LOL 
Who told you that unlocking the CPU was "recommended"
If that is your friend, I would not talk to him.
Who told you that unlocking the CPU was "recommended"
If that is your friend, I would not talk to him.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Unlock 8 Virtual Cores on rMBP
- Thread starter Squilly
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
IT JUST KEEPS GOING ON.
You don't need to do that. I very much doubt it was on Apple Support pages.
Why is this thread still full of arguing and smart-arsery?
I'm sure your friend suggested you fully load all CPU cores, most likely to test your maximum temperatures.
The two methods of doing this that I would recommend is either downloading Handbrake, and converting a HD video with it (I know this can fully load 8 virtual cores), or opening 8 terminal windows, and typing "yes > /dev/null" in each.
Download iStat Pro, load your CPU to 800%, and watch the CPU temperatures and fan speeds. If your CPU temperature stays under 100˚C, you are fine.
EDIT: This will NOT damage your computer. If it does, it was faulty to begin with.
I'm sure your friend suggested you fully load all CPU cores, most likely to test your maximum temperatures.
The two methods of doing this that I would recommend is either downloading Handbrake, and converting a HD video with it (I know this can fully load 8 virtual cores), or opening 8 terminal windows, and typing "yes > /dev/null" in each.
Download iStat Pro, load your CPU to 800%, and watch the CPU temperatures and fan speeds. If your CPU temperature stays under 100˚C, you are fine.
EDIT: This will NOT damage your computer. If it does, it was faulty to begin with.
I downloaded iStat Pro but dunno how to change settings/load. Umm... how? Nevermind. Just opened Photoshop, Illustrator, C4D, and 11 chess games. Everything seems okay.
Attachments
Last edited:
Thats nothing...
And if the CPU needs more power, they automatically go into turboboost mode.
What do you mean you want to stress it over 100%?
If thats what you mean, try opening all of CS6 apps and render tons of video FCPX.
Run some games while you're at it.
"Download iStat Pro, load your CPU to 800%, and watch the CPU temperatures and fan speeds. If your CPU temperature stays under 100˚C, you are fine."
Firstly, Turbo Boost is completely invisible in OSX. It happens, but there is no way of seeing it. The clock speed can increase by as much as 50%, but full load is still 100%/800%.
I said 800% because some methods of calculating how much CPU is being used do it per virtual core, and others do not. For example, iStat Pro's "CPU" panel shows the percentage of all 8 virtual cores combined that are used, and therefore tops out at 100%. If you enable the "Processes" panel (somewhere in its options) it lists each process activity per virtual core, therefore tops out at 800%. It's the same thing, whether it's 8 chess processes at 100% each, or 1 Handbrake encode process at 800%.
So in summary, (based on that previous pic) you have now stress tested your machine, and your temps look fine.
Last edited:
Said above me as well but if you are encoding a vid and check activity monitor, it will probably be over 100% as well.
Unless you have windows on there, it is impossible to see if TurboBoost has engaged or not.
The best you'll be able to get is by using the Intel Power Gadget. It displays Power Usage and CPU Frequency stats. If you know the TurboBoost value of your CPU, you can find out if it's been engaged by monitoring the frequency with the tool.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-power-gadget/
Attachments
A thread is a piece of software code that is executed by the CPU. It has nothing to do with hardware. A single CPU core normally can run one thread at a time.
Hyperthreading allows a single CPU core to often act as if it is running two threads simultaneously, via a little extra funky hardware. It therefore appears to software to be two cores; even though really, it's only one.
This means that as far as hardware is concerned, the 15" MBPs have a 4 core CPU. As far as software running on it is concerned, it has an 8 core CPU. And depending on how that software is threaded, the performance of the CPU can be anywhere between that of a single core, and 8 cores.
As a related note, TurboBoost is designed to allow the CPU to overclock one core by as much as 50% by idling the other 3 (real cores matter here) for running poorly threaded software faster than it would otherwise. Its second objective is to allow the entire 4 core CPU to overclock by a much lower margin, in order to dynamically push the performance of the CPU to the limits of the computer's thermal management system (the fans and heat sinks).
Thanks for linking this, I didn't know it existed!
Apparently my quad 2.2GHz CPU idles at 800MHz, runs 2 processes at 3GHz, runs 4 processes at 2.7GHz, and runs at full load (8 yes-dev-null processes) at 2.5GHz.
A few hundred MHz lower than the maximum TB levels, but still a nice, totally automatic overclock
I would be very interested to see how the new rMBPs fare.
Thanks for linking this, I didn't know it existed!
Apparently my quad 2.2GHz CPU idles at 800MHz, runs 2 processes at 3GHz, runs 4 processes at 2.7GHz, and runs at full load (8 yes-dev-null processes) at 2.5GHz.
A few hundred MHz lower than the maximum TB levels, but still a nice, totally automatic overclock
I would be very interested to see how the new rMBPs fare.
Quad 2.7:
idles @1.20ghz.
1 @3.6 (should be 3.7 i believe)
2 @3.5
4 @3.5
8 @3.3
What your friend most likely was talking about was CPU burn-in. This only applied to building your own computer. You would install the processor, apply thermal paste to the heat sink, then seat the heat sink to the processor, and run the processor at full load for a few hours to a day; the theory behind burning in was that the heat would help the thermal paste to settle, spread, and bond perfectly, which would result in the absolute optimum transfer of heat from the CPU to the heat sink.
There's some debate about whether burn-in was ever warranted, especially with modern thermal paste. Suffice it to say, burn-in doesn't apply to us (unless you're servicing your own Macbook Pro and are changing out the heat sink).
TL;DR: you don't need to stress your CPU.
A quad-core processor with hyperthreading would lose out to a true octo-core processor; however, according to benchmarks a quad-core processor with hyperthreading will have around 25% better performance compared with a quad-core system without hyperthreading.
There's some debate about whether burn-in was ever warranted, especially with modern thermal paste. Suffice it to say, burn-in doesn't apply to us (unless you're servicing your own Macbook Pro and are changing out the heat sink).
TL;DR: you don't need to stress your CPU.
Depending on what program you're using to monitor core usage, yes. Some programs view each core separately, and add the percentages; maxing out one core is 100%, maxing out two cores is 200%, and so on.
The retina MBP (and some MBPs before it) has four physical cores, but with Intel's hyperthreading technology, each core is recognized as having two logical cores (making for eight in total). As a very gross simplification, hyperthreading doubles up the instructions per CPU core. If you use software that states how many cores are available on the system (as certain 3D render suites do), you would see eight cores listed. This is also why the Activity Monitor shows eight graphs if you double-click on the CPU usage graph.
A quad-core processor with hyperthreading would lose out to a true octo-core processor; however, according to benchmarks a quad-core processor with hyperthreading will have around 25% better performance compared with a quad-core system without hyperthreading.