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m3/i5/i7 throttling

P

puh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 31, 2014
14
16
Does the m3 runs cooler than the i5/i7 alternatives?

If so, might it even throttle less? And as throttling reduces the speed substantially, can the m3 even be faster in some cases? For instance if the surrounding temperature is a bit above room temperature.
 
I believe that the m3 wouldn't be faster. They would, at the same temp, run at the same turbo speed. The i5 & i7 can boost higher when cool.
 
I've been surfing around YouTube's 2160p 4K videos and trying them out on my 2017 m3 in a Chrome browser.

I am happy to report that 1440p24 p30, and p60 all seem to work fine without any hiccups. However, some 2160p material will stutter. The bottom of the machine will get very warm, but it does seem to work for relatively extended periods. I tried for several minutes and it doesn't seem to get much worse. CPU can be as high as 200-300% (which is possible since it's a hyperthreaded dual-core.)

I don't know if the i7 would fare any better on the 2160p material or not. Here is one example video:


However, since we can only display 1440p on the internal monitor anyway, a 1440p stream is most ideal in this context. Too bad Chrome is not hardware accelerated for VP9. It will eventually get there, and that hardware acceleration would be great since Kaby Lake has full 8-bit and 10-bit hardware VP9 decode support included.
 
2015 CTO isn't handling this video very well, not sure if it's CPU or network speed... :(
 
EugW said:
Too bad Chrome is not hardware accelerated for VP9. It will eventually get there, and that hardware acceleration would be great since Kaby Lake has full 8-bit and 10-bit hardware VP9 decode support included.
Click to expand...

that's curious, since VP9 was developed and promoted by google itself...
but i understand that KL cpus are relatively new to the market, so i am confident they'll get there one day.
 
palmwangja said:
2015 CTO isn't handling this video very well, not sure if it's CPU or network speed... :(
Click to expand...
Which 2015? Did you try 1440p?

I would imagine the 2015 m3 and 2016 m3 would fail badly with this video at 2160p. However, I'm thinking the 2016 m5 and m7 would be OK with it at 1440p. Dunno about the 2015 m5 or m7 though.
[doublepost=1497952035][/doublepost]I guess the battery saving solution here is just to force h.264 usage until Chrome enables VP9 hardware decode on Macs. Will that require 10.13 High Sierra?

To force h.264 one can simply just switch to Safari, or else in Chrome one can install the h264ify extension. in either situation, the video then maxes out at 1440p, but it's h.264 which is fully hardware accelerated on Macs, including the 2015 m3. CPU usage goes way, way down, and all stutters disappear on my 2017 m3. Dunno about the 2015 m3.
 
Last edited:
EugW said:
Which 2015? Did you try 1440p?

I would imagine the 2015 m3 and 2016 m3 would fail badly with this video at 2160p. However, I'm thinking the 2016 m5 and m7 would be OK with it at 1440p. Dunno about the 2015 m5 or m7 though.
Click to expand...

I tested with 2160p. I heard 2015 CTO is inferior to 2016 m3 CPU-wise, believe it or not.
 
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