Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Slowness on MacOS since October 1 update

I also have an M1 Max and was having the same issue as you. I think we both posted on r/macgaming as well. So I think I have a solution, I've had no issues since doing this.

- Ensure you're in performance mode in the energy settings
- Use Mac Fan Control to ensure the fans are at a constant 3500rpm (or higher) - I found that to be the sweet spot
- Play at Native resolution / 16:10 (assuming you're using the machines display) or whatever the native external display is
- Fullscreen mode
- Seetings high, no FSR
- Frame limit 40fps (if on internal display) or 30fps if on external 60hz display

This works for me. The issue seems to be if the screen resolution is not the same as the game resolution or in the same aspect ratio. You get a long lag every half second or so which is unbearable.

Yes, it's not just the 45fps it's the stutter that really makes it unplayable (have an M3 Max, same issue, starts smooth and then goes really bad).

But that's still unacceptable, BG3 is essentially broken for Mac uses since early October with no end in sight. It's more than a month.

Just wanted to add, I wanted to play this when I travel on my MBP (M3 Max 16C) while away from my gaming PC. Gave it a try today and it was a terrible experience. Even if I can get a solid 60 fps, the stuttering was out of this world, I don't know why or how this is happening lol but from this thread it looks normal...

just moving with WASD it stutters pretty badly, regardless of quality settings.

Borderless Fullscreen or Fullscreen made no difference btw.

This is just so out of character for Larian to ignore this... I mean, they have always been so supportive of the community. It probably is true that Mac-players are a small group, but a single tweet, like, Mac users we see you, bear with us... and some Halsin meme... would be nice. Instead, not a word of attention while some of us cannot play their favorite game in the world for so long. With no solution in sight and completely no clue on when to even expect it.

I hope they are coming with patch soon. It has become unplayable. I had a huge gap this year on playing the game...and after i started playing it again few days ago, i was shocked how bad was the performance! I tried all possible settings, nothing helped! I even went to the extent of thinking about upgrading my M2 MAX (32GB / 38 GPU) to an M4 MAX believing that somehow my "old" laptop is at fault... Luckily i kept searching and found out they totally destroyed MAC version with their latest patches.

So true. I'm dealing with a lot of mental health crap due to material conditions (and the material conditions themselves, obviously), and BG3 was the only thing that made my existence a tiny bit brighter. Now even being able to play an older version of the game doesn't help, because apparently Larian are the same as any other run-of-the-mill corporate entity.

For what's worth there seems to be a work around:
https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/...remedy_for_baldurs_gate_3_patch_7s_poor/

But it's already 1.5 month since BG3 was broken on macOS. Not only the platform is left in this state for so long, but also the fact it was broken with Patch 7 means there's little to no testing taking place on macOS.

Yes!!

the fix!!

The last one did work! Setting system priority does work! Baldurs gate is back to running the way it used to.

I was concerned about trying to use the fix, so I inquired ChatGPT for extra explanations and instructions:
https://chatgpt.com/share/673fa587-d158-8001-9701-84db2b533a24

Setting priority to -15 worked for me just fine.

One of the issues I was concerned about was how setting system priority to the lowest value of -20 (which is the maximum priority) may affect MacOS running. By giving overwhelming priority to BG3 you may impact essential OS processes, in theory. Again I set priority to -15 and still was able to smoothly use messengers and a browser, but your mileage may vary depending on how powerful your system is.