Silverlight is HORRIBLE on OS X

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Mobster
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Joined
9 Apr 2012
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13,166
Silverlight performs horribly on my MacBook Pro Retina.

It's used on Netflix so I'm forced to use it. Watching it causes my Mac's fans to ramp up to full and the temperatures go up to almost 100 degrees C. It just seems like a terribly written plugin.

Netflix often becomes unresponsive due to Silverlight's ****** performance also.

Is this normal?!?
 
yeah I think silverlight is quite widely hated. As for your laptop overheating, do you prop it up? I'm not familiar with macbooks but most laptops have the intakes for their fans on the bottom. If you prop the macbook up it has access to more air. Might help you a bit.
 
Mason- said:
yeah I think silverlight is quite widely hated. As for your laptop overheating, do you prop it up? I'm not familiar with macbooks but most laptops have the intakes for their fans on the bottom. If you prop the macbook up it has access to more air. Might help you a bit.
Click to expand...

The main fan inputs on the Retina MacBook Pro are just under the screen hinge (they're hidden when closed) but it now also has smaller side intakes whereas the older models don't.

Temperature is high and Silverlight shouldn't be putting the fans in max. I can edit 1080p on my rMBP and the fans hardly spin up at all. I did, however, used to have a problem with Flash spinning the fans up but that was a firmware issue that Apple fixed with a patch.

I'd suggest checking for updates OP but there's no way it should be having issues. As I said above I throw a lot of heavy CPU/GPU work at mine and it hardly breaks a sweat. I'd reset the PRAM and ask for this to be moved to Apple Hardware where you may get better responses.
 
AlecR said:
Silverlight performs horribly on my MacBook Pro Retina.

It's used on Netflix so I'm forced to use it. Watching it causes my Mac's fans to ramp up to full and the temperatures go up to almost 100 degrees C. It just seems like a terribly written plugin.

Netflix often becomes unresponsive due to Silverlight's ****** performance also.

Is this normal?!?
Click to expand...

I think some of it is OSX, I have found both Silverlight and flash to majorly suck, I compared it to my windows laptop from 3 years ago against my brand new rMBP and the windows PC used 1% of CPU on flash for example, where as on OSX it used close to 100%.

There 2 plugins are bad, but there just near useless on OSX. I have found them better on Safari vs Chrome, but either way a simple plugin shouldn't max out a brand new laptop. Its my only real compliant about any other wise awesome machine.
 
Is it a new machine ? Maybe there's dust heating things up.

My retina ranges from mid 60's to 70's in Netflix using firefox fans don't go past 3000rpm once it reaches 70+.

Flash is much worse for me. Heats up in the 100's when that's being used.
 
My 13" late 2012 rMBP which I've had for about a year now gets stupidly loud and hot sometimes... for watching a youtube video! It's ridiculous.. £1300 gets you that.
 
Silverlight will use the discrete GPU by default if available. Try turning it off using gfxCardStatus.

Java is another one.
 
Ahh now you mention it, perhaps the discrete graphics might be making the problem worse.

I use two displays so I have to use the discrete graphics. I will try with just the built-in display to see if that helps things.

The fans always ramp up when editing in Final Cut Pro X, Adobe After Effects and programs of a similar nature. Is that considered normal?
 
The dGPU can use up to another 40W which will require additional cooling.

Using an external display will switch it in, as will applications like FCPX and iPhoto that request high performance graphics. The energy panel in Activity Monitor will tell you which apps are requesting it.
 
MagicBoy said:
The dGPU can use up to another 40W which will require additional cooling.

Using an external display will switch it in, as will applications like FCPX and iPhoto that request high performance graphics. The energy panel in Activity Monitor will tell you which apps are requesting it.
Click to expand...

So do you think that it's normal to get temperatures of 90 degrees C+ when using Final Cut Pro, etc?
 
90C on which component?
Is it actively processing something or just sitting idle?

If in doubt post up a screen grab. A picture is worth a thousand words... ;)
 
MagicBoy said:
Silverlight will use the discrete GPU by default if available. Try turning it off using gfxCardStatus.

Java is another one.
Click to expand...

Is it the same case for the iGPU? I've noticed in generally that I see more then normal CPU activity with both Silverlight and Flash which doesn't seem to happen on my windows laptop.
 
Web browser plugins don't appear to be the most optimised of software on OS X. Adobe Flash was terrible, performance improved a lot with v10.1 when they added hardware acceleration support for H.264.

Perhaps it looks worse than it is due to how OS X displays CPU usage? Silverlight shows 65% ish for an HD video, but that's with 1 hyper-threaded core=100%. Max CPU usage is 800% on my rMBP, so 65/800 = approx 8% of total CPU usage.
 
MagicBoy said:
Web browser plugins don't appear to be the most optimised of software on OS X. Adobe Flash was terrible, performance improved a lot with v10.1 when they added hardware acceleration support for H.264.

Perhaps it looks worse than it is due to how OS X displays CPU usage? Silverlight shows 65% ish for an HD video, but that's with 1 hyper-threaded core=100%. Max CPU usage is 800% on my rMBP, so 65/800 = approx 8% of total CPU usage.
Click to expand...


Mines roughly 100% - 100% and I have a 13" rMBP so its 25%, I guess you win some you lose some, I've used Netflix on Windows on my old laptop (Ivy bridge i7 quadcore) and it uses around 1-2% with the GPU off so its similar to the rMBP.

I have also noticed Chrome is much worse then Safari, e.g Watching a flash video at 1080p on chrome uses 120% CPU usage and on Safari it is around 80%. I have checked on the chrome task manager it does use the iGPU but it still needs the CPU to do some of the work.
 
Hmm, wonder what it's like via a Windows VM?

Chrome is bad for CPU usage and therefore battery life.

I've always used Safari. Back in '06 when I got my first Intel Mac it used to have compatibility issues all over the shop, but it's been fine for the last 5 or so years once the web designers pulled their fingers out and stopped designing IE6 specific sites.
 
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