I have been thoroughly enjoying my 2011 MBP 17 and feel it is a massive step up from my older 2010 MBP 17. I have found though, left alone it does run really hot in windows whilst gaming. I decided to do some benchmarks plus moitor power consumption with a kilawattmeter meter.
I am running all tests at the 17" native res of 1920x1200 with screen at max brightness, wifi and bluetooth on. Stock specs except 120gb force 120 SSD and WD black 500gb in optibay. I also made sure battery was fully charged.
Firstly furmark 1.8
GPU 400/600 CPU full speed = 72w CPU capped 2.0ghz = 61w
GPU 600/800 CPU full speed = 76w CPU capped 2.0ghz = 65w
GPU 660/800 CPU full speed = 78w
GPU 720/800 CPU full speed = 80w
GPU 780/800 CPU full speed = 82w
GPU 780/900 CPU full speed = 85w CPU capped 2.0ghz = 72w
As you can see the clock speed increases wattage at a linear rate and my gaming clocks of 780/900 adds 9watts over stock 600/800
Capping the cpu to 2ghz gave me a big drop in power of about 11-12watts, I find this useful as most games are gpubound and I notice no loss of perf at 2ghz.
Dawn of War 2 benchmark. native res, settings high but no AA. Cpu locked to 2ghz
GPU clock Max W Ave Max Min (fps)
600/800----77w 38.92 78 8.26
660/800----80w 43.25 87 15
720/800 ---82w 45.97 93 14.84
780/800----86w 49.38 101 18
600/900----80w 39.29 80 11
660/900----83w 43.89 89 16.34
720/900----85w 46.94 94 16.83
780/900----89w 50.1 102 17
As you can see, its playable at stock settings but overclocking the core makes a nice difference. Overclocking the memory makes next to no improvement so its not worth it in this game and you can save yourself 3w of heat/power.
More to come (shogun2, COH, SC2, BFBC2 & COD BO)
I am running all tests at the 17" native res of 1920x1200 with screen at max brightness, wifi and bluetooth on. Stock specs except 120gb force 120 SSD and WD black 500gb in optibay. I also made sure battery was fully charged.
Firstly furmark 1.8
GPU 400/600 CPU full speed = 72w CPU capped 2.0ghz = 61w
GPU 600/800 CPU full speed = 76w CPU capped 2.0ghz = 65w
GPU 660/800 CPU full speed = 78w
GPU 720/800 CPU full speed = 80w
GPU 780/800 CPU full speed = 82w
GPU 780/900 CPU full speed = 85w CPU capped 2.0ghz = 72w
As you can see the clock speed increases wattage at a linear rate and my gaming clocks of 780/900 adds 9watts over stock 600/800
Capping the cpu to 2ghz gave me a big drop in power of about 11-12watts, I find this useful as most games are gpubound and I notice no loss of perf at 2ghz.
Dawn of War 2 benchmark. native res, settings high but no AA. Cpu locked to 2ghz
GPU clock Max W Ave Max Min (fps)
600/800----77w 38.92 78 8.26
660/800----80w 43.25 87 15
720/800 ---82w 45.97 93 14.84
780/800----86w 49.38 101 18
600/900----80w 39.29 80 11
660/900----83w 43.89 89 16.34
720/900----85w 46.94 94 16.83
780/900----89w 50.1 102 17
As you can see, its playable at stock settings but overclocking the core makes a nice difference. Overclocking the memory makes next to no improvement so its not worth it in this game and you can save yourself 3w of heat/power.
More to come (shogun2, COH, SC2, BFBC2 & COD BO)
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