10.12.2 increased battery, but throttles the computer?

[Noerdy]

I checked /r/apple on reddit, and a lot of people have been saying that their battery life is much better on 10.12.2, but from 1 or 2 people (which is enough to concern me) they have mentioned that the update is throttling the power on their computer. Are people here experiencing similar results? If this is true, then that is really cheap of apple. Another terrible move in this quarter. But if they actually did fix something, then +1 apple. Just want to know what your experiences were.



EDIT: The person who posted this screenshot said he was getting the same geekbench scores, so I guess thats really good.

 

[montycat]

I checked /r/apple on reddit, and a lot of people have been saying that their battery life is much better on 10.12.2, but from 1 or 2 people (which is enough to concern me) they have mentioned that the update is throttling the power on their computer. Are people here experiencing similar results? If this is true, then that is really cheap of apple. Another terrible move in this quarter. But if they actually did fix something, then +1 apple. Just want to know what your experiences were.

Im definitely getting better battery life on my new 15" MBP since the update. So yes, +1
Apple!

 

[Hieveryone]

I'm installing the software update on my late 2013.

Now I'm kind of waiting impatiently to see if my computer is slower or not.

About 8 minutes left.

 

[Make Apple Great Again]

Im definitely getting better battery life on my new 15" MBP since the update. So yes, +1
Apple!

He's not asking if you are getting battery life, but rather is this software "update" just an attempt by Apple to limit the power consumption of your computer to improve battery life (by essentially not letting you use the true power of the CPU that you paid for etc).

 

[Qwaf]

I'm in that thread and talked to you, but for others - I haven't seen any evidence of throttling on my machine - my geekbench scores are a bit better now than before too.

Before: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/1263663

After: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/1337544

In heavy usage, I'm still seeing it boost to the same (and proper) clocks as before too.

My battery life is rather good.

 

[aioriya]

I'm still getting similar battery life as before the new sierra upgrade, 5 to 6.5 hours on 50% brightness, mainly browsing in safari. I've been looking at activity monitor more closely since the battery time was removed and Safari is consistently the app using significant energy and one thing to keep in mind is that some popular sites such as youtube appear to be a huge battery hog and they can bring battery life down significantly.

 

[blairian89]

It was a concern of mine too, but I also have the same Geekbench scores as before...if they throttled it, those would be affected, no?

 

[dallas112678]

It was a concern of mine too, but I also have the same Geekbench scores as before...if they throttled it, those would be affected, no?

Depends on how they decide to throttle. For example, they don't throttle CPU's for heat until they've been going full power for so long building heat. Maybe they don't throttle immediately for power and let you get some usage out of it and then throttle it enough to get the battery life back up.

Based off the graphs he posted, it doesn't look like it throttles immediately so it may not appear in a benchmark that runs for a short time.

 

[skids929]

I feel like my battery life is worse.

 

[Qwaf]

Depends on how they decide to throttle. For example, they don't throttle CPU's for heat until they've been going full power for so long building heat. Maybe they don't throttle immediately for power and let you get some usage out of it and then throttle it enough to get the battery life back up.

Based off the graphs he posted, it doesn't look like it throttles immediately so it may not appear in a benchmark that runs for a short time.

I've run Handbrake for long periods and it has stayed pegged at its max clock, others have reported benchmarking with handbrake before and after and getting pretty much the same time (few seconds difference). Where is this talk about them throttling coming from? Is there any evidence for it?

 

[a4k04]

I've run Handbrake for long periods and it has stayed pegged at its max clock, others have reported benchmarking with handbrake before and after and getting pretty much the same time (few seconds difference). Where is this talk about them throttling coming from? Is there any evidence for it?

I posted this same thing on reddit (not sure if you saw my post or another) where I compared a 1080p 2 hour, 11 minute conversion from MKV to M4V with the default "High Profile" handbrake setting before and after the software update. The before test was run about 2 weeks ago when I was comparing performance to my old machine so the comparison wasn't immediately before and immediately after the update but it's still valid. Both tests were run on battery (also was testing how much a max CPU process hit the battery between my old vs new machine) so there's no invalidation from being connected to AC. The test from 2 weeks ago did finish faster, but only by 5 seconds (if you know anything about video conversion or multi-threading in general this 5 second difference could be explained by hundreds of different things unrelated to CPU throttling, it's an insignificant difference) The full conversion took 33 minutes and change. If there was throttling going on at max CPU load this test would have surely shown it and this whole throttling topic should surely die a quick and painless death.

There's a million and 1 software related reasons for the increase in battery life. Not trying to minimize the battery issues people are/were having, capacity is down, but I've been consistently getting 8+ hours in Xcode, vim, and safari since day 1. I didn't migrate anything over from my old machine and there seems to be some evidence that those who used migration assistant are having more severe battery issues - with the supposed fix from 10.12.2 I'd be looking into a software fix related to migration assistant as the 'thing' that solved the problem.

 

[dgdosen]

I'm in that thread and talked to you, but for others - I haven't seen any evidence of throttling on my machine - my geekbench scores are a bit better now than before too.

Before: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/1263663

After: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/1337544

In heavy usage, I'm still seeing it boost to the same (and proper) clocks as before too.

My battery life is rather good.

I admire the healthy skepticism but whomever started this thread prior to running the exact tests shown here is pretty irresponsible. I'm glad it's documented, but this story should be nipped in the bud. Sure, I've ridiculed Apple for removing the time estimate from the battery - but IMO, wild accusations like this are undeserved and the people that start them should have their accounts banned.

This is not right.