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Currently, in OS X, the entire system is drawn using double buffering through Quartz. The purpose of this is, as far as I know, to eliminate screen tearing.

The reason I would like double buffering to be disabled is because of the mouse lag that it creates, and I am absolutely certain that double buffering is the root cause of all mouse lag in OS X (other than mouse acceleration, which I have disabled by using Razer's proprietary mouse drivers with my Razer DeathAdder).

If I boot OS X with an unsupported video card, the entire OS becomes very laggy, because QE/CI is not supported on the video card and is therefore disabled. However, double buffering is also disabled when I do this, as I can see screen tearing when I shake windows or move the mouse quickly. When boot this way, and double buffering is disabled, the mouse is perfect, just like it is on Windows. No input delay, no acceleration, just raw mouse movement.

I want to know how either double-buffering can be disabled across the entire system, or maybe even if there is a way to draw the mouse outside of Quartz, so that it is not double buffered.

Kale Muscarella
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2 Answers2

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I think what you want to disable is Beam Sync. This can be disabled through Quartz Debugger, an application that is part of the Xcode Developer Tools.

More information can be found here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=779950

(Note: Take the above with a grain of salt. I do not own a Mac and found that nearly 3 year old forum thread with Google. There are more recent threads though, just none as detailed).

Rain
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It seems Pro Tools starting with version 8 has an issue with Beam Sync. Basically it's a form of double buffering that OSX uses when drawing Quartz windows.

  • Get a preferences pane called Secrets.
  • Open Secrets and go to the System settings.
  • Look for Beam Sync and set it to disable.
  • Set Enable Quartz Extreme to On.
  • Reboot.

While running Pro Tools (and having the screen redraw slowly), you open this app, press Cmd+1, and disable Beam Sync and ensure that Quartz Extreme is On. You will immediately notice a perfectly smoove and beautifully working Pro Tools.

Rather than having to open Quartz Debug every time you run Pro Tools however, Secrets is the easiest way to set the OSX preference for this semi-permanently. For some reason however, the preference for Beam Sync occasionally gets set back to Automatic and you need to reset it.

Hope it helps.

Ahmed Bilfaqih
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