Mac Performance Issues, Especially with a 4K monitor

S1mon

I have a 2015 MacBook Pro, and decent internet connection, but I find that Onshape performance is often laggy.

I have an external 4K monitor. I tried to run it at a scaled resolution to make all the text and UI elements more readable, but it seems to really affect the performance of Onshape - unless I go all the way down to 1920x1080. Any thoughts on how to work around this? Do I just need a newer machine with better graphics performance?

I'm mainly using Safari, since that's my main Mac browser, but it seems like Onshape works better in Chrome despite the https://cad.onshape.com/check tests coming back with a lot more triangles in Safari than Chrome. Using the opt-D diagnostics, the frame rate in Chrome is much better. (Although what's the difference between "Interactive framerate: 28.1 fps" and "Queried framerate: 50.2 fps"?)

However, Chrome on my Mac seems to have zero luck with my SpaceNavigator.

I'm considering getting an Apple Silicon M1 machine, but really want whatever the next generation M1 ("M2"?). I tried the same model which is giving me some challenges on an M1 MacBook Air in the Apple Store, and got the same "This webpage is using significant memory. Closing it may improve the responsiveness of your Mac." message.

I'm also considering an iPad Pro with the M1 chip, but I'm not sure I really want to use the iOS version of Onshape. I know some people like it, but as much as I like my iPad for some things (reading, watching videos) it's not so good for having a bunch of windows open on a big screen.

What's your most stable performant Mac or iOS setup with a big screen?





Safari stats:



Chrome stats:

brian_brady

Here are my M1 MacBook Pro 16GB results.

S1mon

@brian_brady, 

Do you ever get “This webpage is using significant memory. Closing it may improve the responsiveness of your Mac.”?

Are you using an external 4K monitor?

Any other issues with lag or responsiveness?

thanks

brian_brady

@S1mon

I was just running the laptop on its own. I do get "significant memory" messages, but generally close and ignore them. Apple is trying to help us, but in this case I want my CAD to use as much memory as it needs for the job. That is why I have 16GB. I actually wish Apple gave us the ability to make exceptions for specific websites. Maybe Onshape can work with them to keep us from getting that message.

Brian

Steve_Spanjers

I'm using an external 5K monitor, and performance is decent.  I have noticed that if I hook up my iPad as a connected display, it will somehow disable the graphics card and try to run everything off the integrated intel graphics.  This causes tons of performance issues (low memory, etc).  From you screenshot, it looks like at least Chrome is reporting the correct graphics renderer (AMD Radeon R9).

Like Brian mentioned above, I tend to ignore the warnings as well, I want it to use a lot of RAM.  I try to close other programs that might also be trying to use RAM.