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

I use iStat Menus. With Patch 6 in Act 3 the systems would stabilize at max RPM for the fans and also lots of Watts in power use (up to 100W). With Patch 7 the fans barely pass (if at all) 4000RPM and the Wattage is around 50, not much more. It looks like that somehow the game is throttled on Sonoma with Patch 7.

I play on a M1 Mac and runs as usually. Maybe is a specific config on High or Ultra as seems those affected are using a Pro or Max M-chip.

Try to set all to Low, then set to High one by one until notice the issue.

Interesting. I will give those things a try.

I'm playing partially on M1 Max and I hadn't played for a bit bit since the patch came out on Windows because I need cross save with Steam Deck to work. It does seem noticeably slower now than it had been. I'd just put it down to having just arrived in Act 3 as I remember complaints about Act 3 performance at release. I'm not normally super fussed about frame rate and will push the settings higher than they probably should be to get it looking prettier rather than smoother. But it's at a point where it's testing even my patience now, and turning the settings down isn't seeming to make much difference. I'm playing on Ultra at the moment. Only on turning all the way down to Low and 1080p does it feel like it's maybe getting performance similar to what I've had all through the rest of the game.

CPU-bound?. That's rare as I said I didn't noticed any issue, tested loading multiple locations including Act 3 and runs as always. But I use a M1 and the issue seems to affect Pro and Max chips, which differs their CPU cores configuration.

Try to open the system Activity Monitor and show the CPU history (Cmd + 3), then play some time and look if there are cores at 100% while others are lower, as the 100% ones would be the bottleneck.

I played last night and noticed that there was no lag for the first 10 minutes of just walking around in Act 3. Then it kicked in and changing the performance settings had no impact.

I reset back to the mix of high/ultra that the identify button sets. I then changed my aspect ratio to 16:10 and everything did work better. Not completely lag free, but significantly better than what I've seen since patch 7.

I don't have time to look check it with Activity Monitor right now, but it certainly shouldn't be CPU bound on M1 Max when it runs just fine on Steam Deck.

And yeah, it does generally seam to run better when I first start up (well, after dealing with the other problem, anyway) and then get worse as time goes on. Going through a loading screen into a smaller, indoor location will see everything running just fine until going out into the city again, as well.

I'm having this problem as well on my M1 Max, and sadly the new hotfix yesterday didn't improve things. I tested the 16:10 resolution tweak but that didn't impact performance. Has anyone figured out how to get BG3 working on Mac post-patch-7? It's unplayable for me with the extreme lag.

This was indeed introduced with Patch #7 (Hotfix #27) on Mac and I confirmed that Hotfix #28 still does not resolve it (to be fair there was no such claim in the release notes). I also wish more attention was paid to the Mac. I used to hit 60fps in Act 3 and not only it was dropped to 45 or lower, but worse, there's choppiness and sudden "jumps" in the frames presented. As other people have observed, after loading, the game is smooth @60fps, but once the machine heats up it's as if it throttles (which was not the case with Patch #6: the fans would go really loud by enabling High Power mode and it would preserve the FPS).

That sounds to throttling for heating due to excessive load. Maybe the unlimited framerate even with vsync enabled is not handled properly. So try to set vsync to Triple Buffer and set the fps limit to 60*.

And in the case of Macbooks, I'd set the energy saving mode for gaming, the performance loss can be up to 20%, but it should avoid any throttling for overheating and have a less noisy gameplay. Overheating is not new on laptops, and even if for working what matters is the total time, for gaming IMO the average performance is preferable, so having an extra at first and falling later due to overheating is worse.

* If you notice choppy motion set fps to 61 instead 60. Seems that sometimes it rounds by default and doesn't fit. I.e. I have a display with VRR 40-60, if set fps to 40 it runs choppy, but if set to 41 runs nicely.

This is a regression. THe fan only goes up to 3-4K RPM and stays there: it throttles because it cannot dissipate the heat fast enough. Thus I only get around 45fps and a lot of jitter and stutter.

With Patch 6 the fans would go all the way 5K+ RPM (much louder) but the game would also stabilize at 60fps even in Act 3. Somehow with Patch 7 it cannot trigger the fans to go higher. Note that by default all MBPs are NOT in High Power Mode. You need to enable it otherwise the fans never reach that high. For both Patch 6 and Patch 7 I am using High Power Mode (under Battery).

Well not perfect but try setting the vsync at Triple Buffer and fps limit to 40-41, as the Macbook Pro display is 120Hz the 40 fps should fit well.

I also noticed some polygon flickering not present in previous versions, so some changes were made to the render system.

I'm playing in a borderless window because the mouse pointer seems to be unreasonably tiny in standard fullscreen mode. It won't let you set an FPS limit unless you're in fullscreen.

It lets, I also play in borderless window and the option is enabled. Just check the square and set the bar. What is disabled is display refresh rate, but using the system one should be 120Hz on a Macbook Pro.

Oh, you're right. Thank you. I'll give it a go. Later though, as I should be working right now!

Just another testimony for the reference.

I have M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64gb of ram . On patch 6 and MacOS 14 the game ran mostly buttery smooth on ultra with any resolution (Act 3 as well).

On patch 7, hotfix 28 MacOS 15.1 the game runs very slowly with framerate drops and stuttering. While often fans are not even rotating. According to activity monitor the GPU is always 100% loaded.

I tried pretty much all fixes suggested above with no noticeable improvement.

Very much looking forward to the fix from Larian.

I have the same exact issue, and the same mac parameters. Patch 7 is pretty much unplayable. Patch 6 runs perfectly. I contacted Larian and only got some generic responses and assurance that "they're aware of the issue" but it's been a month since then and nothing improved.

The issue is definitely Patch #7, and Hotfix #28 did not resolve it.

macOS 14 + Patch #6 ran flawlessly for me (M3 Max). However, for both macOS 14.7 + macOS 15.1, Patch #7 is unplayable (went from 60fps to stuttery 45-ish fps).

Yeah, I've capped mine at 40 now as suggested and I'd be very happy with that if it was smooth, but it's not. It feels a bit better than it was uncapped but it's still stuttering.

I have M1 pro mbp and Sequoia beta. In my case the game was perfectly smooth for the first couple of minutes. But the frame drop happens just as the fans began to sound noisy.