A little over a year ago I purchased a late 2011 15" MacBook Pro with a 2.4GHz i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, high-resolution antiglare display, AMD Radeon HD 6770M/1GB VRAM, and I installed an OWC SSD in it. I was initially pleased with the machine overall. I do some light gaming, some amateur game development, video editing/encoding, and 3D modeling with the machine, so I put somewhat heavier demands on it than many users.
While searching for the ideal setup, I decided to try the machine in clamshell mode with my external display (same native resolution as the built-in screen), keyboard, and mouse setup. This works decently on the whole, although the fans tend to kick on a lot. However, I started to notice slowdowns during processor-intensive or graphics-intensive tasks. I first noticed it during gaming, when I would get a sudden unexplained drop in FPS when playing BZFlag (a 1990's era game with very minimal requirements). I recently installed Portal (needs no introduction, but a game from 2007 which shouldn't especially tax a 2011 MacBook Pro), and noticed awful variance in framerate; a few times a second it would vary from 60, to 40, to 10 or so FPS, making it very difficult to play. Lately I started to notice that even doing a few moderately intensive things at once, like compiling in Xcode while iMovie is open and trying to surf the web in safari, will slow the system down significantly. I use iStat Pro to monitor internal temperatures, and they didn't seem to get all that high (going from memory here, but I want to say about 90C for the CPU and about 70C for the GPU; which, according to my minimal research, I believe to be well within healthy operating range).
Yesterday I unplugged my MacBook Pro to take it on a trip, and when I sat down to work on it, everything was suddenly snappy again. I tried BZFlag and Portal again, and got extremely high FPS rates with perfectly smooth playback. I started googling issues with clamshell mode, and found many threads with reports of significant slowdowns during gaming or other intensive tasks while in clamshell mode. As far as I can tell, Apple seriously crippled performance in clamshell mode to try to solve heat-related issues. I realize that circulation is poor while in clamshell mode, but it doesn't seem to take much (or anything?) to prompt at least some slowdown to occur.
So my question is, what is the best way to use this machine to its full potential with a desk and external monitor setup, while making most of the limited available space? I am stuck with this machine for a while, as it is one of the last models with an optical drive, and I already invested in AppleCare for it (damn good thing, with all the reports of GPU failures out there). I just purchased a monitor riser and vertical stand for the machine, hoping to keep my existing setup, but I don't think that is going to work anymore. I read a few articles about leaving your laptop open and disabling the internal screen, such as here, here, and here. Is there a good monitor stand with like a shelf where I could leave my MacBook Pro open with the lower case underneath the external monitor and built-in display behind it, so I still get the most of the space (I do need my monitor raised about 6 inches for ergonomic reasons)? Is there perhaps a vertical stand that would allow me to safely leave my MacBook Pro partially open (even on its side) for venting without having it take up the whole desk? Can I run it without throttling in clamshell mode if I use some other means of ventilating/cooling it?
While searching for the ideal setup, I decided to try the machine in clamshell mode with my external display (same native resolution as the built-in screen), keyboard, and mouse setup. This works decently on the whole, although the fans tend to kick on a lot. However, I started to notice slowdowns during processor-intensive or graphics-intensive tasks. I first noticed it during gaming, when I would get a sudden unexplained drop in FPS when playing BZFlag (a 1990's era game with very minimal requirements). I recently installed Portal (needs no introduction, but a game from 2007 which shouldn't especially tax a 2011 MacBook Pro), and noticed awful variance in framerate; a few times a second it would vary from 60, to 40, to 10 or so FPS, making it very difficult to play. Lately I started to notice that even doing a few moderately intensive things at once, like compiling in Xcode while iMovie is open and trying to surf the web in safari, will slow the system down significantly. I use iStat Pro to monitor internal temperatures, and they didn't seem to get all that high (going from memory here, but I want to say about 90C for the CPU and about 70C for the GPU; which, according to my minimal research, I believe to be well within healthy operating range).
Yesterday I unplugged my MacBook Pro to take it on a trip, and when I sat down to work on it, everything was suddenly snappy again. I tried BZFlag and Portal again, and got extremely high FPS rates with perfectly smooth playback. I started googling issues with clamshell mode, and found many threads with reports of significant slowdowns during gaming or other intensive tasks while in clamshell mode. As far as I can tell, Apple seriously crippled performance in clamshell mode to try to solve heat-related issues. I realize that circulation is poor while in clamshell mode, but it doesn't seem to take much (or anything?) to prompt at least some slowdown to occur.
So my question is, what is the best way to use this machine to its full potential with a desk and external monitor setup, while making most of the limited available space? I am stuck with this machine for a while, as it is one of the last models with an optical drive, and I already invested in AppleCare for it (damn good thing, with all the reports of GPU failures out there). I just purchased a monitor riser and vertical stand for the machine, hoping to keep my existing setup, but I don't think that is going to work anymore. I read a few articles about leaving your laptop open and disabling the internal screen, such as here, here, and here. Is there a good monitor stand with like a shelf where I could leave my MacBook Pro open with the lower case underneath the external monitor and built-in display behind it, so I still get the most of the space (I do need my monitor raised about 6 inches for ergonomic reasons)? Is there perhaps a vertical stand that would allow me to safely leave my MacBook Pro partially open (even on its side) for venting without having it take up the whole desk? Can I run it without throttling in clamshell mode if I use some other means of ventilating/cooling it?
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