Macbook retina heat slows FPS on gaming!

The internal temperature is getting so high that the CPU is being throttled. It may be that the fans are not ramping up as they need too, or the game is sufficiently demanding that its just getting too hot

maflynn said:

The internal temperature is getting so high that the CPU is being throttled. It may be that the fans are not ramping up as they need too, or the game is sufficiently demanding that its just getting too hot

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I play a lot of games on my MBP and it never throttles.

feliperama said:

Do you usually play with bootcamp? Do you use some program to max fans like SMC fan control?

I was researching and saw some people talking about remove SMC fan control software and reset SMC. I will try to do this, but I'm almost sure that nothing will happens once I was putting the fan speed at maximum (if the high temperature is really cause of drop fps).

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Yeah I got a program called Mac fan control in bootcamp and just set the fans to max (around 6100). I have very consistent performance in all games.

Do notice that I have a normal MBP and therefor play games on a resolution of 1440x900 (which I recommend to anyone, because the retina resolution is much too much for the 650m).

I have a pretty similar issue.

The best performance I've ever got from my retina macbook was: cold room, elevated laptop (using the typical external laptop cooler), no maxed out fans (they'll go full speed when needed), hyper-threading disabled and screen illumination turned down.

Try it out, see if it helps.

I'll also (soon™) format everything, open the laptop up and clean all the dust, and finally changing the thermal paste. I'm pretty sure that'll improve performance.

fenjen said:

I play a lot of games on my MBP and it never throttles.

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I don't play games but I see enough threads to draw a conclusion that the MBP gets very hot (sometimes too hot) when playing games.

maflynn said:

I don't play games but I see enough threads to draw a conclusion that the MBP gets very hot (sometimes too hot) when playing games.

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That may be, but not mine apparently. When I game with my fans on max (from the beginning) my CPU temps virtually never exceed 95 and in most cases not even 90 (degrees C, that is.)

In my experience unusually high temps are almost always a result of dust/debris. It's a fairly simple procedure to pop the bottom off and clean out the fans and heat sinks with some air. You can blast air straight into the back and bottom vents if you really don't want to open the machine, but you're just relocating the blockage in that case so I wouldn't recommend it.

Thermal paste re-application can definitely have a small positive effect, but I wouldn't start there, especially if you've never done it before (in a desktop build, on another laptop, etc). It's not particularly difficult, but a poor re-application will just make things worse.

Obviously it's also important to make sure the fans are actually responding to the RPM you're setting (should be easy to tell from the sound).

On a machine with this ratio of power/size you're always going to see some thermal throttling in long high usage sessions, but what you're describing (half performance) is excessive.

mine only does this when expected like if I have the MBP on a soft surface not allowing good air circulation, when its on a firm surface I have never got the MBP so hot that it throttles