"About" window activates MBP's discrete graphics card

[warmlogic]

I try to stay conscious of when my mid-2010 MBP's discrete graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 330M) gets switched on because it cuts my battery life to less than half of what I'd get with the integrated Intel graphics card. This is a bad thing on a laptop when I need to get work done away from a power source.

Anyway, I opened the About Quicksilver window the other day and noticed that the discrete card gets switched on, probably because Core Animation is used to render the fancy QS that shimmers and floats above the window. (Unfortunately, the discrete card gets switched on for pretty much any use of Core Animation—this is a well known problem among us MBP owners.) The QS is nice eye candy, but the problem is that when I close the window, OS X is not smart enough to switch back to the integrated (less powerful) card.

I will do my best to not look at the About window when I'm not connected to power, but I just thought I would report this. It would be nice to prevent this from occurring somehow, though I don't have an alternative suggestion other than getting rid of the CA, which would obviously take away from the nice effects.

[pjrobertson]

I'm not lucky enough to own a post '07 MacBook, so don't know of the fancy things it can do ;)

I do know that there was a bug in the about window ( https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/issues/183) that should have been fixed in 60. Are you using this version?

Other than that, I can't think of anything else we can do, unless there's some API we can use to tell the MBP to use the integrated card. Really, Apple should fix this :)

On 30 June 2011 19:41, warmlogic < reply@reply.github.com>wrote:

I try to stay conscious of when my mid-2010 MBP's discrete graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 330M) gets switched on because it cuts my battery life to less than half of what I'd get with the integrated Intel graphics card. This is a bad thing on a laptop when I need to get work done away from a power source.

Anyway, I opened the About Quicksilver window the other day and noticed that the discrete card gets switched on, probably because Core Animation is used to render the fancy QS that shimmers and floats above the window. (Unfortunately, the discrete card gets switched on for pretty much any use of Core Animationthis is a well known problem among us MBP owners.) The QS is nice eye candy, but the problem is that when I close the window, OS X is not smart enough to switch back to the integrated (less powerful) card.

I will do my best to not look at the About window when I'm not connected to power, but I just thought I would report this. It would be nice to prevent this from occurring somehow, though I don't have an alternative suggestion other than getting rid of the CA, which would obviously take away from the nice effects.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/issues/404

[warmlogic]

I am using version 60. Should have mentioned that. (Checking my version was actually the reason I opened the about window in the first place!)

I hadn't seen issue 183 before (I searched for "nvidia", "integrated", and "graphics" before posting and came up with nothing), but I can verify that QS's resources jump up (~9%) when the About window is open and it goes back to 0% when I close it, so issue 183 seems to be fixed in version 60.

Apple really does need to fix this. It occurs with so many other applications for extremely minor animations, or even when there are no animations at all such as just opening Chrome!!

[pjrobertson]

Checking my version was actually the reason I opened the about window in the first place!

You can check the version and build number in the Preferences under 'Application'. It may save you having to do this again ;)

I'll close this issue for now. If anybody else has any suggestions of what we (as opposed to Apple) can do, then we can just re-open it. Thanks for the heads up anyway :)

On 30 June 2011 20:05, warmlogic < reply@reply.github.com>wrote:

I am using version 60. Should have mentioned that. (Checking my version was actually the reason I opened the about window in the first place!)

I hadn't seen issue 183 before (I searched for "nvidia", "integrated", and "graphics" before posting and came up with nothing), but I can verify that QS's resources jump up (~9%) when the About window is open and it goes back to 0% when I close it, so issue 183 seems to be fixed in version 60.

Apple really does need to fix this. It occurs with so many other applications for extremely minor animations, or even when there are no animations at all such as just opening Chrome!!

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/issues/404#issuecomment-1477223

[warmlogic]

Fine with me. Thanks.

(Phew, I thought I was going to get sh!t for not using QS to "get info" on the QS application! :) )

[skurfer]

It’s triggered by BusyCal, X11, Twitter and some other things that I leave running at all times. Sort of defeats the purpose. I never knew the effect on battery life was that dramatic (probably because my system has never been able to switch over to the Intel card).

[pjrobertson]

thought I was going to get sh!t for not using QS to "get info" on the QS application!

Why aren't you using that!? Grrr..... :P

On 30 June 2011 20:13, warmlogic < reply@reply.github.com>wrote:

Fine with me. Thanks.

(Phew, I thought I was going to get sh!t for not using QS to "get info" on the QS application! :) )

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/issues/404#issuecomment-1477268

[rudyrichter]

maybe this will help? http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#qa/qa1734/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40010791

[pjrobertson]

Interesting. I had not previously seen that.

It may be worth looking at in the future. I will re-open the bug, but cannot confirm it will be worked on anytime soon.

On 5 October 2011 17:13, Rudy Richter < reply@reply.github.com>wrote:

maybe this will help? http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#qa/qa1734/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40010791

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/issues/404#issuecomment-2299766

[skurfer]

My concern with that solution is that it’s application wide. I can see a day where interfaces and other plug-ins want to use Core Animation. (I think Showcase might already be doing this.)

Abracadabra also kicks on the nVidia card, but since we don’t have source for that, it’ll probably die when we go 64-bit. :(

[pjrobertson]

I believe we can mark this as a 'will not fix' bug.

I am unsure as to whether Apple have made any progress in improving things over the past year, but do not believe it to cause too much of a problem.

[skurfer]

I agree. Not worth the trouble for two reasons:

1. There are tons of other applications/conditions that trigger a switch to the more powerful hardware. It’s basically unavoidable.
2. How often do you really need to look at the “About” panel?

[hmijail]

I have not looked at the "About" panel, and yet I find that QuickSilver is the only process in my system forcing the use of the discrete graphics card. (There was also a rather, say, "substandard" shareware program which also did that - I just substituted it with a better option).

Even Firefox plays better by the OS X rules than QuickSilver? How can that be?

Some notes: The "bezel" interface plugin causes QS to require the discrete graphics card since startup. Selecting other interface (for example, Flashlight or Nostromo) delays the requirement. However, the moment you invoke the interface and start typing a name, the discrete card is requested too. Also, opening the preferences dialog and going to the plugins section causes the request to happen.

[skurfer]

I have not looked at the "About" panel, and yet I find that QuickSilver is the only process in my system forcing the use of the discrete graphics card.

The results list is now doing this too if you’re running 10.9 on certain hardware. It’s an OS X bug. See #1649