Resolved Macbook Pro A1502 (mid 2014) - choppy animations, sometimes really long wake time after sleep

[732]

Hey y'all.


My A1502 has a weird behavior that honestly can't be imo the norm. My mac sometimes takes a really long time to wake up after sleep. It doesn't seem to matter for how long because it happens randomly. What makes me concerning more is that my mac has choppy animations, specially when i'm browsing the internet. It doesn't seem that responsive.
Before using this device I used a mid 2012 MacBook Pro with 12GB RAM and a 480GB SSD, which had the same issues but was way less performant (primarly GPU intensive tasks). It drove me so much nuts that I purchased a used mid 2014 (A1502) with 16GB RAM (see screenshot "About this mac"), expecting a little bit.. more I guess? Not M1 performance of course, but still.

Regarding to the bad performance after I purchased the A1502, I instantly opened it and changed the thermal paste, cleaned the s*** out of my mac and noticed that the battery is bulging like crazy. Because of that, I bought a brand new battery from a known german seller (CDX Datentechnik) and it holds for about 7 - 7,5h a charge. I love it. (see screenshot "coconutResult")
I'm constantly monitoring the sensors and the temps, not noticing ANYTHING weird (see screenshot "Temps").

The choppiness is stretching trough the ui of macOS and it's apps, the temps are while lagging low (60 - 75°C), Intel Power Gadget is not showing any throttling.

What's also weird is that my mac takes sometimes really long to wake up from sleep (closing the lid, opening the lid 5 mins after for example). It doesn't matter for how long I let the mac sleep, sometimes it happens after 5 minutes, sometimes it happens after 5 hours of being in sleep mode. For that I don't have any logical explenation and.. can't provide better information besides what's written here. If there are any logs for sleep/wake-behavior that I can show, please tell me. I'll try to provide as many informations as possible.

Maybe the cause of the issue is that I restored from a TimeMachine-Backup from my old mid 2012? I installed, before restoring from TimeMachine, a fresh version of macOS Big Sur on the A1502.
Another important info: The last backup that I took from my old mid 2012 was, while it was on Big Sur (OpenCore Legacy Patcher). Maybe that's the cause of the issue.

Tl;dr: My mac isn't performing as nice as I was expecting. The UI is choppy and I have weird wake behavior. Mac takes up to 1 minute to wake up from sleep. When the login screen is show, I have to wait about 60 seconds to put in my passcode. Cleaned everything, changed the battery, resetted SMC/NVRAM, same behavior.


Thank you guys for reading my text.

-732

 

[EugW]

I'm constantly monitoring the sensors and the temps, not noticing ANYTHING weird (see screenshot "Temps").

Monitoring the temp sensors is a waste of time. Logging into your user account is not going to tax the CPU much. Changing the thermal paste wouldn't help either.

Also, you don't need 12 GB or 16 GB RAM to log into your user account. I have a 2014 Mac mini with 2.6 GHz i5, 8 GB RAM, and budget DRAM-less SSD, and it is much, much more responsive than your machine. Same goes for my 2015 MacBook Pro 2.7 GHz Core i5 A1502 with 8 GB RAM.

Tl;dr: My mac isn't performing as nice as I was expecting. The UI is choppy and I have weird wake behavior. Mac takes up to 1 minute to wake up from sleep. When the login screen is show, I have to wait about 60 seconds to put in my passcode. Cleaned everything, changed the battery, resetted SMC/NVRAM, same behavior.

How much of your SSD is filled up? Have you checked the SSD condition with DriveDX?

Have you tried a new clean install? I wouldn't restore from a hacked OS install.

 

[732]

Thank you for your reply!

Also, you don't need 12 GB or 16 GB RAM to log into your user account. I have a 2014 Mac mini with 2.6 GHz i5, 8 GB RAM, and budget DRAM-less SSD, and it is much, much more responsive than your machine. Same goes for my 2015 MacBook Pro 2.7 GHz Core i5 A1502 with 8 GB RAM.

Well, than I wrote something wrong. I just was refering to the specs of my two devices. I do not remember any time where I got the memory pressure to display a yellow graph..

How much of your SSD is filled up? Have you checked the SSD condition with DriveDX?

Did not do that. Here's the screenshot. I see that the wear leveling count is a bit low, is it bad? Thanks!

Have you tried a new clean install? I wouldn't restore from a hacked OS install.

I will try it today, but not on the internal ssd, since if that helps, I need to install my programs manually which will take some time...

 

[EugW]

22% wear is fine. That means it still has 78% of its lifespan left.

How full is your drive?

 

[732]

22% wear is fine. That means it still has 78% of its lifespan left.

How full is your drive?

Here:

The "Other" section is the biggest with 83,38GB and I don't know what it actually is.

 

[EugW]

Having 75 GB free is fine. That's 30% free.

However, press the Verwalten button to see if you can clean anything out.

As for "Other", often times it is a lot of junk. It may include cache files, temp files, and unused installer .dmg files, as well as old iPhone backups, etc. There are tutorials online about how to find what's in "Other", and how to safely delete some.

 

[732]

Having 75 GB free is fine. That's 30% free.

However, press the Verwalten button to see if you can clean anything out.

As for "Other", often times it is a lot of junk. It may include cache files, temp files, and unused installer .dmg files, as well as old iPhone backups, etc. There are tutorials online about how to find what's in "Other", and how to safely delete some.

I honestly can't look into "Other" or "Sonstige". Even if I delete everything it doesn't shrink much, so I give my current installed system up and I'm right now rebuilding it from scratch.

I wouldn't restore from a hacked OS install.

I think that is the root cause of my issues. I'm running another fresh installed instance of Big Sur on an external SSD and I notice that my mac seems to run smoother overall, but it could be placebo.

 

[732]

So, after I installed Big Sur 11.6.2 freshly again and installed all the old programs manually (instead of using the TM-Backup) I noticed a huge speed improvement. Wake up issues are basically non existent anymore, sometimes my mac needs 5 - 10 Seconds to show me on the lock screen my user name and the password input form, but I can live with that delay to be honest.

I also noticed that I have more free memory left on my hard drive.

I wouldn't restore from a hacked OS install.

So, I guess the issue was caused by my TimeMachine-Backup that I used. Thank you EugW!

 

[EugW]

Glad its working fine now.

sometimes my mac needs 5 - 10 Seconds to show me on the lock screen my user name and the password input form, but I can live with that delay to be honest.

That's in the normal range with these old machines IIRC.