Hello,
Since updating to Sonama, my FPS spikes down to 60 and then back up.
The spike down to 60 happens when the cursor is present on the screen.
If I left click or right click, causing my cursor to disappear – my FPS will spike back up 120 + (120 is the target).
It’s not the end of the world because the spike isn’t incredibly noticeable – but I am wondering what on earth is causing it?
This is on Classic SOD and Retail
Cheers for reading.
hardware cursor sets framerate to monitor refresh rate when moving cursor. it’s actually why when I’m at 60fps, my variable refresh rate jumps to 120 when i’m moving mouse then back down to 60 when i’m not.
which means you’re likely running higher frames that are completely useless anways. if you have a 60fps monitor, you’d see that behavior though
Were you able to fix this? I’m on an M1 Max and Sonoma 14.2.1, whenever I move my mouse cursor to direct my character or move my camera, it drops the FPS – if I have vsync disabled, it will drop the FPS to 60, with vsync enabled, it drops 10-20FPS and feels very stutter-y.
Im considering downgrading to Ventura if it is not an issue there.
Thank you.
I genuinely just suggest playing at your refresh rate or interval of it to avoid those issues.
Since i have a 120hz display, i cap at either 120 or 60 or 40. an evenly divisible interval of the fresh rate. when you use a non divisible number you just get these strange behaviors. and going over refresh rate most definitely causes issues.
I never had any issues with my m1 Max or the current m3 Max and that’s using either built in 120hz screen, or external 120hz displays (two of them).
I just tested using the M3 Max that I was about to return to Apple and I do not see the same issues there. Even when I disable the vsync, I don’t see the snap drop to 60 FPS on the M3 Max.
I’m going to try a complete restore on the M1 Max and see if it goes away.
All of this testing is only on the internal display with “Promotion” selected as the refresh rate.
OK. Fresh Venture install on the M1 Max doesn’t have the issue with the dipping FPS.
Funnily, I ran into the unable to install WoW with Battle.net issue people are having here on the Mac forums. I found the solution was to enable Full Disk Access for the Battle.net application and the Agent application (credit: Cannot update or reinstall on Mac - #8 by Gembley-moon-guard)
I’ll try a Sonoma update next…
I know with promotion on internal display, even with my 60fps cap cause i’d rather have static frame pacing than variable refresh rate. the frame rate would jump to 120 any time i moved cursor, due to hardware cursor, but that’s it. it’d be 60 or 120 while moving cursor, cause hardware cursor does try to match the max refresh rate (since that is, by design, intent of hardware cursor, to keep it as smooth as possible by prioritizing performance to cursor when visible, which generally means, as fast as refresh rate allows).
But I’d never see dips due to to mouse, unless as i said your fps was higher than refresh rate (which I still stand is pretty silly to do, the input difference in wow isn’t worth it, you’re talking micro seconds in a game that’s not a first person shooter and in all likelyhood your realm latency is higher anyways and actual desider of input lag)
Final (hopefully) update:
I upgraded to Sonoma and the issue with FPS drops seems to be resolved. Feel free to ask any questions if you have them. GL.