10 ms·

Some MacBook Pro users complain about throttling issues

81 points by AnatMl2 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ancorevard 8y ago
Looking forward to the day when Apple will dump Intel and ship its own "A chip" in the MacBooks.
- spamizbad 8y ago
  The thermal overhead of x86 instruction decoding isn’t holding these machines back.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    No, but Intel's failed promise to keep total thermal output down in the last 3 generations did. They failed their TDP and die shrink projections when those machines were designed. So, Apple would have had to redesign the whole case to match the new reality (which they could, but for their kind of redesigns it takes more time and people were already complaining about the lack of a 32GB option).
    - komali2 8y ago
      But why then did other laptop manufacturers not get affected by the issue?
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Others are as well (e.g [1], [2] -- similarly you'll find for Lenovo and others). It's just that Apple gets preferential negative reporting (who would click on an Asus link?) Plus, those with clunky "gamer" / "desktop replacement" style cases are not. (1) https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-series-facing-heavy-throttling-issues.232538.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-series-f... (2) https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/7wqzhg/dell_not_solving_its_laptop_cpu_throttling_issues/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/7wqzhg/dell_not_solvi...
    - jasonlotito 8y ago
      Apple has had years to do this. Years to plan for this. This is their product. They are the one putting their brand on it. Sorry, but they've already demonstrated they had the time to build out a 32GB machine that could do this. They had the time. They just chose to invest it in a touch bar and a thinner design. They've had the time.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >Sorry, but they've already demonstrated they had the time to build out a 32GB machine that could do this. They had the time. That's the same 2016 design as the new model. So it definitely doesn't prove that "they had the time" -- and even less that they wasted it in "a touch bar and a thinner design". The touch bar and thinner design came at the time of the Intel promises, and matched OK with the performance seen at the time. On 2016, when they presented it, Intel was still promising lowered TDP cpus in the pipeline.
        jasonlotito 8y ago
        > even less that they wasted it in "a touch bar and a thinner design". Yes. They had the time. They chose to invest it in putting a touch screen on your keyboard.
        coldtea 8y ago
        You got your timeline backwards. Apple put the "touch screen on your keyboard" when they introduced the current design in 2016. At the time, and for the next year, 2017, the design was perfectly fine for the then-current Intel CPUs models. And Intel was promising even more efficient models. It's not like there was a thermal problem in 2016, when Apple introduced the design and they ignored it to concentrate on the touch strip. Not only wasn't there such a problem at 2018, it still wasn't in 2017 either. One could argue that Apple should have created a new design in the 5-6 previous months during which they had Intels new chips at hand. But that's a much shorter notice, and something totally different than the inane complain about "focusing on the touch screen on the keyboard" which gets the timeline backwards.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  All indicators point to that being the day you will be required to only run apps from the official Apple App Store, unless you pay for a developer cert like for iOS devices.
Endama 8y ago
I feel like Apple is making similar mistakes that Microsoft made a few decades back, its walled garden has become so ubiquitous that they assume that there isn't any trimming that needs to be done. Specifically,Macs are basically the only FreeBSD-based machine with a consumer-friendly interface (ironically this may no longer be true once Windows gets first-party linux support). However, issues like these make me resentful that my day-to-day is dependent on OSX. I hope that some other competitor really steps into the currently (admittedly slim) hole in the market that is growing between professional users and the average Macbook user. EDIT: corrected my mistake about linux!
- foldr 8y ago
  >Macs are basically the only Linux-based machine [...] Macs aren't Linux-based.
- Rapzid 8y ago
  Macs aren't Linux based, they are BSD based and that's not even being pedantic.
  - glup 8y ago
    OP probably meant POSIX-compliant
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nothrabannosir 8y ago
  > Macs are basically the only Linux-based machine with a consumer-friendly interface … Someone will point this out sooner or later, so I might as well do it ;) Macs are neither Linux, nor the only. Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD. Linux machines usually come with GNU tools, and BSD have their own set, with subtle differences causing no end of confusion for the up and coming developers :) sed, grep, ls, etc. All slightly different interfaces (this is why brew offers a package to install the GNU version of all those tools, iirc “gnuutils” ?). The kernel itself is completely different, of course. Android, however, would fit that description quite well.
tomovo 8y ago
Almost feels like they are making things worse on purpose to make the ARM transition truly justified for everyone.
Ambroos 8y ago
To be honest, Apple's MBP CPU upgrades have never been worth it. They are advertised with these big turbo frequency increases that are rarely ever achieved. Even the base frequency doesn't matter because they'll clock far lower if needed to save battery life. For both the 13" and 15" MacBook Pro's, the performance differences between the base and upgraded CPUs are negligible (always less than 10% increase from the slowest to the fastest CPU for the same size, according to Geekbench). You'll get a higher frequency for a tiny amount of time before thermal throttling brings everything down to the same level anyway. They are not limited by Intel's software settings but purely by the cooling hardware. For example, the cheapest 13" MBP from 2017 has a 2.3Ghz base / 3.6Ghz turbo and scores 9079. Most expensive one (3.5Ghz / 4.0Ghz) scores 9552. That is an increase under 6% for a price difference that is far, far larger. Madness. If you buy a MacBook, please don't spend money on CPU upgrades. Thanks.
- caycep 8y ago
  by that measure, I have always never been enthusiastic about discrete GPU's and the extra heat/battery drain. I hope external GPU's become commonplace, inexpensive and reliable
- lkramer 8y ago
  I don't own a Mac, so I'm asking out of curiosity, but does this apply when it's plugged in as well?
  - dep_b 8y ago
    Yes, it's mainly a heat issue.
  - Ambroos 8y ago
    Yes, the cause for throttling is only thermal as long as your battery is over ~5% charged. In fact, while charging performance might even be a bit lower because charging the battery generates some heat as well, further lowering performance.
  - JohnTHaller 8y ago
    With the new i9, it doesn't matter if it is plugged in. The cooling setup in the laptop is just inadequate to keep it running at speed for more than a couple minutes according to David Lee and other tech reviewers.
virtualritz 8y ago
I am just flabbergasted. Apple is ruining the MacBook brand with every update they release. My 2017 MBP keyboard is ready for the mandatory replacement. The power brick has no 'ears' and the cable no clip for safe transport any more. USB C only means I always have a bunch of adapters dangling from my laptop that make it look like a bad attempt at adding some 'cyberpunk' feel to it. And now they finally upgrade the MBP hardware and then this?!
- coldtea 8y ago
  >I am just flabbergasted. Apple is ruining the MacBook brand with every update they release. Yeah, first by not releasing "MBPs with 32GB RAM" and then by releasing them. They can never get a chance... >USB C only means I always have a bunch of adapters dangling from my laptop Or, you know, just buy USB-C to whatever cables and be done with it. It's like a $50 investment for a $2000+ laptop, if having an adapter is so much of a problem. I have USB-C to A, USB-C to that bizarro USB B BS 2.5 external hard disks have, USB-C to lighting, and USB-C to HDMI. End of story, no adapters to carry. YMMV.
  - komali2 8y ago
    Do you mean USBC male to HDMI male? What about when you need to plug into the office HDMI projector?
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Then you need an additional USB-C to female HDMI of which are tons from various brands + the office's male cable. Or you can get just the USB-C to female HDMI alone, and a standard HDMI cable for your monitor. You aren't going to be carrying HDMI cables around anyway.
      - smilekzs 8y ago
        > an additional USB-C to female HDMI which is called an adapter (edit to fit terminology in this thread)
tlb 8y ago
It's underappreciated how much thermal capacity varies from machine to machine, and over time. It makes benchmarking hard. Clock speeds, because they're crystal-controlled, don't vary by more than several PPM between machines. Thermal capacity varies by ±10% easily. The thermal resistance depends on a bunch of mechanical factors that are hard to control in manufacturing, like how well the thermal grease fills the tiny pores in the metal of the heat sinks, and how well the air flows through the ventilation ducts. And these usually get worse over time as bubbles form in the grease and dust sticks to the fan blades. And of course it depends on room temperature and pressure. It means that benchmarks will have to be done under more tightly controlled conditions. The automotive world has standards for this, where horsepower measurements are adjusted by a correction factor that depends on temperature and pressure.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  Those are all reasons why you should engineer in a thermal margin. If some proportion of machines are throttling out of the box, then most machines will start throttling as the thermal management system degrades. You're supposed to account for the ageing of the thermal material and clogging of the airflow path and degradation of the fan bearings. You're supposed to leave in some headroom for warm rooms, high altitude and partially blocked vents. It's yet another symptom of Apple's preoccupation with thickness. The 2015 MacBook Pro was 18mm thick. The new MacBook Pro is 15mm thick. After all the furore over USB-C and unreliable keyboards and the loss of MagSafe, was that 3mm of z-height a worthwhile tradeoff?
  - tlb 8y ago
    I don't think there's room for margin any more. Margin means fixing a power limit slightly lower than what the worst machine can sustain. That probably means leaving 10-20% performance on the table for average machines.
    - stefan_ 8y ago
      No, you don't get to blame this on the processor. Modern processors are perfectly capable of operating exactly at the limit of the cooling system they are provided. No worries there. There is no "setpoint" you need to set; the processor ramps up, then sustains. This is purely a mechanical engineering issue. They haven't designed it properly.
laythea 8y ago
This kind of trick reminds me of broadband internet where you buy X MB connection but actually get X/Y MB. Should be laws against this behavior.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Those laws would be a great example of legislators being technologically ignorant. Optimizing for bursty behavior is not only acceptable, but is what you typically want. Even if you're a developer, your compile-edit cycle typically will be on the order of a couple of minutes of load, or less. Being able to ramp up to 4 GHz during that time and then rushing to idle is what maximizes performance within a given thermal constraint. As to advertising, advertising the burst speed, with the appropriate caveat, is usually the correct decision too. Under full load, almost any modern laptop will get under 2 hours of battery life. Should they be advertised as such? No, that's a completely un-helpful metric. Under typical use, where the machine is idle most of the time, you will in fact get 8 hours or whatever of use. Apple actually advertises these machines as 2.2 or 2.6 GHz machines, with "up to 4.3 GHz Turbo Boost" in smaller font below. This is actually probably deceptive (though in a way that is not favorable to Apple). In typical use, the machine will feel more like a 4.3 GHz machine than a 2.6 GHz one. (E.g. comparing it to your 2.6 GHz Haswell-era Mac.)
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    Where we can bring this analogy back to relevance is when you deal with ISPs that offer "up to X", but in reality, they're so (oversold/badly managed/other excuse) that you will never reach that quoted speed in daily usage. Apple, here, has sold a machine that thermally throttles at idle, basically guaranteeing that its quoted clock speed will never be used, even under load.
j-c-hewitt 8y ago
Isn't this not so much an issue with the Macbook itself but with this generation of processors? Yeah, when it gets hot (and it runs hotter) it will throttle. The Apple reality distortion field only works on people -- it doesn't do much against thermodynamics. It seems a little misplaced to rail against Apple as if this is a design flaw. That's how this CPU will perform even in a completely different form factor without sufficient cooling. Want to prevent throttling? Here's a big heatsink with a couple fans attached to it. Want even more cooling? Here's a tank of water and a giant radiator. Want a slim form factor and an i9? It's going to throttle because it will get hot when you actually use it for something that makes use of that processor. Unless you live where I live and want to use the computer outside in the winter when it's -20F.
- pasbesoin 8y ago
  If the i9 profile doesn't fit what is approaching an ultrabook, then don't try to put it into that ultrabook. If your customers want an i9, be more honest with them. Don't just sell them what ends up being a crippled i9. If Intel could make an i9 that burned less, I'm sure they'd be happy to. (Well, at least now, given their increased need to compete.) I guess in that regard, you could "blame" Intel. If AMD really has pulled ahead in the race to 7 and 5 nm, interconnect data throughput, and whatever else.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    If your customers want an i9, be more honest with them. Exactly. We accepted (or endured, but it wasn't a mystery) the DDR3 limit of 16GB in laptops for years after the desire for more arose.
  - dguaraglia 8y ago
    This is the part I don't understand. Apple has been pushing for thinner and thinner laptops on the Pro line, when all I want is a laptop that can run a workload without throttling immediately, a good keyboard and a reasonable battery (that's the one thing they still do well, considering the legal cap on battery sizes). This is totally my personal opinion, but the MacBook Pro 2015 was the perfect laptop. I still use one as my main driver, and I'm agonizing on what my next (long overdue!) move will be.
bhouston 8y ago
My dell xps 15 9570 with an Intel core i7 8750h throttles to 2 GHz after sustained load as well. I think it is a general cpu issue with this series of 8th generation core i7/i9 chips rather than apple specific. I get throttled after about sustained usage of a couple minutes.
- glup 8y ago
  I think there's a confound there that these are both very thin machines, limiting the size of fans (=CFM per an acceptable noise level) and heatsinks. Not sure how others feel but I wouldn't mind a slightly larger form factor if it improved thermals.
- jasonlotito 8y ago
  The throttling isn't the issue. The issue is that the 2017 MBP i7 is faster than the 2018 MBP i9 in tests. That throttling is making this happen is immaterial. That the 8th gen chips are problematic aren't the issue. The issue is that the newer higher end MBP is slower than the older MBP.
rhacker 8y ago
This is why my wife wants a beefy, heavy laptop that has cooling systems that wrap around the moon once. We haven't chosen one yet, but we it will probably be one of those inch+ thick ones, not the razor thin laptops. She's going to run circles and then some around my MBP 2014. and I'm really really jealous and ready to go back to the PC now.
- noir_lord 8y ago
  The new 4C/8T T480's are incredible, they get about the same work rate as the 7700HQ in my T470P with about half the TDP. Outside of that you are into the P range which are deathstars (Xeon's in a laptop...).
jtbayly 8y ago
Perhaps insulating the new keyboard with a thin layer of rubber wasn't such a good idea after all.
- mort96 8y ago
  In case you haven't seen the pictures: https://betanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/macbook-pro-keyboard-membrane.jpg https://betanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/macbook-pro-... It's mostly a big hole with some silicone on the sides. That's not to say that it doesn't affect cooling at all; saying the keyboard is insulated is probably exaggeration though.
  - jtbayly 8y ago
    Meant to be a joke, mostly, but still, I would expect most of the heat escapes out the sides, not through the key. The sides are what are covered.
jtbayly 8y ago
The cooling problem is Apple's but the heating problem is Intel's. In my mind this is more evidence of the need for Apple to simply produce their own chips.
dawnerd 8y ago
Have any of these reviewers checked if the fans were running at max? I know Apple tends to prefer lower fan speeds.
- thinkythought 8y ago
  you shouldn't have to use a utility to force the fans to max. if it's not running them as hard as it could, then it's badly designed. that's a choice on their part.
  - dawnerd 8y ago
    Totally agree. I hate having to force the fans higher when in clamshell mode. Ideally they could have a settings page to choose between quiet or cool.
geden 8y ago
The big issue for me with the new MacBook Pro is that USB C ports and connectors are not fit for professional use. They are too small and delicate and don’t connected solidly and ‘grasp’ firmly enough. Over the last year they have also worn to a shocking degree on a top spec 2017 15” model. There wasn’t enough friction in the first place and now there’s none. I work with a professional touring musician and we’ve reverted to his 2015 model for stage use because wobbly poor connectors that have to be gaffer taped to the chassis are not fun. That said, I have seen a badly tuned Funktion One PA vibrate out a USB A connector from a MBP port in just a few seconds...
- cageface 8y ago
  I’m seeing this in my 2017 model too. I have to reseat the power cable half a dozen times a day. My 2015 MBP was the best computer I’ve ever owned. This 2017 model is shaping up to be one of the worst.
chendragon 8y ago
I have the 2016 version of the machine, base model, and it throttles. Not nearly as badly as anything else in it's thinness class, but the CPU can only run at 37w as measured by Power Gadget under p95 with fans forced to 6500rpm. PC manufacturers often throttle the CPU with the BIOS on purpose or set PL1/2 which Apple doesn't do. Similar PC notebooks tend to keep the CPU at 85C and run them at 15-20W. Apple runs the CPU at 102C before throttling them, and there aren't apparent power limits. They're trying pretty hard to solve this problem and to be honest there's not very much more they could be doing short of putting last-mm^3 heatsinks everywhere or making the fans even louder. I'm personally okay with the form factor they've chosen and they've done their best with that.
azdacha 8y ago
I'm getting tired of putting my hand on a 40 degrees hoven all day. My hands hurts, it's painful, tiring, enough for me to buy a new keyboard without much tough, and certainly enough to make me think twice about buying a Mac again. Get your shit together.
antoinevg 8y ago
Strike two.
cheshire137 8y ago
Hmm I thought the throttling stuff was just affecting the 15" with an i9, but this article mentioned the i7 had problems, too. Is the i7 in a 13" affected?
amanzi 8y ago
CPU throttling appears to be a common problem with these new powerful CPUs and the thin, light chassis that most manufacturers believe we want. So while this doesn't affect just Apple, I think Apple needs specific calling out since they price and market their laptops as the most premium of all brands.
dharma1 8y ago
I've got my i9 mbpro on order. I've got a couple of ideas for cooling for getting around thermal throttling when doing something super intensive (like compiling or exporting RAW video). 1) Freeze board under the bottom https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Reuseable-Freeze-Board-800 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Reuseable-Freeze-Board-800 2) Running this in reverse to help with airflow https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7X25NR https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7X25NR Will measure temps and blog on it

81 points by AnatMl2 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ancorevard 8y ago

Looking forward to the day when Apple will dump Intel and ship its own "A chip" in the MacBooks.

spamizbad 8y ago
The thermal overhead of x86 instruction decoding isn’t holding these machines back.
- coldtea 8y ago
  No, but Intel's failed promise to keep total thermal output down in the last 3 generations did. They failed their TDP and die shrink projections when those machines were designed. So, Apple would have had to redesign the whole case to match the new reality (which they could, but for their kind of redesigns it takes more time and people were already complaining about the lack of a 32GB option).
  - komali2 8y ago
    But why then did other laptop manufacturers not get affected by the issue?
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Others are as well (e.g [1], [2] -- similarly you'll find for Lenovo and others). It's just that Apple gets preferential negative reporting (who would click on an Asus link?) Plus, those with clunky "gamer" / "desktop replacement" style cases are not. (1) https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-series-facing-heavy-throttling-issues.232538.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-series-f... (2) https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/7wqzhg/dell_not_solving_its_laptop_cpu_throttling_issues/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/7wqzhg/dell_not_solvi...
  - jasonlotito 8y ago
    Apple has had years to do this. Years to plan for this. This is their product. They are the one putting their brand on it. Sorry, but they've already demonstrated they had the time to build out a 32GB machine that could do this. They had the time. They just chose to invest it in a touch bar and a thinner design. They've had the time.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Sorry, but they've already demonstrated they had the time to build out a 32GB machine that could do this. They had the time. That's the same 2016 design as the new model. So it definitely doesn't prove that "they had the time" -- and even less that they wasted it in "a touch bar and a thinner design". The touch bar and thinner design came at the time of the Intel promises, and matched OK with the performance seen at the time. On 2016, when they presented it, Intel was still promising lowered TDP cpus in the pipeline.
      - jasonlotito 8y ago
        > even less that they wasted it in "a touch bar and a thinner design". Yes. They had the time. They chose to invest it in putting a touch screen on your keyboard.
        coldtea 8y ago
        You got your timeline backwards. Apple put the "touch screen on your keyboard" when they introduced the current design in 2016. At the time, and for the next year, 2017, the design was perfectly fine for the then-current Intel CPUs models. And Intel was promising even more efficient models. It's not like there was a thermal problem in 2016, when Apple introduced the design and they ignored it to concentrate on the touch strip. Not only wasn't there such a problem at 2018, it still wasn't in 2017 either. One could argue that Apple should have created a new design in the 5-6 previous months during which they had Intels new chips at hand. But that's a much shorter notice, and something totally different than the inane complain about "focusing on the touch screen on the keyboard" which gets the timeline backwards.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
All indicators point to that being the day you will be required to only run apps from the official Apple App Store, unless you pay for a developer cert like for iOS devices.

Endama 8y ago

I feel like Apple is making similar mistakes that Microsoft made a few decades back, its walled garden has become so ubiquitous that they assume that there isn't any trimming that needs to be done. Specifically,Macs are basically the only FreeBSD-based machine with a consumer-friendly interface (ironically this may no longer be true once Windows gets first-party linux support). However, issues like these make me resentful that my day-to-day is dependent on OSX. I hope that some other competitor really steps into the currently (admittedly slim) hole in the market that is growing between professional users and the average Macbook user. EDIT: corrected my mistake about linux!

foldr 8y ago
>Macs are basically the only Linux-based machine [...] Macs aren't Linux-based.
Rapzid 8y ago
Macs aren't Linux based, they are BSD based and that's not even being pedantic.
- glup 8y ago
  OP probably meant POSIX-compliant
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nothrabannosir 8y ago
> Macs are basically the only Linux-based machine with a consumer-friendly interface … Someone will point this out sooner or later, so I might as well do it ;) Macs are neither Linux, nor the only. Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD. Linux machines usually come with GNU tools, and BSD have their own set, with subtle differences causing no end of confusion for the up and coming developers :) sed, grep, ls, etc. All slightly different interfaces (this is why brew offers a package to install the GNU version of all those tools, iirc “gnuutils” ?). The kernel itself is completely different, of course. Android, however, would fit that description quite well.

tomovo 8y ago

Almost feels like they are making things worse on purpose to make the ARM transition truly justified for everyone.

Ambroos 8y ago

To be honest, Apple's MBP CPU upgrades have never been worth it. They are advertised with these big turbo frequency increases that are rarely ever achieved. Even the base frequency doesn't matter because they'll clock far lower if needed to save battery life. For both the 13" and 15" MacBook Pro's, the performance differences between the base and upgraded CPUs are negligible (always less than 10% increase from the slowest to the fastest CPU for the same size, according to Geekbench). You'll get a higher frequency for a tiny amount of time before thermal throttling brings everything down to the same level anyway. They are not limited by Intel's software settings but purely by the cooling hardware. For example, the cheapest 13" MBP from 2017 has a 2.3Ghz base / 3.6Ghz turbo and scores 9079. Most expensive one (3.5Ghz / 4.0Ghz) scores 9552. That is an increase under 6% for a price difference that is far, far larger. Madness. If you buy a MacBook, please don't spend money on CPU upgrades. Thanks.

caycep 8y ago
by that measure, I have always never been enthusiastic about discrete GPU's and the extra heat/battery drain. I hope external GPU's become commonplace, inexpensive and reliable
lkramer 8y ago
I don't own a Mac, so I'm asking out of curiosity, but does this apply when it's plugged in as well?
- dep_b 8y ago
  Yes, it's mainly a heat issue.
- Ambroos 8y ago
  Yes, the cause for throttling is only thermal as long as your battery is over ~5% charged. In fact, while charging performance might even be a bit lower because charging the battery generates some heat as well, further lowering performance.
- JohnTHaller 8y ago
  With the new i9, it doesn't matter if it is plugged in. The cooling setup in the laptop is just inadequate to keep it running at speed for more than a couple minutes according to David Lee and other tech reviewers.

virtualritz 8y ago

I am just flabbergasted. Apple is ruining the MacBook brand with every update they release. My 2017 MBP keyboard is ready for the mandatory replacement. The power brick has no 'ears' and the cable no clip for safe transport any more. USB C only means I always have a bunch of adapters dangling from my laptop that make it look like a bad attempt at adding some 'cyberpunk' feel to it. And now they finally upgrade the MBP hardware and then this?!

coldtea 8y ago
>I am just flabbergasted. Apple is ruining the MacBook brand with every update they release. Yeah, first by not releasing "MBPs with 32GB RAM" and then by releasing them. They can never get a chance... >USB C only means I always have a bunch of adapters dangling from my laptop Or, you know, just buy USB-C to whatever cables and be done with it. It's like a $50 investment for a $2000+ laptop, if having an adapter is so much of a problem. I have USB-C to A, USB-C to that bizarro USB B BS 2.5 external hard disks have, USB-C to lighting, and USB-C to HDMI. End of story, no adapters to carry. YMMV.
- komali2 8y ago
  Do you mean USBC male to HDMI male? What about when you need to plug into the office HDMI projector?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Then you need an additional USB-C to female HDMI of which are tons from various brands + the office's male cable. Or you can get just the USB-C to female HDMI alone, and a standard HDMI cable for your monitor. You aren't going to be carrying HDMI cables around anyway.
    - smilekzs 8y ago
      > an additional USB-C to female HDMI which is called an adapter (edit to fit terminology in this thread)

tlb 8y ago

It's underappreciated how much thermal capacity varies from machine to machine, and over time. It makes benchmarking hard. Clock speeds, because they're crystal-controlled, don't vary by more than several PPM between machines. Thermal capacity varies by ±10% easily. The thermal resistance depends on a bunch of mechanical factors that are hard to control in manufacturing, like how well the thermal grease fills the tiny pores in the metal of the heat sinks, and how well the air flows through the ventilation ducts. And these usually get worse over time as bubbles form in the grease and dust sticks to the fan blades. And of course it depends on room temperature and pressure. It means that benchmarks will have to be done under more tightly controlled conditions. The automotive world has standards for this, where horsepower measurements are adjusted by a correction factor that depends on temperature and pressure.

jdietrich 8y ago
Those are all reasons why you should engineer in a thermal margin. If some proportion of machines are throttling out of the box, then most machines will start throttling as the thermal management system degrades. You're supposed to account for the ageing of the thermal material and clogging of the airflow path and degradation of the fan bearings. You're supposed to leave in some headroom for warm rooms, high altitude and partially blocked vents. It's yet another symptom of Apple's preoccupation with thickness. The 2015 MacBook Pro was 18mm thick. The new MacBook Pro is 15mm thick. After all the furore over USB-C and unreliable keyboards and the loss of MagSafe, was that 3mm of z-height a worthwhile tradeoff?
- tlb 8y ago
  I don't think there's room for margin any more. Margin means fixing a power limit slightly lower than what the worst machine can sustain. That probably means leaving 10-20% performance on the table for average machines.
  - stefan_ 8y ago
    No, you don't get to blame this on the processor. Modern processors are perfectly capable of operating exactly at the limit of the cooling system they are provided. No worries there. There is no "setpoint" you need to set; the processor ramps up, then sustains. This is purely a mechanical engineering issue. They haven't designed it properly.

laythea 8y ago

This kind of trick reminds me of broadband internet where you buy X MB connection but actually get X/Y MB. Should be laws against this behavior.

rayiner 8y ago
Those laws would be a great example of legislators being technologically ignorant. Optimizing for bursty behavior is not only acceptable, but is what you typically want. Even if you're a developer, your compile-edit cycle typically will be on the order of a couple of minutes of load, or less. Being able to ramp up to 4 GHz during that time and then rushing to idle is what maximizes performance within a given thermal constraint. As to advertising, advertising the burst speed, with the appropriate caveat, is usually the correct decision too. Under full load, almost any modern laptop will get under 2 hours of battery life. Should they be advertised as such? No, that's a completely un-helpful metric. Under typical use, where the machine is idle most of the time, you will in fact get 8 hours or whatever of use. Apple actually advertises these machines as 2.2 or 2.6 GHz machines, with "up to 4.3 GHz Turbo Boost" in smaller font below. This is actually probably deceptive (though in a way that is not favorable to Apple). In typical use, the machine will feel more like a 4.3 GHz machine than a 2.6 GHz one. (E.g. comparing it to your 2.6 GHz Haswell-era Mac.)
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Where we can bring this analogy back to relevance is when you deal with ISPs that offer "up to X", but in reality, they're so (oversold/badly managed/other excuse) that you will never reach that quoted speed in daily usage. Apple, here, has sold a machine that thermally throttles at idle, basically guaranteeing that its quoted clock speed will never be used, even under load.

j-c-hewitt 8y ago

Isn't this not so much an issue with the Macbook itself but with this generation of processors? Yeah, when it gets hot (and it runs hotter) it will throttle. The Apple reality distortion field only works on people -- it doesn't do much against thermodynamics. It seems a little misplaced to rail against Apple as if this is a design flaw. That's how this CPU will perform even in a completely different form factor without sufficient cooling. Want to prevent throttling? Here's a big heatsink with a couple fans attached to it. Want even more cooling? Here's a tank of water and a giant radiator. Want a slim form factor and an i9? It's going to throttle because it will get hot when you actually use it for something that makes use of that processor. Unless you live where I live and want to use the computer outside in the winter when it's -20F.

pasbesoin 8y ago
If the i9 profile doesn't fit what is approaching an ultrabook, then don't try to put it into that ultrabook. If your customers want an i9, be more honest with them. Don't just sell them what ends up being a crippled i9. If Intel could make an i9 that burned less, I'm sure they'd be happy to. (Well, at least now, given their increased need to compete.) I guess in that regard, you could "blame" Intel. If AMD really has pulled ahead in the race to 7 and 5 nm, interconnect data throughput, and whatever else.
- rhizome 8y ago
  If your customers want an i9, be more honest with them. Exactly. We accepted (or endured, but it wasn't a mystery) the DDR3 limit of 16GB in laptops for years after the desire for more arose.
- dguaraglia 8y ago
  This is the part I don't understand. Apple has been pushing for thinner and thinner laptops on the Pro line, when all I want is a laptop that can run a workload without throttling immediately, a good keyboard and a reasonable battery (that's the one thing they still do well, considering the legal cap on battery sizes). This is totally my personal opinion, but the MacBook Pro 2015 was the perfect laptop. I still use one as my main driver, and I'm agonizing on what my next (long overdue!) move will be.

bhouston 8y ago

My dell xps 15 9570 with an Intel core i7 8750h throttles to 2 GHz after sustained load as well. I think it is a general cpu issue with this series of 8th generation core i7/i9 chips rather than apple specific. I get throttled after about sustained usage of a couple minutes.

glup 8y ago
I think there's a confound there that these are both very thin machines, limiting the size of fans (=CFM per an acceptable noise level) and heatsinks. Not sure how others feel but I wouldn't mind a slightly larger form factor if it improved thermals.
jasonlotito 8y ago
The throttling isn't the issue. The issue is that the 2017 MBP i7 is faster than the 2018 MBP i9 in tests. That throttling is making this happen is immaterial. That the 8th gen chips are problematic aren't the issue. The issue is that the newer higher end MBP is slower than the older MBP.

rhacker 8y ago

This is why my wife wants a beefy, heavy laptop that has cooling systems that wrap around the moon once. We haven't chosen one yet, but we it will probably be one of those inch+ thick ones, not the razor thin laptops. She's going to run circles and then some around my MBP 2014. and I'm really really jealous and ready to go back to the PC now.

noir_lord 8y ago
The new 4C/8T T480's are incredible, they get about the same work rate as the 7700HQ in my T470P with about half the TDP. Outside of that you are into the P range which are deathstars (Xeon's in a laptop...).

jtbayly 8y ago

Perhaps insulating the new keyboard with a thin layer of rubber wasn't such a good idea after all.

mort96 8y ago
In case you haven't seen the pictures: https://betanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/macbook-pro-keyboard-membrane.jpg https://betanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/macbook-pro-... It's mostly a big hole with some silicone on the sides. That's not to say that it doesn't affect cooling at all; saying the keyboard is insulated is probably exaggeration though.
- jtbayly 8y ago
  Meant to be a joke, mostly, but still, I would expect most of the heat escapes out the sides, not through the key. The sides are what are covered.

jtbayly 8y ago

The cooling problem is Apple's but the heating problem is Intel's. In my mind this is more evidence of the need for Apple to simply produce their own chips.

dawnerd 8y ago

Have any of these reviewers checked if the fans were running at max? I know Apple tends to prefer lower fan speeds.

thinkythought 8y ago
you shouldn't have to use a utility to force the fans to max. if it's not running them as hard as it could, then it's badly designed. that's a choice on their part.
- dawnerd 8y ago
  Totally agree. I hate having to force the fans higher when in clamshell mode. Ideally they could have a settings page to choose between quiet or cool.

geden 8y ago

The big issue for me with the new MacBook Pro is that USB C ports and connectors are not fit for professional use. They are too small and delicate and don’t connected solidly and ‘grasp’ firmly enough. Over the last year they have also worn to a shocking degree on a top spec 2017 15” model. There wasn’t enough friction in the first place and now there’s none. I work with a professional touring musician and we’ve reverted to his 2015 model for stage use because wobbly poor connectors that have to be gaffer taped to the chassis are not fun. That said, I have seen a badly tuned Funktion One PA vibrate out a USB A connector from a MBP port in just a few seconds...

cageface 8y ago
I’m seeing this in my 2017 model too. I have to reseat the power cable half a dozen times a day. My 2015 MBP was the best computer I’ve ever owned. This 2017 model is shaping up to be one of the worst.

chendragon 8y ago

I have the 2016 version of the machine, base model, and it throttles. Not nearly as badly as anything else in it's thinness class, but the CPU can only run at 37w as measured by Power Gadget under p95 with fans forced to 6500rpm. PC manufacturers often throttle the CPU with the BIOS on purpose or set PL1/2 which Apple doesn't do. Similar PC notebooks tend to keep the CPU at 85C and run them at 15-20W. Apple runs the CPU at 102C before throttling them, and there aren't apparent power limits. They're trying pretty hard to solve this problem and to be honest there's not very much more they could be doing short of putting last-mm^3 heatsinks everywhere or making the fans even louder. I'm personally okay with the form factor they've chosen and they've done their best with that.

azdacha 8y ago

I'm getting tired of putting my hand on a 40 degrees hoven all day. My hands hurts, it's painful, tiring, enough for me to buy a new keyboard without much tough, and certainly enough to make me think twice about buying a Mac again. Get your shit together.

antoinevg 8y ago

Strike two.

cheshire137 8y ago

Hmm I thought the throttling stuff was just affecting the 15" with an i9, but this article mentioned the i7 had problems, too. Is the i7 in a 13" affected?

amanzi 8y ago

CPU throttling appears to be a common problem with these new powerful CPUs and the thin, light chassis that most manufacturers believe we want. So while this doesn't affect just Apple, I think Apple needs specific calling out since they price and market their laptops as the most premium of all brands.

dharma1 8y ago

I've got my i9 mbpro on order. I've got a couple of ideas for cooling for getting around thermal throttling when doing something super intensive (like compiling or exporting RAW video). 1) Freeze board under the bottom https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Reuseable-Freeze-Board-800 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Reuseable-Freeze-Board-800 2) Running this in reverse to help with airflow https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7X25NR https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7X25NR Will measure temps and blog on it