Mabook Air M2 15 Inch slowdown issues

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jesslorenzo Author

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6 points

Mabook Air M2 15 Inch slowdown issues

I have the entry level MacBook Air M2 15 inch with 8G of Memory and 256G SSD.

I recently had to bring my 2020 iMac to the apple repair under apple care due to a failing power.

Anyway, using the MacBook Air M2, I was surprised that it did not take much to slow down the laptop.

OBS: With OBS running taking a USB feed from my iPhone 14pro for video, Virtual camera mode activeated
Zoom: accessing OBS virtual camera thru a USB C Dongle, Shure MV7 connected directly to the MBAir
One Safari window open using 200 Mb of memory.
One presentation in Power Point shared in zoom, no animation or video

The memory pressure goes up and turns orange in the activity monitor. This is no problem since this happens to my other MacBook Air M1 with the same donfig.

However, the MacBook Air M2 15 starts to crawl when switching apps and the voice and video in OBS and zoom goes out of sync when swap file increases to 700MB.

This make the Macbook air M2 slower than my MacBook Air M1!

Has anyone seen this issue?

Is this a MacBook Air memory issue or is it a USB Hub issue?

MacBook Air 15″

Posted on Nov 16, 2023 8:51 PM

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Answer 1

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jesslorenzo Author

Level 1

6 points

Feb 14, 2024 4:17 PM in response to jesslorenzo

I have no cleaner or optimizer, nor VPN software.

After some research, I found the culprit is the shared memory. Once I use OBS or any software that uses the GPU, the memory is used up, and the swap file increases, thus causing the slowdown.

There is really no solution to this. My wife uses the MBA 15 now for day-to-day tasks such as email and web browsing.

The 8G Macbook is not fit for anything more than that.

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Answer 2

Feb 14, 2024 1:55 PM in response to jesslorenzo

Do you have any anti virus, Mac "Cleaner", Mac "Optimizer" or VPN software installed. Any of these will, most often, interfere with the optimum health of your Mac.

If you'd like us to dig a bit deeper, please download/install/run the free program Etrecheck, then provide the report here so we can examine it for likely things hampering your Mac. This article describes how to to this: How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

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Answer 3

Feb 14, 2024 12:56 PM in response to jesslorenzo

Hello,

I've been having something similar happening to me.

I've been trying to use my new MacBook air m2 to stream on kick.

I've used the suggested settings that are always on YouTube tutorials and tried just about everything.

I am sometimes able to get 30fps, but most of time when I am using simple apps like safari, I will get a really bad output lag on the kick website. Specially when switching tabs or putting on a different YouTube video.

And my frame rates drop to as low as 8 or less frames per second at least on OBS. My kbps will drop to 0 sometimes.

But on twitch the stream can become unwatchable due to how much the video will lag behind, sometimes the images will be stuck for minutes. And it usually happens as I try to do anything on my Mac.

I also don't understand why, as the few first streams it worked fine, and it was later on I started getting this issue.

But it doesn't just affect OBS and streaming, while having this issue. The MacBook will become notoriously slower to the point it needs to be restarted.

My internet is pretty fast. I get as much as 65mbps upload speed and over 550mbps download speed.

It has to be a problem with the MAC. It is really frustrating seeing everyone claim this is supposed to run smoothly, but it is not working.

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Mabook Air M2 15 Inch slowdown issues

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