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2011 MacBook Pros Crashing Under Load?
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Yes. Very well. When I used to play Left 4 Dead 2 on my mid-2009 MBP, it used to stutter. Same thing would happen with Day of Defeat Source. My computer met all the required specs and the problem would occur no matter how high or low I set my graphics settings. I figured the computer might be getting too hot (the 2009 MBPs would not turn the fan on until the CPU was ridiculously hot, like 85-90*C). I downloaded SMC fan control and ran it every time I wanted to play a game. I usually just pumped the fan to its maximum RPM (6000). Problem solved!
Since the Mac wasn't going to do it for me, I had to do it myself. If ever I saw the temperature creep toward 80*C, I'd just turn the fan to 3000 or 4000 RPM and that would do the trick. What a fantastic little program. I haven't used it for my 2011 MBP as it seems to have better fan management. It doesn't wait until 90*C to kick the fan into high gear. Some people are complaining about the noise - I welcome it!
First post here with half a clue and then you leave us in suspenders?
So, what did "top" say?
Try running it with a short interval time and no sleep time, e.g. "top -i 1 -o cpu -s 0".
Of course, that will make "top" eat up all the CPU so maybe that's not such a good idea
I've seen serious (multiple second) "soft freezes" on my wheezing old Early 2006 MacBook Pro (2.16 GHz Core Duo model with 2 GB) when it is creating new swap files in "/var/vm" from too much machine/memory loading.
I wonder if new swap files are being created in this case? Do all the machines affected have 8 GB of RAM?
P.S. This is what you get for being an Apple early adopterAlways wait for the 2nd or 3rd generation!
Sorry -- no intention to leave anyone in suspenders (sic).
The point was to say that the system froze almost immediately. At that point the whole screen updating stopped and the system was interactively non-responsive, but I could still SSH into it from another machine. Up until the machine froze (all of about 30 seconds), top showed what I expected -- 5 processes each consuming 100% of the CPU, PhotoBooth consuming about 30% and all the usual other stuff.
From research and reading all the posts (500+ now) in the main Apple Discussion thread on this it appears that:
1) Many people are able to create a hang / freeze with no additional software installed -- just a plain, new installation; also, the freezes seem to happen at random times -- from completely idle to waking from sleep, to running all cores at maximum load; sometimes software has been suspected (smcFanControl, etc.), but this is unfounded -- in many cases it is happening on a plain, vanilla, freshly installed system;
2) Many cite some improvement by forcing the machine to use either the discrete GPU or the internal GPU (conflicting! or at least pointing to a problem with the automatic switching) -- again, assertions that "this fixes the problem" are unfounded -- counter examples abound!
3) There are "freezes" that are "soft" -- in that the machine continues to run processes (iTunes, allowing SSH, etc.), although sometimes only until the end of a song (but sometimes beyond, so again, conflicting!); also, there are reports of "harder" freezes where everything stops functioning, or at least rapidly cascades to where everything stops;
4) There are those who report no problems -- some initially, and then after trying some of the tests, they discover that the machine does hang; -- others claim their machine seems to be impervious to hanging. This is both good news and bad news -- it points more to a bad batch of hardware than a driver issue (since the driver issue should affect ALL machines), but it does offer some hope that it is possible to get a "good" one;
5) As far as I can tell, this affects all new 2011 MacBook Pro Quad-Core 15" and 17" machines (with the apparent exception of those who are currently claiming imperviousness), regardless of disk type, disk size or amount of memory installed;
6) Interestingly, a 13" i7 user reported a problem, but this is the only instance I've seen of this.
I have a new machine coming to replace the faulty one (as soon as a courier calls to pick this one up) and I will thoroughly test it before installing ANYTHING else on it. Last time I was two full days into almost 500 GB of data migration when it started locking up randomly.
At this point, I'm not hopeful for an impervious one in round two, but I believe Apple will get it sorted. They have been professional, courteous, apologetic and very polite so far as, I like to think, have I, (although apologetic not so much...
).Anyway, if anyone were looking for a recommendation to buy a new machine right now, my advice would be to wait for this to be resolved. This is the first time in FOREVER I have violated my inviolable principle of NEVER buying the first batch of anything Apple, and I have been properly rewarded for my impatience
Best of luck to all struggling with this issue...
Scott
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Common sense to the rescue! He means that, while nvidia had its problems, for the most part their hardware and drivers were good. OpenGL drivers are, as I understand it, harder to make than DirectX drivers.
2IS said:
Common sense to the rescue! He means that, while nvidia had its problems, for the most part their hardware and drivers were good. OpenGL drivers are, as I understand it, harder to make than DirectX drivers.
There you go, NEVER buy first gen of any new Apple products!
On top of that, the i7 is known to heat up and I am personally not comfortable with electronic heats up (even they are within designed spec).
I had an HP DV6 i7-740, that heats up and the motherboard fried. I don't doubt this won't happen to a Macbook Pro.
On top of that, the i7 is known to heat up and I am personally not comfortable with electronic heats up (even they are within designed spec).
I had an HP DV6 i7-740, that heats up and the motherboard fried. I don't doubt this won't happen to a Macbook Pro.
My 15" 2.3 turns up the fans full throttle and gets HOT when simply converting a .dvdmedia file to a .mp4 file. Running Fusion sometimes lock up the machine. It's driving me crazy... glad you don't have the same problems... it sucks.
No issue here. Running HandBrake playing some games and running Photo Booth but no problems. I have the 13" however with the integrated graphics and it seems the issue is affecting the 15" and 17" models. Hope it gets fixed for you guys soon!
AFAIK, it's a term that was coined by me right after the new Macbook Pros were released with Thunderbolt ports (see my sig). It was the name that immediately came to my mind when I first saw the spy shots of the Thunderbolt logo. But I didn't post about it until the day after launch. I did a search for ThunderBook, and my post naming my machine was the earliest result:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/11998160/
As the creator of this term I must say that your interpretation is correct! But the B should be capitalized.
ThunderBook Pro sounded too clunky to me, so I kept it short and sweet. Plus with the quad-core blazing fast processors, I felt like simply calling it a MacBook Pro wouldn't do! So the speed also factored into the equation.
I've seen a few other people around here use the term, so hopefully it becomes popular! I think it's catchy anyway.
Then you'll never buy an Apple product again.
Better stick to an ancient C2D MBP then... but make sure it wasn't a first gen!
Well, I'll be damned. Mine's affected as well. 15"/2.2 GHz/6750M.
I have to say I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be, since I've run CPUTest recently (for an hour or so), with no problems at all, and have also installed relatively large packages from macports before. Photo booth + boost compile did make it crash in the end, though. "yes" didn't, at least not in a short-ish time.
I have to say I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be, since I've run CPUTest recently (for an hour or so), with no problems at all, and have also installed relatively large packages from macports before. Photo booth + boost compile did make it crash in the end, though. "yes" didn't, at least not in a short-ish time.
My custom built Windows 7 rig can run circles around all your macs. Virus/problem free.
Oh yeah, it doesn't crash under load either
Chaps, lets be civilised here, nobody ever wins a "My iDick is bigger than your WinDick" arguments.
No one is suddenly going to say "Damn, how could I have been so blind!?"
And then throw their PC/Mac into the bin, and buy a new computer.
I have to be honest and say when I just saw the top half of this image, before I scrolled down, I thought there was something wrong with my graphics card.
It's MacBolt Pro, not ThunderBook
ThunderBook is way more brutal.
I had a 15", 2.2, 8GB, 500GB, for less than 12 hours. Got it to deep freeze rendering a 7 min. 1080p in iMovie and using Safari, or running Portal and changing the keyboard (or screen) brightness f* keys. Both scenarios required a hard reboot every time.
Been over a week since I sent mine back and still no updated shipping info in a replacement system.
Just ran 8 instances of yes > /dev/null & and all it did was make my CPU temp go up and fans kick in.
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