3-Screen setup, slow GUI

[Resuah Knit]

hi there,

I wonder who is doing the heavy GUI-lifting in my 5.1 MP, I have the stock 5870 and when moving midi notes or doing other GUI-tasks, I get GUI lag, the problem gets less when I disconnect one monitor to a 2 screen setup and almost disappears with a 1 screen setup. does upgrading the GPU to maybe a 980 GTX help with this, or is there some other bottleneck?

seems like osx does not like to push many pixels at once, logic also gets sluggish when I try to run it in higher resolutions.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by Resuah Knit

hi there,

I wonder who is doing the heavy GUI-lifting in my 5.1 MP, I have the stock 5870 and when moving midi notes or doing other GUI-tasks, I get GUI lag, the problem gets less when I disconnect one monitor to a 2 screen setup and almost disappears with a 1 screen setup. does upgrading the GPU to maybe a 980 GTX help with this, or is there some other bottleneck?

seems like osx does not like to push many pixels at once, logic also gets sluggish when I try to run it in higher resolutions.

you don't say what OS you are running in your profile. If it's mojave, don't get a 980..
Does the 5870 properly support metal?
What sort of res are you trying to pump out from one gfx card on each monitor? I mean is it three 4k monitors for example? Of course that will strain that card.
My Vega 56 is running great with one 5K imac pro screen and one extra 24" 4k monitor (the lg from apple's store), but that's way more powerful than a 5870. Pro Tools does seem to make good use of video acceleration and video card memory from what i can make out in istat menus, so the best card you can get for your system that is metal compatible and combine with Mojave would help. If you want to stay with high sierra then an nvidia card that is compatible would be fine. I can't see how a 980 with 4GB wouldn't help against a 1GB 5870 and the 980 is a lot stronger in processing power as well, but if you ever have designs to move to Mojave, remember, nvidia support has been dropped.
I am not sure what cards are compatible with your model of mac but the best you can get that;s compatible would definitely help in a nutshell.

PS there is massive difference in Mojave to High sierra that the imac pro shipped with, when resizing windows in both logic and PT at 5k resolution.. high sierra would hitch and "jump" and be unresponsive. So PT must be metal optimised now I would say?

[Mark Ziebarth]

I had the same issue. But as I am using HD Native now I had some unused Pcie slots. I took a graphics card out of one of my old 3.1 Mac Pros and use it now for the third screen with close to zero problems. I guess two graphics cards are better than a newer one for three screens with one card.

Best

Mark

[Resuah Knit]

Originally Posted by TNM

you don't say what OS you are running in your profile

will fix now, I’m still on sierra, not interested in the upgrade lottery, but I sure would like better GUI performance, interesting thoughts thanks for sharing.

edit: anyone else want to chime in? which system gives you the best gui performance? coming from cubase, I like to edit a lot, but when transposing midi notes, I get really ugly lag on 3 screens, as in: hold down arrow for two seconds, watch the notes move for 10 seconds. babysteps.

[weezul]

running 3 screens, 2x 1080p and 1x ultrawide 1080p, was on a 970ti, then a 1050ti, and now an AMD RX 580. All have been fine but recently i'm starting to get screen tearing on the AMD in pro tools only (phantom solo buttons, so the graphics of the mixer are out of line, and if you click in the 'wrong' place where the button actually is, it appears on top of the older drawn mixer/edit window.... not sure if it's the card or new version of pro tools as I'm on materinity leave until next week. But I've only seen it once or twice in the past few weeks. Definitely no visual 'lag' though, faders and graphics all nice and smooth, 60fps enabled in iZotope plugs that support it, and ProQ 3 smooth as butter for example.

[JFreak]

Display processing seems to require more and more juice lately.

I have a 2013 iTrashcan with dual D500 and while it supports three 5K displays I have hard time running two 4K without occasional lag. The specs say D500 has 2.2 teraflop processor per card which isn't so much by today's standards. And you cannot use two cards with single display.

[DJ Hellfire]

Had the same issue running 2 screens on my 4,1 Mac Pro with the stock video card. Upgraded to the Radeon 5770 and the problem went away instantly.

[Resuah Knit]

Originally Posted by DJ Hellfire

Had the same issue running 2 screens on my 4,1 Mac Pro with the stock video card. Upgraded to the Radeon 5770 and the problem went away instantly.

can confirm, the 1-slot gpu is weak, but the 5870 is still a little beefier than the 5770, is there a particular reason you run the 5770?