Google Maps eats power like crazy on 15" MBP TB

[konnyaku]

Google Maps seems to make the GPU kick in whether on Chrome or Safari - wattages are insane, upwards of 20W just from zooming in and out of a simple map, with nothing else open. Weird thing is the browser will stay on "High Performance Graphics" for quite some time even after you close the Google Maps tab.

Wondering if others are noticing the same. A possible clue to the battery life issues?

Is there a way to force Chrome/Safari to use integrated graphics? Absurd to fire up the GPU for this.

 

[xraydoc]

Google Maps seems to make the GPU kick in whether on Chrome or Safari - wattages are insane, upwards of 20W just from zooming in and out of a simple map, with nothing else open. Weird thing is the browser will stay on "High Performance Graphics" for quite some time even after you close the Google Maps tab.

Wondering if others are noticing the same. A possible clue to the battery life issues?

Is there a way to force Chrome/Safari to use integrated graphics? Absurd to fire up the GPU for this.

Wondering if Apple Maps does the same thing.


Edit: So allow me to add to my post. It appears that the Apple Maps app does not activate the dGPU, but I can see that Google Maps on Safari does. Must be something to do with how Google Maps is rendered.

 

[bhayes444]

Google Maps seems to make the GPU kick in whether on Chrome or Safari - wattages are insane, upwards of 20W just from zooming in and out of a simple map, with nothing else open. Weird thing is the browser will stay on "High Performance Graphics" for quite some time even after you close the Google Maps tab.

Wondering if others are noticing the same. A possible clue to the battery life issues?

Is there a way to force Chrome/Safari to use integrated graphics? Absurd to fire up the GPU for this.

Google maps does this on my 2012 rMBP, always has. Although mine does toggle back to the iGPU, pretty quickly, once the tab is closed.