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    MBP 13" (2010) Sluggish External Monitor Performance

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by dbam987, Jul 6, 2012.

  1. dbam987

    dbam987 wicked-poster

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    Hey all, I have the MBP 13" (2010) that is experiencing sluggish performance when I hook it up to an external monitor. I notice choppy-ness when scrolling on web pages with Safari and Chrome, as well as even dragging windows around. Does anyone have any suggestions on some tweaks I could do to improve the performance?

    My specs on the MBP are the following:
    • 2.4 GHz Intel C2D CPU
    • 8 GB DDR3 Memory
    • 256 GB SSD (Samsung)
    • NVidia GeForce 320M Graphics Processor (256 MB Shared Memory)

    When I'm just using the MBP's own monitor, everything is liquid smooth. Is the graphics card not able to keep up with a 1920x1080 external monitor?
     
    dbam987, Jul 6, 2012
    #1
  2. kornchild2002

    kornchild2002 Notebook Deity

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    It should be. My mid-2011 MBA can perform just fine when I use both the built-in display and an external monitor at a higher resolution than 1080p without having choppy performance.

    What version of OS X are you running? Does this monitor perform that way with other systems or just the Mac? I would also check your Display Preferences to make sure the external monitor's refresh rate isn't something that is too low and fits within the maximum limit of the monitor.
     
    kornchild2002, Jul 6, 2012
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  3. dbam987

    dbam987 wicked-poster

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    I have Lion installed. It turns out Steam was doing a ton of disk access, thus slowing down practically everything. I didn't realize it at first since the CPU meter that I have didn't show anything.

    Thanks for the suggestions! +1 Rep.
     
    dbam987, Jul 6, 2012
    #3