I just installed Gimp because I can't run Photoshop on my old machine (2012 IMac). So far it seems like a great program, very robust, except for one issue. When I scroll around in an open image or even in a dialog box it doesn't render, it glitches, iim not sure how to explain it except that the scrolling doesn't refresh the image in the new position. It just gets all fragmented. This is almost a deal breaker for using gimp. any help would be appreciated.
I've read some forums that describe similar issues and blame it on the graphics card. I'm running a Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M 512MB and have never had any issues scrolling or other graphics issues in other apps. Is this card not up to snuff for Gimp?
any advice would be appreciated.

A GTX with 512MB is quite small these days, but I wouldn't expect GIMP to not even be able to draw the UX with it.
- It could be a driver issue (it's a 12 year old computer). Make sure you have the latest driver compatible with that card.
- Install a nvindia memory viewer. I don't know what's available for your Mac, but on Linux, there's nvtop you can use, to se just how much graphics memory (not normal memory) you are currently using.
- How big is the image / file you are working on. A large 300 dpi image file opened up with layers etc can easily chop up dozens of graphics memory. You could see if there's a correlation between the size of file and your graphics issues; if a small image doesn't show the effect, the problem is likely graphics memory, otherwise it could be a driver/incompatibility of some sort.
- Look at logs. I don't know what Mac offers, but something akin to your window manager logs. Maybe it will show a bunch of errors logged (or not, but worth checking).

thanks Griatch,

The image is not that big. A 2MB jpg roughly 6000 x 4000. so it shouldn't cause any issues because of size.
It's just strange the issue only shows up in Gimp. Ive run the machine for 12 years including using photoshop and Lightroom professionally with huge files and have never had the behavior. So I'm guessing its a compatibility thing somehow?
I'm not much of a programmer, more of a photog and imager, so not sure how much I can dig into as far as the deep stuff. zIt is pretty frustrating tho, so I'm hoping its not something that will keep me from using Gimp.
I'll check out some things you suggest.

thanks!

Just downloaded and installed an older version from back in '20 or '21 and its working smooth. So must just be a compatibility with my machine and the latest version?

oh well its working.

24Mpx is somewhat big. When you load this in Gimp you need a couple hundred megabytes of RAM. How uch memory have you got and how much RAM is still available when you start GIMP? Check `Windows > Dockable dialog > Dashboard` to see how Gimp uses your memory. Also check the `Tile cache size` in preferences (System or System Resources page) and set it to as much RAM as you want Gimp to use (if too small,Gimp will do its own swapping to disk).