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Matt Mac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 4, 2012
13
0
hi all,
ive recently just got a retina mbp
it has 16gb ram
ssd (obviously)
the upgraded 2.6ghz i7
and a nvidia GT650M

My first question is that the activity monitor shows 1 core...
should it not be 4 physical (8 logical) ??

and secondly, this computer kicks the c*** out of my old laptop spec wise but it can't run games for anything, e.g., counter strike source ran well on my old MBP 13" with the HD3000 chipset! (onboard graphics) high setting 70 odd fps (more than enough)
on this new MBP all lowest settings it struggles to hit 40 and a lot of the time -30 and is almost impossible on online play (laggy as hell)
seriously, even on like 800 x 500...

so is there something seriously wrong? because this should really surly not be happening.

i also tried guild wars 2, MAX settings 22 fps..... MINIMIUM settings... 22 fps.... how can this be??

p.s. i tried lots of different resolutions in both games which did not help at all in some cases.

thanks all for any help or advise you can offer! :confused::confused::confused:
 
...

activity monitor should show 8 cores. It should show all of the logical cores available, take it in and get it replaced
 
thanks for the replies guys,
i tried the SMC reset thing, dunno if it actually worked/did anything,
and on further inspection, if i go into activity monitor and show cpu history it shows 8 bars.
this still doesn't explain/solve the unbelievably poor performance in cs:source or cs:go though. (i've only tried these and guild wars 2) i dunno what's going on with it. :(

p.s. i just tried civ 5, that runs like a load of c*** too :(:(
 
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Are you sure you are using the dedicated graphics card? There are lots of options that default to the integrated card, like if you're running on battery power etc.
 
My laptop also so as one core in activities monitor.
You have to choose CPU tab and then double-click on the black square and it will show all of eight cores.
 
yeah i'm quite sure it's using the dedicated card, i also downloaded gfxCardStatus to check

(but even if it was using the integrated HD4000 rather than the nvidia card, thats better off than my old mac with the HD3000 and that ran better with less and slower ram, less cpu power and a spinning hdd) :confused:
 
Take it in to Apple, preferably with your old one, running them side by side. It should thrash the old one...
 
Those framerates are horrible. It almost sounds like your machine is failing to switch to the 650m, which is certainly a very capable GPU, when it needs to... have you made any progress using gfxCardStatus? If not, it really sounds like there's something wrong with the graphics here. Take it in to Apple.
 
Looks like there something wrong but until you can go to a genius (i would demand a new computer instead of a fix btw) you can try a harddware test. Press D on the keyboard while turning it on and see if it catches anything.
 
Activity monitor shows a combination of all cores, unless you specifically choose the floating CPU window.

Make sure you've updated to version 10.8.2.

rMBP is not perfect, but you should not be having worse performance in games than you did with your old Mac.
 
Try running this command in Terminal:

sysctl hw.cpufrequency

It will return your CPU frequency in Hz. You should get 2600000 if everything is normal.

Some rMBP have bad throttling issues because of a software glitch I believe.

Otherwise I suggest running Geekbench and / or Cinebench and compare to typical results to find out if your CPU or GPU are the problem. Geekbench=CPU, Cinebench OpenGL test=GPU.
 
Yeah if the SMC reset was a no go, I'd say take it in. Since the last EFI update my bootcamp will default the 650m at 250MHz and kill gaming performance. Reseting the SMC allows it to go back to 900MHz. Not sure if there is a way to see the GPU frequency in OSX, but if you can it should be 900 core.
 
activity monitor should show 8 cores. It should show all of the logical cores available, take it in and get it replaced

Default it shows all cores combined in one graph.

In order to see all cores individually, go with your mouse on the CPU core window, and simply double click. Now you can see 8 cores ;)
 

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- Based on what evidence exactly?

http://www.hwww.anandtech.com/Show/...extgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review

Check the last section, "Software Funniness". I've seen users here reporting the same bug.

I also had a strange experience where the CPU clocks on the system magically decided to get clamped down to around 1.2GHz on battery power. A simple reset of the PRAM and SMC fixed the problem but it was odd behavior for sure. I can’t completely fault Apple for this one, as I know I subjected the rMBP to a bunch of strange tests over the course of the past week and a half.
 
thanks again for the replies,

i tried the hardware test, it took 5m40s and said everything was ok
i entered the terminal command and received hw.cpufrequency: 2600000000

as for the core thing that is no longer an issue, it turns out apple have just decided that on the 'dock' it will only show one bar, it just confused me at first.

i'll give the Cinebench and Geekbench a go and see what they have to say
 
thanks again for the replies,

i tried the hardware test, it took 5m40s and said everything was ok
i entered the terminal command and received hw.cpufrequency: 2600000000

as for the core thing that is no longer an issue, it turns out apple have just decided that on the 'dock' it will only show one bar, it just confused me at first.

i'll give the Cinebench and Geekbench a go and see what they have to say

Geekbench 32bit test gave:
Integer Processor integer performance 9803
Floating Point Processor floating point performance 18131
Memory Memory performance 7046
Stream Memory bandwidth performance 7074
Geekbench score: 11893

Cinebench

“CINEBENCH OSX” can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.

Your security preferences allow installation of only apps from the Mac App Store and identified developers.

Safari downloaded this file today at 20:53 from http.maxon.net.

odd, anyway, i changed the preferences.
i got a OpenGL score of 36.38
 
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