Mac discrete graphics card required.

[skoya]

For some reason on a mac book pro retina, opening brackets causes the graphics card to switch from integrated to discrete. This drains the battery quicker when using brackets on the move. Note that chrome/safari and others do not switch graphics. Do we know why brackets does? - If there is an advanced rendering feature being used by brackets then perhaps a switch/option to disable would be greatly appreciated.

[JeffryBooher]

@skoya do you know when this started?

[JeffryBooher]

@skoya Also, do you see this with the Chrome Canary (https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/canary.html) build as well? I only have 10.8 on retina and gfxCardStatus has issues with 10.8 but it seems that the compositing mode used in the newer builds of Chromium may be shifting the GPU into discreet mode.

[skoya]

I am not sure when it started. Chrome Canary is fine: 31.0.1619.0 - it doesn't switch away from the integrated graphics card.

I am just updating canary to the latest version will report back once downloaded (on 3g at the moment).

I also have OSX 10.8.4

[skoya]

31.0.1620.0 doesn't switch either. Could there be something in the brackets app shell?

[gruehle]

Medium priority to @JeffryBooher for investigation. This may be an issue with CEF, or it could be something triggered by some of our custom CSS. We should figure out what is causing this switch.

@njx had a good suggestion -- try running Tailor (the Chrome Packaged App version of Brackets) and see if it also triggers the discreet graphics card.

[peterflynn]

We could also test the CEF theory by doing something like window.location.href = "www.google.com"; in the dev tools for Brackets, and seeing if that simpler content running in CEF also forces the discrete GPU.

[mseymour]

I'm on 0.34.0-10729 here (Mid-2012 non-retina MBP), and it switches graphics from integrated to discrete.

It's kind of a pain when the card takes a while to switch (No idea if it has to do with the fact that I only have 4GB ram or what, though.)

[framerate]

This behavior is still happening, yet I noticed this bug was closed? Is this something we should look at?

[njx]

This bug is still open. (The "closed" indication above is for another issue that was a duplicate of this one.)

[CMRahman]

Same thing happens in Maverics as well. Is anyone looking into it?

[peterflynn]

@CMRahman You can check the assignee of any bug in the header at the top of the page. In this case it's assigned to @JeffryBooher, so that's who's looking into it.

[JeffryBooher]

It looks like this problem is caused by Chrome Compositing:
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=192668

I also see this

Even without having any tabs open or fresh start with Chrome just showing the Google search page.

Chrome: Version 31.0.1650.57

Marking this item to Track

[peterflynn]

@skoya @mseymour @framerate @CMRahman Can you reply back and let us know (a) what vintage Mac you're using (Apple menu > About this Mac > More Info should give something like "Mid 2009") and (b) what version of Mac OS you're running. It would also be useful if you could check whether launching Chrome itself causes the same thing to happen. Thanks!

This Chromium comment is interesting:

There are severe bugs in the graphics drivers for the mid-2010 MacBook Pro which can lead to entire system lockups when switching between the integrated and discrete GPU. For this reason Chrome forces the use of the discrete GPU on such systems.

Unclear what exactly defines "such systems" but it would be good to see what the patterns are among users who are hitting this.