Krita's graphics output on macOS is relatively slow, and it is very slow on 5k iMacs. This seems to be related to QT's QWidget implementation on macOS. And this is probably a well-known problem. If not, this ticket can keep track of infos about QT's state of things. Two useful pointers I found: https://forum.qt.io/topic/59578/rendering-performance-problems-on-imac-with-retina-5k/24 https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-44228 As QT's OpenGL compositing internally happens with and without Krita's OpenGL canvas, switching to Krita's raster canvas does not make a difference.
Well, if you apply these patches does it get even slower? https://phabricator.kde.org/D7973 https://phabricator.kde.org/D7982 https://phabricator.kde.org/D7984
*** Bug 373676 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Let's just close this as upstream: there isn't anything we can do about it ourselves. For tracking what is being done in Qt, it would be better to use Phabricator.