Info needed on Fan Noise on new MBP while playing WoW

[James_C]

Apologies I did post the same question in Apple Games, but have not got a reply yet to the question that I asked (although someone did post a helpful suggestion). Thinking about it the question is more about the performance of the MacBook Pro, than WoW which is why I am reposting here.

The questions was "I have a early 2007 MBP 2.4GHz - I don't like playing WoW on it, because after 10 mins the fans start to speed up. After 15-20 mins the fans sound like they are going full pelt and the noise becomes very noticeable. How are the new MBP's ? I have seen a few posts saying the frame rate is pretty good, but no comments about fan speed / noise. Does the fan noise depend on the graphics chip being used?

As noise can be subjective my MBP fans normal idling speed is 2000 RPM (silent), after a few mins of playing WoW the fans get up to 5300 RPM. At that point I am half expecting a voice to come out of the speakers -'Please fasten your belts for takeoff'."

The original post was here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/583963/

 

[WilliamG]

Apologies I did post the same question in Apple Games, but have not got a reply yet to the question that I asked (although someone did post a helpful suggestion). Thinking about it the question is more about the performance of the MacBook Pro, that WoW which is why I am reposting here.

The questions was "I have a early 2007 MBP 2.4GHz - I don't like playing WoW on it, because after 10 mins the fans start to speed up. After 15-20 mins the fans sound like they are going full pelt and the noise becomes very noticeable. How are the new MBP's ? I have seen a few posts saying the frame rate is pretty good, but no comments about fan speed / noise. Does the fan noise depend on the graphics chip being used?

As noise can be subjective my MBP fans normal idling speed is 2000 RPM (silent), after a few mins of playing WoW the fans get up to 5300 RPM. At that point I am half expecting a voice to come out of the speakers -'Please fasten your belts for takeoff'."

The original post was here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/583963/

Normal. My new MBP does the same as the old. You play a game (in Windows for me), and vroom!

 

[Eidorian]

If you take a look here the MacBook Pro's chipset, GPU, and CPU heat are dissipated along the same heatpipe and fan system just like the previous MacBook Pros.

Gaming or high CPU usage is going to make your fans spin up.

 

[kolax]

I was curious to see if the noise wasn't as bad for middle CPU usage, since the fan has more blades, so can achieve similar air flow at a lower rpm.

 

[James_C]

Thanks for the reply. Just one more question can someone test with just the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M ? does this reduce the fan speed / noise and run at a reasonable frame rate. I know WilliamG said that the fan speeding up is normal, I am concerned that because the notebook gets very hot while running these games (hence the high fan speed) that this will reduce the life of the machine because of the extra stress of getting (very) hot, then cooling down again. I was hoping that these new laptops had had cooler running GPU's and perhaps better cooling generally, but it looks like that may not be the case.

 

[Eidorian]

Thanks for the reply. Just one more question can someone test with just the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M ? does this reduce the fan speed / noise and run at a reasonable frame rate. I know WilliamG said that the fan speeding up is normal, I am concerned that because the notebook gets very hot while running these games (hence the high fan speed) that this will reduce the life of the machine because of the extra stress of getting (very) hot, then cooling down again. I was hoping that these new laptops had had cooler running GPU's and perhaps better cooling generally, but it looks like that may not be the case.

The GMA X3100 is capable enough to run WoW. The 9400M G is much better then that.

Keep in mind that WoW also uses multithreaded OpenGL to improve performance as well. Is there any way you can cap the frame rate so it doesn't push the hardware as much?

 

[radx]

The GMA X3100 is capable enough to run WoW. The 9400M G is much better then that.

Keep in mind that WoW also uses multithreaded OpenGL to improve performance as well. Is there any way you can cap the frame rate so it doesn't push the hardware as much?

wow on x3100 is pretty mediocre in terms of performance even if you enable mt opengl.

 

[Eidorian]

wow on x3100 is pretty mediocre in terms of performance even if you enable mt opengl.

I never said how high the video settings or resolution were.

Some people are more then happy with Very Low as long as it's playable.

The only real way to reduce heat is to cap the frame rate at say 25-30 FPS so that it doesn't tax the hardware as much.