General Comments and Suggestions about gfxcardstatus

[jmlares]

Thank you for the updates Steve. Like @maciboy I am having great results from the 2.4.1i build. My main problem was that the discrete card kicked in on certain webpages on Safari, it's nice to not have to worry about that now, along with apps like Atom.io.

[simoniscasesensitive]

Thanks a million for your work on this, it's been a saviour; my discreet gfx card is nuked, even sent it off to be repaired, still no use. I'm 24 hours stable for the first time in months thanks to your version of this utility. I would love to see it default to your last choice on boot up, but it's not too much hassle to remember to switch it on on each cycle.

[pointlessone]

First of all thank you @steveschow. It's been a great help.

I wanted to share that macOS 10.12.3 update did miracles. I have 2010 MBP. It couldn't survive an hour without crashing on 10.12.x only gfxCardStatus could make it usable. Though, since 10.12.3 it's been 3 days now and my MBP haven't crashed once yet and it uses discrete graphics chip all the time (according to gfxCS).

[steveschow]

That's very interesting. Please keep us informed as you go. i would be very shocked but pleasantly surprised if Apple somehow fixed a work around for 2010 mbp's. Make sure to use some of the programs that are known to easily cause a crash

[pointlessone]

The first day I just forgot to switch into integrated-only mode because I don't reboot often. On the second day I've noticed and tried a few apps (Console was particularly terrible for me) and it all worked fine.

There were a few changes to graphics drivers in this update. As long as I can recall the crash has been always reported coming from graphics driver for me. It was always happened in the same place (as reported by macOS crash report tool). So it appears to be at leas to some degree reproducible. Maybe someone found how to exploit it and reported it to Apple.

I also wonder if this is just me or if others experience same improvement. I have 2 2010 MBPs. Both seem to behave so far.

In any case, I'll keep you posted.

[bschembri]

Did anyone else start having GPU kernel panics after upgrading to macOS Sierra 10.12.3 ? I have an early 2013 rMBP. Crash happens only when on discrete gfx card.

@steveschow, did you notice any increased demand for gfxCardStatus since the 10.12.3 release a week ago.

The fact that it had been working fine for almost 4 years, and that the GPUpanic issue started occurring after an OS upgrade, gives me hope that this is not a hardware issue.

The original gfxCardStatus app was not working for me -- some apps forced a switch to "discrete only". This fork seems to be doing the job of keeping me "integrated only", so thanks Steve.

[steveschow]

I'm on El Capitan and don't plan to upgrade so unfortunately I have zero experience with sierra. Someone else reported that latest sierra update seems to have fixed panics on 2010 MBP, but I want to hear more.

I'm on version 2.4.3i, macOS Sierra 10.12.4 and everything is working great. I am wondering if I could request a feature.

Would it be possible to add the option to create and edit a list of applications and set whether it could use Integrated or Discrete graphics?

I envision the on/off option appearing under "Dynamic Switching" as, for example, "Dynamic Switching (Application Specific)". The list of approved applications would appear under the preference window panel.

Thanks for your work so far!

[steveschow]

Its a good idea. Create a new issue with that as the title. But honestly, I have no idea if and when I would be able to do it. But if not me, then maybe someone else would pick up that task someday.