What's with the LAG?!?

MDLarson

Registered
OK, I just got back from the Mall of America Apple Store. G5's are nice. :D

BUT, I was playing around with the 1.8 GHz model (they didn't have a dual 2GHz on display). And I was testing the user interface, like moving windows around (just fine, akin to my G4 450) and resizing windows. This is what makes me mad... there is a slight lag! I'm well aware of it on my own computer, and am used to it. But I expected that type of thing to be pretty much done away with on the high-end machines.

For an idea of what I'm talking about, I was dragging the corner across the screen, and the actual corner trailed my cursor by about 1/4".

So why can you resize an Internet Explorer window full of content and have it scale nicely, and yet the G5, which runs our beloved OS X, still laaaaaggs?

The display that the G5 was hooked up to was a 23" HD Cinema Display.
 
Don't know, maybe it is because it was a microsoft product you wer using...
or it could be that the lag is just part of the way OS X displays the interface. Maybe it will be fixed in Panther. Who knows...
 
I used the same model over at a local CompUSA...and let me tell you what: I opened up Quicktime (playing the G5 intro movie, and the matrix 3 trailer) and then opened up itunes (playing random mixes) WITH the visualizer on, then photoshop, addressbook, and finally system preferences previewing the screensavers. There was MINOR lag! It was great!

I have no idea why you got lag there buddy. :(
 
MDLarson,

As the proud, but now broke, owner of a new amazing G5, I can tell you that I experience no lag in anything that I do. You can tell that, unlike any other mac before it, this computer was built from the ground up for OS X and all the potential it has. I can't wait to see Panther on this thing.

BTW - does anyone know of any 64-bit (non-science) apps for the the G5 yet?
 
I used a 1.6 at CompUSA, and there was a hint of lag in some of the actions I took, such as opening disclosure triangles and the like. Resizing windows didn't cause anything to happen.
 
You mean, of course, that the windows _did_ resize, don't you Arden? ;-)

I guess that 'special' machine you've tested, MDLarson, may have had a fault at that moment. Maybe a relogin would have made it go away, maybe a reboot, maybe the system (software) was kinda broken...
 
i noticed a tad bit of lag on the one i used, but thats OSX's fault and nothing more, the way it redraws windows compared to windows is completely different iirc

but who cares?
 
Resizing windows is still slow in Jag, and I'd suspect it'd be at least slightly noticable even on a machine 5 times faster than my 1.25Ghz G4.

Resizing is noticibly faster in Panther, though the lag is still there. However, with everything else (genie/close/open effects, dock, scroll-down windows, Expose, fast user switching, moving windows, scrolling windows, etc) being so fast and pretty, and the lag being so minor, I just don't care anymore.

And yes, OS X's window drawing routines are much more complex (and powerful) than Windows - that's why you tend NOT to see the horrible tearing and see-through broken window problems in OS X that you do in Windows

(like when you open a page in Internet Explorer that takes a bit of time/processor power to load, and you minimize that window to get to another IE window behind it - you get the outline & controls of the "other" IE window, but the web page content is the leftover garbage from the previous window. This is so ultra-common in the Windows world that most users don't even NOTICE it anymore... Horrors of GDI...)
 
Originally posted by jhawk28
Don't know, maybe it is because it was a microsoft product you wer using...
or it could be that the lag is just part of the way OS X displays the interface. Maybe it will be fixed in Panther. Who knows...
Well, I wasn't using a Microsoft product... :confused: The worst offender I've seen is Safari.

Don't get me wrong, the G5 was way better at keeping up with the cursor than my current G4, which I'm used to. But the its responsiveness was still not as good as Windows'.

Sounds like y'all know what I'm talking about, but it's still kind of hard to illustrate. Go to this page and scroll down to the "Responsiveness" section.

I'm just concerned about the perceived sluggishness of OS X. Sitting side-by-side with a Windows box, Windows appears snappier.
 
I have been a LAG hater since day one. I don't comprehend how people can write it off so easily at not being a big deal. Buth, hey, if it doesn't bug them, so be it. To me, it's a very big deal. I find it endlessly annoying. I'm a bit disappointed to hear it's still not perfectly glass across the board, given the massive hardware improvements. Perhaps Panther will tweak this out even further.

I have noticed that my home and work machine respond quite differently. The home machine is much smoother on a 1024x768 CRT (DP 867) and my work machine (DP 1 gig original) is much slower with GUI lag on the 1600x1024 Cinema Display. Does anyone know if this is a result of the bigger display or just the machines? I believe both machines use the same graphics card.

That xvsxp site is way cool. Thanks for the link.
 
Originally posted by MDLarson
I'm just concerned about the perceived sluggishness of OS X. Sitting side-by-side with a Windows box, Windows appears snappier.

As I mentioned, Panther is much snappier, overall. With the exception of the window resizing, I don't think you'll have much of ANY "snappiness" concerns with a G5 running Panther, sitting next to the best PC.

Here's an exercise to remind you of the effort that's gone into Windows' UI design:

In WinXP, go to Start->Shutdown, and wait while the current screen (except the logoff window) fade to grey. What the heck is THAT? On my 1.6ghz P4 I get updates of about 1-2 frames per second as it struggles to compute Alpha info...

Now, just after you've logged into your XP machine (as it's still loading), click the start button. Now, it makes sense that since the system is very busy (accessing the disk, mostly) that it may take a moment to display the start window. But Windows is in the habit of drawing half-finished and torn windows - watch as it builds the "outline" of a window, struggles to fill it in, and eventually layers widgets overtop of the broken window. Now that's good basic UI design!
 
Well, then Mac OS 9.x wins. ;-) ... Hmm... In my Panther installation, when I drag windows around, I don't have any lag. On a G3/800, that is. And I don't remember any in Jaguar, really. Dragging Safari windows around: No lag. *IF* there is lag, it's less than 0.02 seconds.
 
Just saying this because I can: I could care less if the G5s lagged for 1.5 seconds or anything. I'll never get one. :D
 
Originally posted by fryke
Well, then Mac OS 9.x wins. ;-) ... Hmm... In my Panther installation, when I drag windows around, I don't have any lag. On a G3/800, that is. And I don't remember any in Jaguar, really. Dragging Safari windows around: No lag. *IF* there is lag, it's less than 0.02 seconds.
Dragging is different than resizing. Try resizing that Safari window, and I'm sure you'll see what I'm talking about. :D

And if any Mac OS X stalwarts need help in the feud between XP and OS X, XvsXP.com is a GREAT resource.
 
Originally posted by Trip
Just saying this because I can: I could care less if the G5s lagged for 1.5 seconds or anything. I'll never get one. :D

Because you already have a similar cheese-slicing tool in the kitchen? Or another reason?
 
I have often noticed the Windows partial redraw "featurette." I like the way it resizes simple windows, but it's because it's a dumber OS. OS 9 is actually the loser in all of this because resizing windows isn't dynamic; rather, you get a ghost outline, which, while efficient, is ugly and has its drawbacks.

Rip: No, because he's a poor skater. :D
 
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