2019 15" MBP sluggish performance issues

[mattmower]

Hi Have a 2019 MacBook Pro 15,3 2.4GHz i9 with 32GB memory and the Pro Vega 20. macOS 10.14.6.

What I am noticing is that, every now and again, the machine becomes exceptionally sluggish. Mouse & keyboard input is slow, switching apps or tabs is slow.

I noticed it today and poked around a bit using iStatMenus. Here's what I could see:

CPU
Consistently pegged at 1.5GHz
Cpu temp hovering around 63-64C (No throttling?)

Processes
kernel_task 660%
zoom.us 188%
chrome 125%
WindowServer 77%
Grammarly 70%
Load averages: 30.88, 17.43, 9.91

GPU
Hovering around 34 FPS

So the machine was under enough load to render the machine sluggish. The GPU was working. The CPU was operating considerably lower than base frequency while the temp appeared relatively low.

Anyone seen anything like this? What am I missing? Anything to watch out for next time?

Thanks.

Matt

 

[robvas]

What’s your memory usage look like? That load average is nuts. Swapping like mad?

Try closing zoom and grammarly (that last one is a badly written app I’ve seen cause all kinds of issues...)

 

[mattmower]

I should have looked at memory also, I will log that next time.

Chrome tends to use insane amounts of memory although I give it a pass as I am one of those 5 browser windows with 200 tabs people. (I managed to get down to 1 window and about 20 tabs in March but I swear, they breed!)

Grammarly is one of a number of not very good web wrappers I use (Slack also). But I am puzzled how they can be bringing down the machine to this extent.

And what is baffling me is why the CPU frequency is so low. If the CPU temp was near 100C I could understand the CPU being throttled but I would be expecting it to be at least at the base frequency under this kind of load. I'm not sure what the sustained-multi-core-load frequency of this CPU should be, but 1.5GHz?

 

[mattmower]

Reviving this thread as the problems have gotten worse since I wrote this and I now, occasionally, see the CPU frequency drop to 800MHz rendering the machine borderline unusable. All while the CPU temp is 64C. The system is drawing 42-48W and the fans are both >6k RPM. The Radeon is drawing 12-14W the CPU 11-16W I'm not sure where the remaining 12W is going.

What I don't understand most is this: I thought 2.4GHz was the base frequency, by which I understood it to mean that 2.4GHz was the minimum frequency that the CPU should be at any workload. I understand that it could drop the frequency when the machine is idle but the machine is not idle.

Something doesn't make sense here.

I also note that I have a friend with a 16" model that is doing the same thing only for him it is occasionally hitting 600MHz.

 

[mattmower]

As an aside, I don't think this is related to memory usage per se. I do run a number of Electron apps that are memory hungry. But on the one hand, I have 32GB of memory and they're not *that* hungry and closing them doesn't seem to have any impact on whether I experience this problem and it continues in their absence.

 

[mattmower]

One theory I have seen although I cannot now remember where is that it's related to the battery. My case is slightly warped in the battery area.

 

[DenisK]

I am just guessing but could it be the iStatMenus, that's causing it all? In the past Ive had issues with the likes of CleanMyMac - but it was many OSs ago and I just dropped using any of the third party helpers. The numbers you show are crazy indeed, and I have an MBP similar to yours that doesn't exhibit any of this (I have not jumped the ship to Big Sur yet) - and it is stable as a rock. I do occasionally cut 4K videos in Final Cut and that's probably the biggest workload for it, coupled with a 4K monitor, some photo editing too. All in all, if this keeps happening on yours and there are no obvious hardware issues (all checks are OK) I'd do a clean install and just stick to the known apps that you use.

 

[mattmower]

One more piece of data. Right now, with the same workload, it's going from 1.6Ghz - 3.4GHz

I am just guessing but could it be the iStatMenus, that's causing it all? In the past Ive had issues with the likes of CleanMyMac - but it was many OSs ago and I just dropped using any of the third party helpers. The numbers you show are crazy indeed, and I have an MBP similar to yours that doesn't exhibit any of this (I have not jumped the ship to Big Sur yet) - and it is stable as a rock. I do occasionally cut 4K videos in Final Cut and that's probably the biggest workload for it, coupled with a 4K monitor, some photo editing too. All in all, if this keeps happening on yours and there are no obvious hardware issues (all checks are OK) I'd do a clean install and just stick to the known apps that you use.

Obviously, I can't say "No" but I'm not clear how iStatMenu's could cause this kind of problem.

The last time I did a hardware diagnostic it came back clean. But I've seen that before with problems that were later diagnosed as hardware in-store.

The most probable cause to me at the moment is the battery warping affecting the electronics somehow. I have battery warping as does my friend with the 16" and a similar problem.

Unfortunately, I don't have another Mac at the moment to let Apple take this one and diagnose it properly. Waiting for the 28" M1X iMac which should at least solve the problem by being a different machine!

 

[DenisK]

One more piece of data. Right now, with the same workload, it's going from 1.6Ghz - 3.4GHz

Obviously, I can't say "No" but I'm not clear how iStatMenu's could cause this kind of problem.

The last time I did a hardware diagnostic it came back clean. But I've seen that before with problems that were later diagnosed as hardware in-store.

The most probable cause to me at the moment is the battery warping affecting the electronics somehow. I have battery warping as does my friend with the 16" and a similar problem.

Unfortunately, I don't have another Mac at the moment to let Apple take this one and diagnose it properly. Waiting for the 28" M1X iMac which should at least solve the problem by being a different machine!

Cool, with just one observation that if i had even a hint of a suspicion of battery warping visible to me, I'd be long at the Genious's desk asking them for a new battery, or at least have a looksie to confirm or deny it being there. The thing with swelling batteries is that you dont know whats to happen next: whether it will snap the logic board or burst into fire... nothing of the sort you want to happen. While at it, they can diagnose and comment on whats happening in case its not warping thats causing it. Id make a full backup now, and run to the store basically.

 

[make_mac_fast_again]

Sounds like VRM thermal throttling. Try the steps I wrote here.

 

[mattmower]

Sounds like VRM thermal throttling. Try the steps I wrote here.

Thank you.

Okay so `thermal levels`

cpu: 141
gpu: 83
io: 50

CPU die temperature 60-65C

So it sounds like you may be on to something w.r.t. VRM throttling. Apple seems to have issues a patch for High Sierra (I'm on 10.14.6) but nothing since.

My mate with the 16" is already running TurboBoost Switcher and that doesn't appear to have been the fix for him. He's getting the exact same problem. I'm going to try it anyway.

Not sure where to go next.

Matt

 

[make_mac_fast_again]

> cpu: 141

This pretty much confirms you have VRM throttling.

Your goal is to get this number under 100 and keep it there. When fans are running max it will always be 100.

Non-invasive

- Disable TurboBoost
- Stop intensive tasks and sleep your MacBook when you see throttling - otherwise it will take several minutes to return to normal.
- Point a desk fan at the rear of the case (I use this variety)
- Clean your fans! Book appointment at Apple Store.
- Keep your room temperature low. Anything above 26C is basically untenable. If you don't have air con, block sunlight with blinds, open windows during cooler mornings.

Invasive

- Clean fans yourself.
- VRM thermal pad mod

 

[Yebubbleman]

Zoom also tends to load a bunch of other processes that will slow the system down a bit. I utterly loathe Zoom, but especially on the Mac.

 

[ryanmillercg]

Hi Have a 2019 MacBook Pro 15,3 2.4GHz i9 with 32GB memory and the Pro Vega 20. macOS 10.14.6.

What I am noticing is that, every now and again, the machine becomes exceptionally sluggish. Mouse & keyboard input is slow, switching apps or tabs is slow.

I noticed it today and poked around a bit using iStatMenus. Here's what I could see:

CPU
Consistently pegged at 1.5GHz
Cpu temp hovering around 63-64C (No throttling?)

Processes
kernel_task 660%
zoom.us 188%
chrome 125%
WindowServer 77%
Grammarly 70%
Load averages: 30.88, 17.43, 9.91

GPU
Hovering around 34 FPS

So the machine was under enough load to render the machine sluggish. The GPU was working. The CPU was operating considerably lower than base frequency while the temp appeared relatively low.

Anyone seen anything like this? What am I missing? Anything to watch out for next time?

Thanks.

Matt

This site might be of interest to you! https://chromeisbad.com/

It explains how Chrome uses even more resources than reported on MacOS, hiding them in WindowServer.

See if there is any difference if you remove Chrome and use something such as Safari or Firefox instead.

 

[make_mac_fast_again]

> cpu: 141

This pretty much confirms you have VRM throttling.

Your goal is to get this number under 100 and keep it there. When fans are running max it will always be 100.

Non-invasive

- Disable TurboBoost
- Stop intensive tasks and sleep your MacBook when you see throttling - otherwise it will take several minutes to return to normal.
- Point a desk fan at the rear of the case.
- Clean your fans! Book appointment at Apple Store.
- Keep your room temperature low. Anything above 26C is basically untenable. If you don't have air con, block sunlight with blinds, open windows during cooler mornings.

Invasive

- Clean fans yourself.
- VRM thermal pad mod

 

[DenisK]

I'd begin by simply removing load rights from any third party app that loads itself automatically, better yet, start up in Safe Mode and see how things work while there. Then, based off that decide on next steps. I second that Zoom and Chrome are evil, yet I do use Zoom everyday, including on a maxed 2012 MBA on 10.15.7 - with no issues. I do not use Chrome ever, but use Firefox and Opera where Safari falls short (its not supported everywhere). Opera is actually quite light in use, while being very comprehensive to the extent I dislike it a bit (Social networks integration, but on a plus side - free VPN that comes with it). On my oldish 2012 MBA I had to reapply thermal paste a few times myself - and clean the dust out of the fans - to see meaningful increase in productivity and decrease of fan spinups, but I don't believe my 2019 MBP had nearly enough uptime and use for needing that, will do that not sooner than next year. On my 2019MBP 15 incher I never have audible fan spinups, except for 4K video renders, literally never. But I do keep things relatively simple and never use any third party system helpers - except for Coconut battery and Handbrake!

 

[mattmower]

> cpu: 141

This pretty much confirms you have VRM throttling.

Your goal is to get this number under 100 and keep it there. When fans are running max it will always be 100.

Non-invasive

- Disable TurboBoost
- Stop intensive tasks and sleep your MacBook when you see throttling - otherwise it will take several minutes to return to normal.
- Point a desk fan at the rear of the case.
- Clean your fans! Book appointment at Apple Store.
- Keep your room temperature low. Anything above 26C is basically untenable. If you don't have air con, block sunlight with blinds, open windows during cooler mornings.

Invasive

- Clean fans yourself.
- VRM thermal pad mod

So my anecdotal evidence of today is that CPU freq varies inversely with CPU thermal pressure (as reported by thermal levels) and independently of CPU die temp (as reported by powermetrics).

I had an episode on a Zoom call where the machine dropped to 800MHz and became essentially unresponsive. I placed 4 sealed ice cubes on the area of the case above the touchbar from the 4-8 key and within a few seconds thermal pressure was dropping and the CPU freq came back up to about 2GHz. All while the CPU temp was still 60-65C.

All of which to say that I think you are spot on about this.

Turbo Boost Switcher isn't working for me (running from /Applications & have blessed the kext in System Preferences) but I think the answer is cooling. I might look into applying a metal strip to that area connected to some kind of cooling setup as I don't want to open the case and can't afford the time to take it to an Apple Store and leave it with them.

 

[make_mac_fast_again]

So my anecdotal evidence of today is that CPU freq varies inversely with CPU thermal pressure (as reported by thermal levels) and independently of CPU die temp (as reported by powermetrics).

I had an episode on a Zoom call where the machine dropped to 800MHz and became essentially unresponsive. I placed 4 sealed ice cubes on the area of the case above the touchbar from the 4-8 key and within a few seconds thermal pressure was dropping and the CPU freq came back up to about 2GHz. All while the CPU temp was still 60-65C.

All of which to say that I think you are spot on about this.

Turbo Boost Switcher isn't working for me (running from /Applications & have blessed the kext in System Preferences) but I think the answer is cooling. I might look into applying a metal strip to that area connected to some kind of cooling setup as I don't want to open the case and can't afford the time to take it to an Apple Store and leave it with them.

Be careful with the ice packs they can cause condensation which screws things up.

I think you’ll find a cooling solution won’t help much. Turbo boost will constantly push temps too high, causes slowdown to a crawl…and then you get a slightly faster recovery.

Strange that the switcher is not working. I’d say focus efforts on that more than anything.

Elevating the back of laptop off your desk might help too. Or a cooling pad.

Anyway, good luck!

 

[DenisK]

it is just unthinkable that a zoom call would put an i9 mac with 32gigs of ram to a standstill to the effect of starting puttin ice cubes on it. Sorry. My iPad 2 handles Zoom calls and so does my 10 year old MBA. You can run a full-fledged CNN studio broadcast in 4k with a dozen of sources and graphics out of your machine. There must be something else going on. I'd start afresh, and if you cant afford the time to bring it - get a loaner mac and work with it while you check yours for battery warping - as that is a serious threat, if that exists.

 

[macsound1]

I'd start by just making a new user on your machine and seeing how the machine performs under that user, initially doing nothing but maybe just try for your Zoom meeting and see if that's annihilates it instantly or not.

 

[mattmower]

Be careful with the ice packs they can cause condensation which screws things up.

I think you’ll find a cooling solution won’t help much. Turbo boost will constantly push temps too high, causes slowdown to a crawl…and then you get a slightly faster recovery.

Strange that the switcher is not working. I’d say focus efforts on that more than anything.

Elevating the back of laptop off your desk might help too. Or a cooling pad.

Anyway, good luck!

The ice cubes aren't a long-term solution but more to test the hypothesis (and I am dealing with condensation but, yes, a good shout warning about that).

What I am seeing with them in place is that the CPU is actually running hotter at 70-80C and sustaining 2.1-2.8GHz under load while the CPU thermal pressure holds at 100, rather than hitting 150+. No sign of kernel_task. I'm pretty convinced at this point that you called it right.

The laptop is elevated from the surface it's on but the cooler pad I had wasn't working so I'm ordering a Cooler Master XL with a 230mm fan in the hope that will do something measurable in terms of dissapating the heat. Will report back.

Thanks again for weighing in on the thread, was pretty much giving up before!

Matt

 

[mattmower]

it is just unthinkable that a zoom call would put an i9 mac with 32gigs of ram to a standstill to the effect of starting puttin ice cubes on it. Sorry. My iPad 2 handles Zoom calls and so does my 10 year old MBA. You can run a full-fledged CNN studio broadcast in 4k with a dozen of sources and graphics out of your machine. There must be something else going on. I'd start afresh, and if you cant afford the time to bring it - get a loaner mac and work with it while you check yours for battery warping - as that is a serious threat, if that exists.

You may say it's unthinkable but that's the evidence I have. The cooling is not working, thermal pressure is going up, and the CPU is being throttled. It's not just Zoom that I see it in, pretty much any demanding workload is going the same thing. I suspect the cooling in my laptop is faulty.

Battery warping may be an issue but I've seen other people with the problem without it so I while it could be a problem, I don't necessarily think it's this problem. Nor would the cooling I've put in place be likely to affect it if it was.

Matt

 

[mattmower]

Strange that the switcher is not working. I’d say focus efforts on that more than anything.

After trying it about a dozen times it's finally worked. I'll see what happens next. That said my friend with a 16" MBP who has the same problem has had TB disabled for months and that doesn't seem to be helping him any.

M

 

[bbowser12]

You may say it's unthinkable but that's the evidence I have. The cooling is not working, thermal pressure is going up, and the CPU is being throttled. It's not just Zoom that I see it in, pretty much any demanding workload is going the same thing. I suspect the cooling in my laptop is faulty.

Battery warping may be an issue but I've seen other people with the problem without it so I while it could be a problem, I don't necessarily think it's this problem. Nor would the cooling I've put in place be likely to affect it if it was.

Matt

Doesn't help fix it, but I have the same machine, and Zoom absolutely brings it to a halt. Are you using a second monitor? I find that Zoom performs much better with one.

 

[DenisK]

You may say it's unthinkable but that's the evidence I have. The cooling is not working, thermal pressure is going up, and the CPU is being throttled. It's not just Zoom that I see it in, pretty much any demanding workload is going the same thing. I suspect the cooling in my laptop is faulty.

Battery warping may be an issue but I've seen other people with the problem without it so I while it could be a problem, I don't necessarily think it's this problem. Nor would the cooling I've put in place be likely to affect it if it was.

Matt

Well, the end result is that something is suffocating your system, and that could be happening on two levels: physically or “mentally” - meaning, on OS level. So, physically there are a few options that all have to do with interfering with heat pipes that take the heat away from the processor. I’m not sure if a swelling battery could do that as it sits in the opposite part of the box - but I’d check. On OS level there are many more options, all depend on the user’s input, such as apps that were installed and mods that were made. For example, I can confirm that Zoom doesn’t seem to have any visible suffocating effect on my 2019 15MBP - and hardly anything does. On my oldish 2012 MBA zoom sometimes does cause the fans to audibly spin - but I can still operate it without any hiccups, with lots of docs and tabs open, it’s on the same OS. Hope this helps