Open Radar

 
Radar as formatted text and with pictures at:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/rendering-glitches-only-in-specific-apps-photos-and-safari-on-mbp-15-mid-2014-when-dgpu-active-in-macos-11-big-sur.2284320/

Below, at least the plaintext representation, as good as possible.



TL;DR:​

In the recent weeks I experience graphical glitches in specific apps only (Photos + Safari)
on my MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) and only when running on its dGPU which is a NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M.

For a number of reasons (see inline) I do not think that this is thermal, aging issue,
but rather a software issue having to do with recent updates:
NVIDIA driver, MetalAPI, possibly recent Firmware/BootROM upgrade.
Glitch I in Photos.app and Glitch II in Safari are both 100% reproducible!


WITHIN THIS BUG REPORT:​
- Roman numerals refer to the separate observed glitches.
- Arabic numerals refer to the provided screenshots / screen recordings.


GLITCH I in Photos.app​

Always correct behavior on iGPU (100% reproducible)​

- Disconnect power adapter to run on battery
- Launch Photos.app, it runs on the iGPU
- Switch from "Months" to "Days" view and later back again
- Perfect animation, always

Always faulty behavior on dGPU (100% reproducible)​

- Connect power adapter

- Launch Photos.app, it enforces dGPU
- 1a) Switch from "Months" to "Days" view and back again
-- During the transition within the content canvas of the single-window-app:
--- The upper ca. 30% and lower ca. 30% off the canvas show the faulty behavior:
--- Random white/grey lines, triangles or rects overlaying some of the photos.
-- Sometimes this does not happen at the first transition, but just scroll up or down a bit, and then transist, and latest at the 3rd-5th repetition you get the glitch.
--- And if you then transist back and forth, without scrolling inbetween, you always reproduce the glitch

- 1b) If you are already in the bug and then scroll within the "Months" view, then the gap surfaces between the photos flashes in full white or with white zig-zag lines.


GLITCH II in Safari​

Not reproducible. But when occurring certain environment commonalities are observable:
- Experienced this twice within 8 days while using my computer ca. 6 days a week for 6-10 hours a day.
- Both times happened on GitHub.com, though on different project pages.
-- Not on other domains, and I sure visit 100 different domains/websites per day.
- Always occurred while on dGPU:
-- On 2020-02-03 I ran on an external display which enforced the dGPU.
-- On 2020-02-11 I ran on the internal display, had Photos.app running in the background (I explicitly mean the GUI, not the daemons like photoanalysisd), which enforced dGPU.

2) Visible glitches​
- Black squares and triangles (assumingely polygons of accelerated graphics)
- Font rendering shows broken glyphs

3) Workaround:​
- 3a) When Safari suffers the glitch
- 3b) Switch from dGPU to iGPU
-- I did this while running on power adapter effectively by quitting the only dGPU dependent app Photos.app
- 3c) Thermals were unsuspicious while that time. Fans very relaxed.
- 4) Also other people on the Internet report the same symptoms​
All of late 2020 or early 2021, so very likely all related to recent Safari and macOS Catalina / Big Sur. And in many cases mentioning NVIDIA GPUs.

4a) Weird black triangular graphics disruption
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/weird-black-triangular-graphics-disruption-ad-related.2222160/?post=28191230#post-28191230

4b) Safari graphics glitch with MacRumors
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/safari-graphics-glitch-with-macrumors.2257989/?post=28975745#post-28975745

4c) Safari graphics glitch with MacRumors nr2
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/safari-graphics-glitch-with-macrumors.2257989/?post=29441279#post-29441279
​

GLITCH III in Safari​

Always reproducible!
- 5a) I now have a stable reproduction:
-- With your external display connected, hence the dGPU on, open Safari
-- Open wxcharts.com (a weather website)
-- The satellite/weather image sequence shows a rendering glitch: Green rectangles (ca 90x50px) along a diagonal axis are shown above that satellite/weather image sequence. Regardless where the playback/slider is.
-- 4d) exactly as user @Benblob688 reported on https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252176898
-- 5b) For comparison, while still on dGPU the same website renders flawlessly on Brave Browser (Chromium web engine)
-- In Safari: As soon as you switch to iGPU by disconnecting the external display, the window re-renders instantly, and all is fine!

ISOLATION BY TIMELINE:​

- These were the things which I recently changed:
-- 2021-01-18 Upgraded macOS 10.15.7 with 2020-001 Supplemental (had postponed this for long)
--- macOS: 10.15.7 19H15 -> 19H114
--- Boot-ROM: 162.0.0.0.0 -> 429.0.0.0.0
-- 2021-01-21 Upgraded macOS 10.15.7 Catalina to 10.11.1 Big Sur

Glitch II in Safari definitely only experienced first on 2020-02-03. Never before.

Glitch I in Photos I only deliberately noticed on 2021-01-29 in Big Sur and thereafter.
- But I may have already noticed it in Catalina somewhen 2020 and ignored it, rarely used it then.
- Luckily I still had bootable backups of Catalina and Mojave and booted them on the same machine with the meanwhile newer BootROM 429.0.0.0 and ran:
-- Photos in Catalina: Exactly the same glitch happens!
-- Photos in Mojave: Different navigation paradigm "Photos | Moments | Collections | Years". But I scrolled around wildly and zoomed in and out wildly, and no glitches at all!

ISOLATION BY SCOPE:​

- My thermals are overally very ok. The fans are mostly silent, also when the incidents happened.
- I never have rendering artefacts on the screen in general or in other apps.
-- Only in the forementioned specific apps Photos and Safari.
- Other 3D apps work without glitches:
-- Apple Maps in 3D mode in cities which have the 3D buildings
-- Brave Browser running Google Maps in 3D mode
-- Google Earth Pro (seems to use Qt/OpenGL)
- I don't think (or hope) that it's first signs of dGPU death as it was on my MacBook Pro (Late 2006) with the widely spread contact-pin issues of this series back then. The difference there was that heat indeed noticable and the glitches were general and not app-specific.
- So I assume it's indeed a software issue (NVIDIA drivers, Metal API, maybe recent BootROM upgrade v162 -> v429) and hope that it will be solved.