Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

matthew011029

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 3, 2011
9
0
Hi there,
I have ran into an issue while gaming in Bootcamp, where I experience constant frame rate hitches and stuttering no matter what game it is I play. After doing a little digging around, I have tried using lubbo's fan control to max out my fans, using nvidiaInspector and throttlestop to stop CPU and GPU throttling.
None of those methods worked, which caused me to assume this to be purely a thermal throttling issue. The weird thing is, I have never experienced this issue until a few weeks back, which all games run perfectly. From what I remember, this happen directly after I have decided to clean out the dust in my Macbook Pro with some basic sweeping, I don't necessarily see a correlation, but it is the last thing I did before the issue starts surfacing.
The temperature when the throttling kicks in is around 70 celsius. Also, I have never experienced the issue in the OSX side.

For reference, my Macbook Pro is a Mid 2012 15 inch.
CPU: 2.3GHz Intel Core i7
RAM: 4GB
Graphics Card: Nvidia Gefore GT 650M
Bootcamp OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Thanks in advance.
 

cbautis2

macrumors 6502a
Aug 17, 2013
894
1,106
You probably knocked the fan and heatsink assembly while sweeping your MacBook to remove the dust. I suggest to reseat the heatsink and apply a good thermal paste like arctic mx4 or IC diamond 7 so that your CPU and GPU won't throttle while gaming.
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,478
43,405
MBPs run hot in windows, so this may not be an issue.

if you're not seeing any sort of heat issues under OSX then its probably not hardware related.
 

sjinsjca

macrumors 68020
Oct 30, 2008
2,238
555
Which GPU is being used? If the integrated one, then there's your problem.
 

matthew011029

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 3, 2011
9
0
MBPs run hot in windows, so this may not be an issue.

if you're not seeing any sort of heat issues under OSX then its probably not hardware related.

Well all the games run smooth as silk if my Macbook is below a certain temperature, that's why I assumed it may be an issue with an aggressive thermal throttling.
I didn't do any software updates though, maybe I updated to 10.8.3, but I don't exactly remember.
Also, forgot to add that there are already traces of some throttling before, but I thought it was caused by the game that I was playing (Crysis 3), and after I opened my Macbook to do some cleaning, I am experiencing a full-on throttling.
 

matthew011029

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 3, 2011
9
0
Oops, apologies, after some observation, there is also some throttling at around 70 degrees in the OSX side, didn't notice since I was always playing online games.
Also, resetting the PRAM/NVRAM helps a bit, it takes much longer for the throttling to kick in, but it still happens. However the game ran smooth in temperatures that would've triggered throttling before.
 

MJL

macrumors 6502a
Jun 25, 2011
845
1
MBPs run hot in windows, so this may not be an issue.

if you're not seeing any sort of heat issues under OSX then its probably not hardware related.

I suspect the turbo mode has a lot to do with it. My machine runs 24/5 windows for business purposes and the remainder two days OS X and I am concerned with heat. (reliability - check out what the maximum operating temperature for the C-MOS battery is, same for the memory sticks. Similarly life of a SSD gets greatly reduced when working at or above recommended maximum temperature).

I recently had to do a long malware scan - temperature constant at 85 - 87C. I switched off turbo (in power options set the maximum processor speed to 99%) and the temperature dropped to below 70C. The latter is a temperature I am comfortable with but not 85-87 C.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.