Choppy Graphics 10.6.3 13" Unibody Macbook

**Mac :)** · April 11th, 2010, 08:44 AM

Hello All

Im running 10.6.3 on a 13" Aluminium Macbook (5,1) and am experiencing choppy / laggy graphics with the NVidia GeForce 9400M graphics card but only when running on battery power. When I am running on AC power, the graphics are smooth with no issues.

The graphics are choppy when opening the dashboard, expose, spaces and opening stacks from the dock on battery but fine on power

This is a really annoying issue and want to know how to sort it.

Thanks in advance

(System Specs - 160gb HDD (112gb spare) - 2gb Ram - 2GHz Core 2 Duo)

**ElDiabloConCaca** · April 11th, 2010, 09:54 AM

Try changing your power settings for battery to something like "Performance."

I believe those computers do some level of down-clocking and/or energy-saving when on battery power, which may contribute to a slight decrease in performance (while enabling the computer to run longer).

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3092
(that article is old, but I believe still relevant)

**Mac :)** · April 11th, 2010, 10:19 AM

Hi,

I have tried looking in Energy Saver for the power settings but am unable to find anywhere to change the settings. Am i looking in the correct place?

Thanks for the help so far

**ElDiabloConCaca** · April 11th, 2010, 11:10 AM

Hmmm... I just read that the option may have been removed from Snow Leopard (it did exist in 10.5 Leopard, that's for sure).

Apparently the "pmset" command-line tool can still manipulate these settings, but may not be able to control the processor performance like the Energy Saver preference pane could.

I'm not in front of my Mac at the moment so I can't verify this one way or the other.

**Mac :)** · April 12th, 2010, 06:29 AM

Hey again

Im interested to know what the "pmset" tool is because i am rather new to Mac and OSX.

This is weird because i had no issues like this under Leopard

Thanks

**Giaguara** · April 12th, 2010, 09:48 AM

pmset is a command line power management settings manipulation tool.
Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities), and man pmset will give you the full syntax (developer documentation has currently man for 10.6.2, so if you have any other version of OS X than that, man pmset in your Terminal will give the correct syntax for your system).