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Battery & GPU issues.

C

Cinab1mt

macrumors regular
Original poster
Ill try to keep this short and simple.

1. I have the newest 15'' MBP i5 (mid range model). I have only had my MBP for 2 months and have done the monthly cycle religiously for my battery. Now, I am not stupid and I realize overtime, the life of my battery will continuously decrease but currently my charge is only at 95%. I use Coconut battery, and it seems every time I take my MBP of the charger it goes down by 1%. Can anyone help explain this for me? Is my charger defective?

Also, I use the GPU info app for my MBP and it is always showing that I am using the NVIDIA GPU when Im not using any intensive programs, only Chrome. Why would this be? Are there programs running in the background that I cannot see? And if so, how can I stop or delete the ones I dont use.

Any insight would be great! Thanks!
 
1. Do you mean that the charge in the finder bar won't go past 95% or the capacity in Coconut is showing at 95%? If it's the latter then that seems pretty normal as my i7 seems to fluctuate between 93 - 97% in Coconut. If it's the former it's a bit odd, possibly try a SMC reset?

2. Don't use Chrome so haven't experienced it effects on the graphic switching, however to check if there's anything running in the background hold down command plus space and type act then enter to launch Activity Monitor, you'll be able to kill any processes you don't think should be running.

Would also be worth opening System Preferences> User Accounts> Log in items to see if there's anything loading on boot that shouldn't be.
 
runebinder said:
1. Do you mean that the charge in the finder bar won't go past 95% or the capacity in Coconut is showing at 95%? If it's the latter then that seems pretty normal as my i7 seems to fluctuate between 93 - 97% in Coconut. If it's the former it's a bit odd, possibly try a SMC reset?

2. Don't use Chrome so haven't experienced it effects on the graphic switching, however to check if there's anything running in the background hold down command plus space and type act then enter to launch Activity Monitor, you'll be able to kill any processes you don't think should be running.

Would also be worth opening System Preferences> User Accounts> Log in items to see if there's anything loading on boot that shouldn't be.
Click to expand...


Correct (the first one) the charge bar wont go past 95% in coconut battery. The life of my battery is 97% and my battery even when fully charged shows 95%, am I missing something?
 
Mine is also at 97%, but goes up to 100% when charged. Note that if you charge your machine to full and the readings didn't go up to 100% something is not good.

In the other hand, Chrome switches on the nVidia GPU, so is totally normal to have it engaged when running Chrome.

How is your battery life? I'm getting 7 to 8 hours, browsing and word processing...
 
Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and insight. I just don't understand why it would continually decrease. It almost as though every time I disconnect from my magsafe it goes down by 1%, just doesn't seem normal.
 
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