, and did both suggestions listed here (Disk permission repair, then manual iTunes folder permissions change): http://discussions.apple.com/message...623410#7623410. After this my problems were eased for a little bit, I was even able to import the folder I had been unable to import earlier. But I tried then to import the very next CD (it was an 8-CD set), and then I got the same error. Thinking it was possibly a problem with a corrupted/infected file, so I ran a scan through my whole computer (using McAfee), which didn't return any problems. Then, on top of this, my mac suddenly stopped burning CDs, saying that the CD failed because of a "medium write error."
After upgrading to Snow Leopard on my brand new MBP, I have taken notice of a definitive perf drop in OpenGL, particularly when I make use of switching windows via Spaces. The transition between windows skips and is not a smooth animation.
My PowerMac plays most small videos (640p) on YouTube just fine, as well it does an OK job at playing slightly larger videos in Quicktime. I would like to not have to worry about Flash any more. With the new 10.1 beta 2 I notice a nice boost in performance, almost tolerable. If I install a graphics card that supports Core Video will it free up the CPU? How can I tell if a card supports Core Video? As well, what cards do you recommend? Is it difficult to flash a graphics card to work with OS X Tiger in a PowerMac G4?
I just got my air today and everything is fine, but some standard def quicktime files (.mov) that played fine on my mac pro and windows netbook, for some reason play like a slideshow on the 11" air. They play perfectly in VLC however, anyone know why? I would not care but there for a school project... They are rather large for their quality (600mb for 3 min) they were exported from avid...
I recently upgraded my 1st Gen MBP 2.14Ghz and my legs no longer get cooked while doing basic task. This is a great improvement.My new laptop is the 2.53Ghz w/ 4GB and 9400M Nvidia GPU w/ 256MB shared memory. upgraded w/ EFI 1.7
Aside from the upcoming Snow Leopard, the main reason I upgraded was because I watch alot of online video. Netflix, Hulu, etc...I have read that the new GPU does alot of the decoding which keeps the CPU in single digits.I noticed something was sluggish the first time I started watching videos. Netflix had a vertical sync issue that I never experienced w/ my old MBP.Then today I was watching Hulu and I saw the processing or CPU jump to 112% and the base of my laptop was very hot.
Like I said I purchased the new MBP hoping to avoid cooking the family jewels. Anyone know what's going on and what I can do to stop this?
Does anyone else have video performance issues with the 15" 2.16Ghz MBP? I am working with 3gigs of RAM here, and yet videos skip and stutter CONSTANTLY! Initially it seemed to only happen to hd videos (720p), but now it seems to happen to any kind of video file I play. The player I'm using is VLC, as that seems to cause the least amount of problems. If I use quicktime it's worse. Could it possibly be caused by the slow (5400RPM) HD which is steadily filling up? I'm at a complete loss, and it's really making me hate this thing!
I have a 2009 2.53GHz MacBook Pro which I bought a couple months ago. It's been working great, but lately, I've been noticing a lot of strange issues with video playback/general graphics and UI. These includes:- Laggy video performance, frame skipping, generally 2x slow video -- on both iTunes and web video. It's not as smooth as it used to be, though admittedly not totally unbarable - VLC shows a black screen, doesn't show the video - Randomly pixelated icons in the dock (it's almost like the Mac picks a new one everyday to pixelate), dock animation not 100% smooth, although fairly good (not sure if it used to be this way)
Is that setting effecting the processor as well? or anything else?it'd be great if when put on the "better battery life" it would down clock a bit to squeeze more battery life.
After some difficulty upgrading my 4HD RAID0 2.66 MP to SL I've discovered my full screen Hulu and WB browser video is choppy if I use a full screen pop out window. If i go full screen it works fine. I've checked my Internet speed and it is as good as ever. I have not changed my config. of three LCD screens or any other hardware. This problem happens in both Safari and Firefox. I did have to reset the PRAM in order for the SL installer to see my RAID0 HD per Applecare. The bottom line is I used to be able to watch Hulu via a pop up expanded to the edges of my 24# LCD, and surf using one of my 22 inch screens. Now I can't unless I want the video and audio dialog to sych. I did confirm the the main Radeon 3870 card is still running at 16X. Could this be driver problems?
I currently got the 5870 driving a 30" ACD and 23" ACD. Would there be any noticeable performance increase if I were get the gt120 to run the 23" and have 5870 run the 30" ACD (my work display)?
this is kind of a dumb question. I have a Radeon 8500 in a Power Mac G4 that I'm repairing. I have a PCI Radeon 7000, and I was wondering, if I put it in too, would having two GPUs affect performance even though the monitor was only attached to the 8500?
i am using Mainly Photoshop, RealFlow and Maya on my latest MAC:
Model Identifier:MacPro3,1 Processor Name:Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor Speed:3 GHz Number Of Processors:2 Total Number Of Cores:8 L2 Cache (per processor):12 MB Memory:4 GB Bus Speed:1.6 GHz Video1: ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT: Video2: VIDIA GeForce 8800 GT:
If i order 2 More Video Cards, will that improve performance, even i have only 2 Displays connected?
Today I just bought and installed an (Apple) ATI 4870 for my '06 Mac Pro. It's all gone pretty smoothly, however I have noticed that flash video playback from sites such as Youtube and Vimeo are jerky. Have I missed something about installing a 4870 into an older MP? I thought it was basically plug and play - even though it's not officially supported by Apple. Quicktime movies are nice and smooth. This is under Snow Leopard, so I'm not sure if the problem exists under Leopard but I could probably move my last bootable backup drive into an enclosure with firewire and check things out.
Is there any way to improve the video performance on my iBook G3 (600mhz, 640MB RAM, 16MB VRAM)? I find that besides not being able to play any of the HD trailers at Apple's website (even 480p), it can't even seem to play a standard trailer without stutterring. Is there anything I can do to improve the video performance?
After reading some of the threads here with people being very happy with their minis, I decided to head down to the Apple store and give it a go. I used each of the computers (a Mac mini, Mac Pro, and iMac) for about 10 minutes (which seems like forever when you are in a crowded retail store) doing things I would normally be doing at home. The iMac was fine, as expected. It handled just about everything with satisfactory speed, even thought it was the base 24" model with no fancy processors or graphics.
Video
The Mac Mini though was quite disappointing. To render a 1 minute video in iMovie it took around 4 minutes. The Mac Pro did the job on the same exact movie (sample file found on every display computer) in about 45 seconds. Another big difference was apparent, while the movies were rendering, the Mac Pro was completely responsive and I was able to load iPhoto, Pages, Numbers, Safari, and iTunes. Each opened up within seconds, and each interface was running smoothly as if nothing was happening in the background (granted for a short period as the movie finished rendering quickly).............
I have a 15" 2010 MBP. I got it well spec'd, with 7200 drive, 8 GB ram, best CPU... First thing I did was bootcamp. Went smoothly - did a 400 gb partition for Windows 7. The drivers all installed fine and Windows 7 does alright.
My Windows Experience scores: Processor: 6.9 RAM: 6.9 Graphic: 6.4 Gaming graphics: 6.4 Hard drive: 5.9
Things look good... But I am having trouble playing hidef content - VLC is choppy on a bunch of files that play smooth as silk when booted into Mac OS - and actually even play ok on my old Santa Rosa 15" MBP. Quicktime is also slow. I have always found VLC to be very solid. (actually use it on the Mac side for this test as well). I tried playing with the hardware acceleration toggle, and it does seem better with it disabled - anyone else having issues playing hidef media on the windows side of this MBP?
Back in February, I purchased the (at the time) base mode 15" MacBook Pro, which I shouldn't have returned (idiot). I spec whored and went for the Sony VPCF115FM/B, with i7 which has proven to be a catastrophic and horrendous piece of machinery.
It is coming in from its second round of repairs (still will have poor screen, battery life, and dismal 900MHz throttling when on battery). I am looking to get a Mac to replace it, and I've come down to a few options.
1) Get the baseline 13" model with hopefully the new BTS deal. 2) Get the mid line MBP from last generation refurbished for $1529 (2.66, 9600 320GB 4GB). 3. Get the low-end 15" from this gen with the BTS deal (required for me to afford it), and sell the iPod/Printer.
Do I need the power and screen resolution (size doesn't matter to me) or would the cheaper 13" cover me?
Story: I took my mac out of sleep and found that the trackpad was not functioning.After a little time, I decided just to reboot. I hit the power button and then hit restart, but it could not restart because for some reason, Skype was not closing. Finally, I just decided to force restart by holding power button. I turned computer back on, and it was stuck on the gray loading screen. I waited about 20 minutes and then turned it off.
I've reset PRAM, repaired permissions/disk (from Leopard disk). I finally got past the login screen and got on my desktop. When I clicked on the airport on menu bar, I noticed another problem; Airport Card not installed. I rebooted again, reset PRAM, and found I was back in the same situation again; stuck on loading. I checked system profiler and it recognized my airport card, so that is not dead. I decided to finally archive and reinstall OSX. Now I've been stuck on the "about 10 minute" mark for about an hour now. Thinking of just quitting install and trying to reboot again.
I just have a quick question. I'm ordering a Macbook Pro this weekend and saw that one had a little beefier 512 MB of RAM instead of 256 dedicated for the graphics card.
I really hope Starcraft 2 isn't too graphic intensive and that the 256 would be enough to handle it. That's really the only game I plan on buying to play on here.
I just got a brand new Mac Mini 2,26 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2 gig RAM, and it's hooked up to my tv with a mini-DVI adapter. Snow Leopard installed. I noticed right away that the screen looks really sluggish, with screen tearing and laggy video performance. Playing videos in Plex for instance there is a lot of screen tear and I had to set the display to 720p to get it decent, and even then it's rough, even on SD videos! So I ran Xbench, and got a remarkable slow score on OpenGL; 43. My MacBook Pro running with the 9400M card got 97.
Just wondering what else, if anything else, I can upgrade on my system.I have an original 2006 launch model (2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual Core Xeon, 8GB 667 DDR2 RAM from Crucial, 4 x 1TB Western Digital RE3 7200RPM drives w/ 32MB Cache in a Software RAID)However, I still have the original NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT card in here and I've never been super-impressed nor disappointed.Should I replace it? I do mostly graphics work in Photoshop and writing code as a web-developer but I do occasional gaming so I'd see a benefit there.. I'm just wondering if it'd boost performance in the OS. Honestly, the computer runs fine... I would never replace it unless it had an issue. I'm just thinking about the future.
I need some advice on whether a hardware update will actually improve my video performance or not. Currently I am using a mac mini snow leopard server 2009 model hooked via mini display port to hdmi adapter to my lg 37 LED LCD TV. The mac mini has a intel x25 m 80 gb bootdrive. 2 external fw 800 drives used as video storage. Mostly I use boxee eyetv sat all controlled via appleremote - sofacontrol.
Altogether a great setup. With big mkv files in full hd the picture sometimes is choppy. Would a upgrade to the new 2010 mac mini server with direct hdmi port and 320M graphics actually improve the video quality - graphics performance? or should I stick to my current setup? (I bought the current server cheap from the uk)
I'm using a 2GHz MacBook Pro as a HTPC, but it has developed some major heat issues and is not much longer for this world. I have read some threads regarding overheating issues with Minis and wonder if that is still an issue? I want to replace the laptop with a Mini and don't want to run into the same problems.
After much research on the interweb I've finally realized I've lost the plot, so time to ask the experts....
I've just bought some Kingston KTA-MP800K2/4G RAM from here. The website says it's non-ECC yet the same product from here says it is ECC. This "yes it is/no it isn't" repeated throughout my searches. I bought my Mac with 4x1Gb of Apple's RAM which I'm guessing is ECC(?).
These are my questions: 1. Does anyone know what the correct ECC status is for this product (the Kingston website was no use at all!)
2. I'm reading that it is you shouldn't mix ECC types but what are the consequences of doing so?
3. Is there any software tool to run that can check if my installed RAM is ECC or not, or check everything is happy and compatible?
4. Am I being pointlessly paranoid!?
I do a lot of motion graphics and 3d work so it's important to me everything is tuned up and working as smoothly as possible.
There is a bug when it comes to rules in Mail in 10.6.4 and 10.6.5 (and possibly earlier versions of Mail as well).
Here are the steps to reproduce the bug:
1. Make sure you have an IMAP account in Mail.
2. In your IMAP account's Mailbox Behaviors, UNCHECK the box that says "Store draft messages on server". This ensures that your draft messages will be saved locally on your Mac instead of on your IMAP server.
3. Create one new rule that would ALWAYS be true of ANY new message that you would be creating in mail, such as: "From contains (your email address)" OR "Sender is a member of group (name of a group that your own card is a part of)" Don't create both of those rules... just choose one.
4. The action that the rule should perform is: "Set Color of text (choose a color)" Make sure that you're NOT setting a BACKGROUND color, but rather that you're setting a TEXT color.
5. Save the rule.
6. Now, create a new message and start typing.
7. Save the message as a draft once.
8. Notice that the message shows up in your Drafts folder with the text color applied that you set in #4 above. This actually is a small bug right there, because rules shouldn't apply to messages in your drafts folder, but this first bug is not a big deal.
9. Continue editing the message.
10. Save the message as a draft for a 2nd time.
11. This is where the major bug takes place.... after you've saved your draft for the 2nd time. Look in your Drafts folder. Your message has now shown up in the list of Drafts message with the BACKGROUND COLOR of the subject changed to the TEXT COLOR that you set in #4, which makes the message unreadable if you had chosen a dark text color. Even though you specified a TEXT color, Mail incorrectly applied a BACKGROUND color to the message. This is completely annoying if you're working on a bunch of drafts, because you can't even read the names of the drafts that you're working on without individually opening them up.
