macOS Monterey 12.3 causes issue for some Mac owners with PCI-E GPU

Recently, Apple released the new macOS Monterey 12.3 update to everyone but it is causing performance issues for some Mac users. AppleInsider reports that after updating their systems to the latest update, Mac users experience that the PCI-E GPU cards are not delivering speed as they normally do, in both eGPU enclosures and Mac Pro.

macOS Monterey 12.3

The newly seeded macOS Monterey 12.3 update concludes new features Universal Control (beta), Spatial Audio, new Emoji; several performance improvements for Siri, Podcasts app, Safari, and others; and bug and security fixes.

macOS Monterey 12.3 update reduces the performance of graphics cards on Intel-based Macs

In emails to the publisher, affected users complained of a drop in the performance of their PCI-e cards in eGPU enclosures, and Mac Pro.

One email claimed that following the update, their Mac’s processor’s integrated graphics ran faster than their “$2,800 W6800X card.” In another case, a user found their unidentified AMD RDNA card decreased in performance in a benchmark by 94% after the update.

macOS monterey 12.3

It is noted that the issue has persisted throughout the beta of macOS Monterey 12.3 but it’s not a widespread issue; Macs with AMD graphics cards are functioning as they normally do after bringing updated to the latest macOS version.

In conclusion, the publisher states that only Intel-based Mac models are affected by the graphics cards performance issue which can be resolved in a future update.

As Apple Silicon Macs don’t currently support eGPUs, the issue currently only impacts Intel-based Macs that do support the enclosures.

Apple provides the drivers for AMD video cards, not vendors. The testing and results strongly suggests there is some form of driver issue occurring with the latest update. This would be something that could potentially be solved in a software update, though Apple has yet to acknowledge the problem exists.

Intel-based and Apple Silicon Mac models compatible with macOS Monterey 12.3

  • Mac Pro (late 2013 and later)
  • iMac Pro (2017 and later)
  • iMac (later 2015 and later)
  • MacBook Air (early 2015 and later)
  • MacBook Pro (early 2015 and later)
  • MacBook (early 2016 and later)
  • Mac mini (late 2014 and later)

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Addicted to social media and in love with iPhone, started blogging as a hobby. And now it's my passion for every day is a new learning experience. Hopefully, manufacturers will continue to use innovative solutions and we will keep on letting you know about them.