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High Power Mode Expands to 14-Inch MacBook Pro With M3 Max Chip
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Exactly this. Curious to see real-world performance for long renders and gaming. It cranks up the fans to keep the temperature down so it doesn't throttle as much over a longer period of high load. I've seen testing with a thermal gun that shows that the M3 Max seems to run about 4-5C cooler on the bottom of the case than the M2 Max. The more efficient 3nm node likely helps with that, and perhaps the 14" thermal envelope could handle it now, even with the same fans. Not sure if they updated the cooling architecture at all? Will have to see the teardown.
Glad I bought the 14" M3 Max! Probably won't use this feature very often but I'm sure it will be useful when I really need it, especially as the machine ages and I get higher end photography gear and more AAA games are ported.
"most regular users" won't own an M3 Max. They will own the base model, the most popular model every year.
Good, push the Max to the max for people who need maximum performance. Meanwhile I will keep using third-party software to crank up the fans when I run Handbreak on my M1.
I find myself constantly futzing with power modes on Windows laptops, at least as late as Tiger Lake. I can feel a difference between each one, power saver just locks out most boost clocks and actually feels more sluggish because the x86 camp relied too much on high power draw turbo boost to get this performance, high performance feels snappier but way hotter, even balanced will blast the fan on battery. But on macOS they don't seem to make that much difference, the balanced mode will give you almost all of the power if you need it, and save power as you need it.
it’s only available on the Max chip, so I’d expect Max chip owners to know what it does.
Apple's consideration of silent computing and low/ no fan noise is why I switched to Apple in the first place. Even though in the early 2000s the use of the Motorola G4 in the Powerbooks probably had nothing to do with reducing fan noise, I loved how the fan was hardly noticeable, and variable speed. On PC, I hated when my laptops would constantly spin up and down while working on creative things. I found it horribly irritating and counter-productive.
That being said, I recently had an i9 MBP and when I did screen recording for software demonstrations, the fan would kick on and show up in my recordings. I had to move the MBP to the floor while recording from my desk. When the M1 Mac mini showed up I gave it a try and it was dead silent. When the M1 16" MBP came out I traded my Intel in immediately. My M1 MBP's fans wont kick on even while playing a game.
Digressing, with Apple Silicon I do miss being able to use an eGPU and running old MacOS operating systems via Parallels.
That being said, I recently had an i9 MBP and when I did screen recording for software demonstrations, the fan would kick on and show up in my recordings. I had to move the MBP to the floor while recording from my desk. When the M1 Mac mini showed up I gave it a try and it was dead silent. When the M1 16" MBP came out I traded my Intel in immediately. My M1 MBP's fans wont kick on even while playing a game.
Digressing, with Apple Silicon I do miss being able to use an eGPU and running old MacOS operating systems via Parallels.
I dunno, I've been using Macs as a power user for time. These type of should I shouldn't I hurt my head. I am a heavy audio user always driving CPUs but at the same time I don't want to burn. Do I, don't I? How do I know what % extra I am getting? How do I know how much the fans are driving? I guess it's better to be there than not but I disagree about the confusion.
So if you need the power it will move to high power automatically? Then why do we need the high power mode at all do you think?
In a perfect world where people bought the exact machine that suited their needs, and just used the machine to accomplish tasks, you’d be right. But “Through all our performance testing, the machine stayed virtually silent, we never heard the fans” has become such a source of praise in reviews that you can see why Tim would permit an unofficial opt-in to fan noise.
It doesn't move to high power mode automatically, it makes the fans more aggressive and tries to clock higher faster. But my point was, it doesn't seem to make much difference on Apple Silicon, it's already good at giving you full performance on balanced mode. There might be some niche applications like 8K color grading and stuff that maybe it's better for, but most people don't seem to find much difference.
