I had a maxed out MBP order about to ship but I became concerned after looking at the max TDP of the components. I hope I'm missing something because what I learned seems rather absurd if true.
The adapter outputs 85W so this is the maximum power draw of the 15-in rMBP. The TDP of the 4960HQ is 47W and the TDP for the 750M is ~45W. This itself adds up to 92W and that number would be greatly exceeded if we include the motherboard, screen and other components. Consider a program that requires maximum CPU and GPU performance while you're blasting music with maximum screen brightness (probably another 10W or more) plus Wi-Fi and BlueTooth on. Let's say you're connected to an external display via HDMI, have a USB 3 drive and a Thunderbolt 2 device too. The amount of power required to do all this would probably be 2x as much as that 85W adapter is capable of outputting.
It's not the most realistic use scenario but the point stands. The only way I see the MBP doing this is by throttling down the CPU and GPU a ton. But then, why do I pay for the highest end CPU and a discrete GPU if they're running at 60% when I actually need them? How can they get away with an 85W PSU if only the graphics card and CPU TDP exceeds that?
The adapter outputs 85W so this is the maximum power draw of the 15-in rMBP. The TDP of the 4960HQ is 47W and the TDP for the 750M is ~45W. This itself adds up to 92W and that number would be greatly exceeded if we include the motherboard, screen and other components. Consider a program that requires maximum CPU and GPU performance while you're blasting music with maximum screen brightness (probably another 10W or more) plus Wi-Fi and BlueTooth on. Let's say you're connected to an external display via HDMI, have a USB 3 drive and a Thunderbolt 2 device too. The amount of power required to do all this would probably be 2x as much as that 85W adapter is capable of outputting.
It's not the most realistic use scenario but the point stands. The only way I see the MBP doing this is by throttling down the CPU and GPU a ton. But then, why do I pay for the highest end CPU and a discrete GPU if they're running at 60% when I actually need them? How can they get away with an 85W PSU if only the graphics card and CPU TDP exceeds that?
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