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How serious is the high CPU/not charging issue on the MBP

existe

existe

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2009
72
22
I have read a few threads about the high CPU/Charging issue with the MBP (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2787732?start=0&tstart=0 and I was curious how much of an issue this actual is?

I am considering moving back to MAC in a new non-retina MBP, I am a hobbyist at best with C4D/Modo/AE but sometimes certain renders can take awhile and I am worried this issue will be too impacting.

I know a desktop is a better solution, I would just like to actually gain mobility now and willing to pay the price of slower render times with that gain, but I want to at least finish them. Sounds like instead of one giant render session I might have to break it up into chunks. Just curious if others who do heavy 3D and After Effects work on the MBP run any issues with the high CPU/Charinging issue. Thanks
 
This can be an issue but usually requires more than several hours to fully discharge the battery. It is also dependent on which system you have, a quad core with discrete graphics can easily discharge the battery when both the GPU and CPU are maxed out for an extended time. A render job that is performed strictly on the CPU would draw less power though since the GPU isn't enabled. What I'm getting at here is it will depend on what you're doing and how long your doing it.
 
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Oh man this really sucks =(. I hope its not as bad with the ivy bridge CPU's that are probably a lot more power friendly for the same 85w adapter. I always wondered why such a powerful cpu/graphics only had a 85w power adapter when my dell had like a 125w one.

Like I can totally live with battery charge time going way down or to nothing but actually draining the battery while on A/C power??? uh....
 
It's honestly not much of a problem for me. I can run intense games for a couple of hours and loose no more than a 10% of the charge on the battery. It would have to be a very long render job to seriously impact the battery life.
 
DustinT said:
It's honestly not much of a problem for me. I can run intense games for a couple of hours and loose no more than a 10% of the charge on the battery. It would have to be a very long render job to seriously impact the battery life.
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Wow.. this is kind of making me starting to regret my purchase. It is ridiculous to me it looses any battery power while plugged in =(. I plan on running gentoo on my laptop which means sometimes doing very long multi-hour builds which most of the time will be utilizing all cores on the CPU =(. Very disappointing.
 
This is a serious problem. I'm new to the mac world as well (bought the RMBP 2.6/16/512). If this happens I'm afraid I'll be sending it straight back as how on earth is it "expected" that the battery drains when plugged in - I've *never* heard the like of this before.

It shouldnt matter what the cpu/gpu is doing - it should never discharge the battery when plugged in. Madness!
 
So... apple being apple, is it really impossible to fix a third party power adapter that packs more power than the just barely-ish enough kind of ******** apple keeps using?
 
I've been around on these forums for a little while and a lot of new Mac owners make posts like these. It's worth noting that this is a problem with some PC laptops as well. And, it's not half as bad of a problem as it seems.

Regarding your Gentoo build, it will not be stressing all the cores all of the time. So, the system will have plenty of time to charge. A lot of the Gentoo work I've done is package mirror, network or i\o limited and I've never had a problem with the system discharging because it stressed all the cores.

Guys, take a deep breath... Go use your laptops... I suspect most will find this isn't a problem at all.
 
I am just trying to gauge how bad it is, I am sure it is not as bad as the forums make it sound but I would like to get a feel for it that is all. There have been some renders that have taken between 4-6 hours, and the CPU is pegged the entire time.
 
existe said:
I am just trying to gauge how bad it is, I am sure it is not as bad as the forums make it sound but I would like to get a feel for it that is all. There have been some renders that have taken between 4-6 hours, and the CPU is pegged the entire time.
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Agreed - I would like to know if the macbook would die during a long process like this.
 
4-6 hours would be pushing it. Let me ask, do you know that the renders will take that long? I say this because there are a number of performance improvements that might reduce the time required.

Or, could you setup another machine to help with the rendering? Perhaps a Mac Mini server with the Quad Core would help. Honestly, this issue will a problem on any battery powered Mac. And, it would be a problem on a lot of pc mobile workstations as well.

If I were talking about this to a client, I'd be pushing them into a Mac Pro. It will have the processing to do the work in a lot less time, the cooling to do it reliably for years to come and the power to do it without sweating. If you needed one machine that will do 4-6 hour renders, I don't think a MBP is it.

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psynnott said:
Agreed - I would like to know if the macbook would die during a long process like this.
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The only way I know of is for someone to test it with a 4-6 hour render. I don't have the software to do that type of work. Sorry!
 
What I'm trying to get at is, if I want to hog the cpu for 2358072305 hours straight, I should be able to. It shouldnt matter to me that its a laptop with a battery if its plugged in.

On every single laptop I've used (mostly Dells, all windows machines), if its plugged in, it's NOT drawing from the battery fullstop. I know that I can run it till the end of time and not worry about if the battery is going to crap out on me.

I just find this incredibly frustrating that you have to limit yourself based on if its a laptop or not.
 
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This is basic fundamentals that are wrong! 4-6 hour render is NOTHING, trying doing animation, 25 frames per second... you don't need to make many seconds worth of HD quality animation to exceed 6 hours of rendering. And yes ideally you would do that on a renderfarm and yada yada, thats not the point!

Point is people are relying on the macbook pro for production of all sorts, and not being able to max out everything and keep powered is just absurd!

again, is it really not possible to loophole this? with third party power supplies?
 
DustinT said:
4-6 hours would be pushing it. Let me ask, do you know that the renders will take that long? I say this because there are a number of performance improvements that might reduce the time required.

Or, could you setup another machine to help with the rendering? Perhaps a Mac Mini server with the Quad Core would help. Honestly, this issue will a problem on any battery powered Mac. And, it would be a problem on a lot of pc mobile workstations as well.

If I were talking about this to a client, I'd be pushing them into a Mac Pro. It will have the processing to do the work in a lot less time, the cooling to do it reliably for years to come and the power to do it without sweating. If you needed one machine that will do 4-6 hour renders, I don't think a MBP is it.

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The only way I know of is for someone to test it with a 4-6 hour render. I don't have the software to do that type of work. Sorry!
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Speaking frankly I don't really think that matters. If you spend that much money on a laptop, it should stay charged while you're getting your money's worth out of it, not discharge itself ... that's just counterintuitive.

The solution isn't to "set up another machine", the solution is to make it so that the macbook charges and powers itself regardless of it's load.

OP : I as well now have this lingering frustration that I may be receiving my newly ordered 2012 MBP with the same issue. Great. :(
 
What you said: "I'm doing 24 hour render jobs on a laptop."

What I heard: "I don't know how to use the right tool for the job."
 
I don't think it's as bad as some are making it sound. On my 2011 i7 2.5Ghz MBP it certainly caught my eye (thought something was wrong) the first time I noticed it happening but it never occurred long enough to drain the battery much.

I develop/compile software frequently and have multiple VMs (linux, windows) for various compilers running at any give time. Builds take anywhere from 45mins-6hrs depending on the target. Some utilize only one core in which case this never occurs, others can utilize multi core CPUs and will take advantage of all. In many cases I could see the CPU maxed out via activity monitor for hours at a time and only see "not charging" for a minute or two. In all cases it seemed very brief.

I just picked up a RMBP so we'll see how it holds up under the same load.
 
DustinT said:
I've been around on these forums for a little while and a lot of new Mac owners make posts like these. It's worth noting that this is a problem with some PC laptops as well. And, it's not half as bad of a problem as it seems.

Regarding your Gentoo build, it will not be stressing all the cores all of the time. So, the system will have plenty of time to charge. A lot of the Gentoo work I've done is package mirror, network or i\o limited and I've never had a problem with the system discharging because it stressed all the cores.

Guys, take a deep breath... Go use your laptops... I suspect most will find this isn't a problem at all.
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Good old newbie mass hysteria.
 
cmonroe said:
I don't think it's as bad as some are making it sound. On my 2011 i7 2.5Ghz MBP it certainly caught my eye (thought something was wrong) the first time I noticed it happening but it never occurred long enough to drain the battery much.

I develop/compile software frequently and have multiple VMs (linux, windows) for various compilers running at any give time. Builds take anywhere from 45mins-6hrs depending on the target. Some utilize only one core in which case this never occurs, others can utilize multi core CPUs and will take advantage of all. In many cases I could see the CPU maxed out via activity monitor for hours at a time and only see "not charging" for a minute or two. In all cases it seemed very brief.

I just picked up a RMBP so we'll see how it holds up under the same load.
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I hope you are right :) I am personally pretty much just waiting for my work place to get their finger out of their.... and pay me so I can order my macbook :)
 
This is something that seems to have only happened me recently? I have a Macbook Pro Early 2013, I used to play World of Warcraft on charge with no issues. Now once the MBP has high CPU usage the light on the charger goes out and the MBP drops power rapidly in this game.

Also when using Handbrake Pro for rendering, once the fans kick in and High CPU usage i get the same outcome.

To say this is normal operation has to be mad IMO, So lets say i decided i want to do a render or play a game and i lift my MBP and it only has 15% battery power left, the first thing you do is put it on charge as you know 15% isn't going to be enough power to complete the activities mentioned. This is the whole point of having an external power source, If i want to render in this Scenario, I have to put my MBP now on charge and make sure i get it to 100% before i attempt to do the process, this is not normal. :mad:
 
Futhark said:
This is something that seems to have only happened me recently? I have a Macbook Pro Early 2013, I used to play World of Warcraft on charge with no issues. Now once the MBP has high CPU usage the light on the charger goes out and the MBP drops power rapidly in this game.

Also when using Handbrake Pro for rendering, once the fans kick in and High CPU usage i get the same outcome.

To say this is normal operation has to be mad IMO, So lets say i decided i want to do a render or play a game and i lift my MBP and it only has 15% battery power left, the first thing you do is put it on charge as you know 15% isn't going to be enough power to complete the activities mentioned. This is the whole point of having an external power source, If i want to render in this Scenario, I have to put my MBP now on charge and make sure i get it to 100% before i attempt to do the process, this is not normal. :mad:
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Nice necro thread resurrection...
Anyways, this has been known to occur with macbooks over the last 7-8 years or more. Every single MBP that I've owned with a dGPU will drain the battery if I'm pushing the CPU/GPU both at the same time.
If you have a 13 inch MBP, you could try buying a 85 watt AC adapter meant for the MBP 15's and that may allow you to do major cpu work without draining the battery.
Instead of Apple making a bigger/heavier power brick, they've decided making it as small/light as possible was more important then having the ability to run you MBP at full tilt without draining the battery. If you think only Apple does this, check out the Dell forums where Dell also underspecs their laptop power supplies.
 
magbarn said:
Nice necro thread resurrection...
Anyways, this has been known to occur with macbooks over the last 7-8 years or more. Every single MBP that I've owned with a dGPU will drain the battery if I'm pushing the CPU/GPU both at the same time.
If you have a 13 inch MBP, you could try buying a 85 watt AC adapter meant for the MBP 15's and that may allow you to do major cpu work without draining the battery.
Instead of Apple making a bigger/heavier power brick, they've decided making it as small/light as possible was more important then having the ability to run you MBP at full tilt without draining the battery. If you think only Apple does this, check out the Dell forums where Dell also underspecs their laptop power supplies.
Click to expand...


But this hasn't always been the case, I can't say for sure but I think this only occurred for me since updating to Yosemite. I have seen loads of posts regarding this but I definitely hadn't issues like this when I first got the MBP?

Is it worth taking to my local Apple Store for them to check out?
 
Futhark said:
But this hasn't always been the case, I can't say for sure but I think this only occurred for me since updating to Yosemite. I have seen loads of posts regarding this but I definitely hadn't issues like this when I first got the MBP?

Is it worth taking to my local Apple Store for them to check out?
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It should only ever occur when both the CPU and GPU are pushed to the max.

On a CPU only task, you should see no drainage.
 
snaky69 said:
It should only ever occur when both the CPU and GPU are pushed to the max.



On a CPU only task, you should see no drainage.
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Yeah it works perfectly under most conditions for me, only World of Warcraft and Handbrake I've had this occur but as I said this wasn't always the case :-(
 
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