Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacRumours, It's about time the GPU issue about 16" MBP goes to the front page!!

K

Kung gu

Suspended
Original poster
Oct 20, 2018
1,379
2,433
This issue has been going on ever since the 16" MBP was released , it is there. Anyone with a 16" MBP with a 5300M or 5500M can get this issue. The temps increase by 20C and GPU wattage increases from 0W to 20W, as soon as the MBP is plugged to any display. I am actually annoyed that no one is reporting this in the tech media.

MacRumours posted the USB 2.0 issue and that promoted Apple to fix the USB 2.0 issue with the MBA 2020 and MBP 2020.

This post is seperate to the "16" is HOT & NOISY with an external monitor! :(", this post is to get public awareness about this issue.

The fact that issue can be fixed in Windows 10 with third party AMD Drivers shows that this is driver problem.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Forti, nizuzen, Nightfury326 and 3 others
I agree and this is awful behavior from Apple. I wished someone would have warned me about this awful overheating bug before I got the 16" MBP so everyone considering this laptop should be warned.

I would have returned it ASAP if I knew!
 
  • Like
Reactions: foliovision and WilliamG
personally I'm waiting for the day some website will report the seemingly hundreds of people with ear discharge after using Airpods Pros.

or the stuttering of the MBP16 in some apps when not on the discrete graphics card.

I'm betting it's the kind of niche thing that is very important to few people and so it will not get traction.

I've owned apple devices only since last year and I have to admit, they're great in general but only relatively to the absence of real competitors. in absolute terms there's plenty of issues and bugs.
 
  • Like
Reactions: foliovision
In my experience with Apple dGPU machines - they have always turned on the discrete GPU when plugged into a monitor (unless you manually disable it with third party tools).

It's always been stupid behaviour. It's always caused more heat and power draw. I do not expect them to fix it any time soon, as it was a problem with my 2011 machine for its entire life.

Its a major contributor to why I do not buy discrete GPU MacBooks any more.
 
  • Like
Reactions: foliovision, Spectrum and bhodinut
throAU said:
In my experience with Apple dGPU machines - they have always turned on the discrete GPU when plugged into a monitor (unless you manually disable it with third party tools).

It's always been stupid behaviour. It's always caused more heat and power draw. I do not expect them to fix it any time soon, as it was a problem with my 2011 machine for its entire life.

Its a major contributor to why I do not buy discrete GPU MacBooks any more.
Click to expand...

sensible, and was my thoughts for the future too.
I am going back to the hardcore desktop and lightweight laptop model, rather than a do it all overheated noisy solution that I have right now.
 
  • Love
  • Like
Reactions: foliovision and throAU
throAU said:
In my experience with Apple dGPU machines - they have always turned on the discrete GPU when plugged into a monitor (unless you manually disable it with third party tools).

It's always been stupid behaviour. It's always caused more heat and power draw. I do not expect them to fix it any time soon, as it was a problem with my 2011 machine for its entire life.

Its a major contributor to why I do not buy discrete GPU MacBooks any more.
Click to expand...
Agreed. The GPU powering up when an external monitor is attached is nothing new for Macbook Pro. And the power consumption is higher now that people are using 4K and 5K external monitors. If AMD or Apple, and not a 3rd party has a better driver, than that works better, than they should use it. But a 3rd party driver not supported by Apple and AMD is not something I want on my system.

I suspect the need to go to these measures to get good graphics performance is one reason Apple is spending so much research and engineering effort into their own CPUs and GPU packages using Apple Silicon.
 
jerryk said:
Agreed. The GPU powering up when an external monitor is attached is nothing new for Macbook Pro. And the power consumption is higher now that people are using 4K and 5K external monitors. If AMD or Apple, and not a 3rd party has a better driver, than that works better, than they should use it. But a 3rd party driver not supported by Apple and AMD is not something I want on my system.

I suspect the need to go to these measures to get good graphics performance is one reason Apple is spending so much research and engineering effort into their own CPUs and GPU packages using Apple Silicon.
Click to expand...

There's no difference if it is a 1080p or 4K.
+/- 18-20w power draw is a given with lid open resulting in 15-20 Celsius temp raise on idle(!!) which causes CPU to hit max thermal a lot faster which often leads to kernel panics or down throttling.
 
Grohowiak said:
There's no difference if it is a 1080p or 4K.
+/- 18-20w power draw is a given with lid open resulting in 15-20 Celsius temp raise on idle(!!) which causes CPU to hit max thermal a lot faster which often leads to kernel panics or down throttling.
Click to expand...

I don't buy that there is no difference between 1080 vs 4/5k. More pixels to update per cycle uses more power.
 
jerryk said:
I don't buy that there is no difference between 1080 vs 4/5k. More pixels to update per cycle uses more power.
Click to expand...

You don't have to buy anything lol.
It's a fact and there's a massive thread for you to catch up since you joined this one for some reason.
I tested it on 1080p , 1440p, ultra wide 1440p and 4k at this point. GPU power draw goes solid 18-20w as soon as lid is open or second screen (lid closed) is attached. We're talking idle, desktop, nothing open.
There's people running 5K (or was it 6K??) screens with 180 degree rotation (!!!) that got better results than me.
Again. There's a big thread with pictures if that's what you need to validate my words.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: foliovision
there definitely is an issue with minor tweaks to frequency and such or just a different 4k display apparently resulting in a more expected 6w instead of 20w draw for external display, the 20w seems like a massive disparity for normal desktop usage.
 
  • Like
Reactions: foliovision
I may be confused but isn't this ideal? AMD calls this Switchable Dynamic Graphics but in the Nvidia world it is called Optimus. If you want better performance, you plug in your display into a port that is tied directly to the output of the dGPU.

I heard someone say that this problem doesn't exist in windows so that tells me the Thunderbolt ports are wired to the Intel card? So apple may be forcing "maximum performance (as seen in the windows battery settings under Switchable Dynamic Graphics )"

dGPUs use a lot of idle power so this makes total sense if an app is being forced to use the dGPU but in windows it's not. Apple may also be forcing higher power states if you are using an external display but not when using the internal display? I have an AMD laptop and I can replicate this so it makes sense.

EDIT: screen resolution doesn't seem to affect my idle power draw at higher power states. 4k60 or even 2 4k60 screens still show 3 watts. (crappy AMD RX540)
 
richinaus said:
I am going back to the hardcore desktop and lightweight laptop model, rather than a do it all overheated noisy solution that I have right now.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much my usage model:

  • iPad Pro for note-taking, use on planes, meetings, etc.
  • MacBook Air for general email, web, remote administration (I'm a network admin). Like 80% of my daily work.
  • desktop(s) for gaming / network simulation / virtual machine test lab
I've tried to cram everything into a single 15" laptop before and it just doesn't work very well at all. hot, noisy, expensive, single point of failure, too big to be usable on a plane, hot/heavy/noisy on lap, etc. I simply can't get enough RAM in a laptop to really do the things I want to be doing with virtual machines in my test lab setup.

The iPad Pro and MacBook Air have a lot of cross over. I'm super keen to see the new Arm based Macs, because if they can get me something like an iPad Pro 12.9 (in terms of size/weight) with the same performance, no fans and macOS, I'll be all over it like a fat kid on cake. Or if they can give iOS better multi-tasking on the iPad Pro (give me the ability to ensure some apps do not get terminated in the background - like remote consoles), that may also fit the bill as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: foliovision
throAU said:
This is pretty much my usage model:

  • iPad Pro for note-taking, use on planes, meetings, etc.
  • MacBook Air for general email, web, remote administration (I'm a network admin). Like 80% of my daily work.
  • desktop(s) for gaming / network simulation / virtual machine test lab
I've tried to cram everything into a single 15" laptop before and it just doesn't work very well at all. hot, noisy, expensive, single point of failure, too big to be usable on a plane, hot/heavy/noisy on lap, etc. I simply can't get enough RAM in a laptop to really do the things I want to be doing with virtual machines in my test lab setup.

The iPad Pro and MacBook Air have a lot of cross over. I'm super keen to see the new Arm based Macs, because if they can get me something like an iPad Pro 12.9 (in terms of size/weight) with the same performance, no fans and macOS, I'll be all over it like a fat kid on cake. Or if they can give iOS better multi-tasking on the iPad Pro (give me the ability to ensure some apps do not get terminated in the background - like remote consoles), that may also fit the bill as well.
Click to expand...

That’s me in a nutshell. And really I realised I sit in the same place most of the time working anyway so why be compromised, and don’t need the power when away from my desk to the same extent.
I am going to look into remote desktop more to see if the performance is there but the most likely outcome is I am going to separate work from home use [it is a very blurred line though so may be tricky !]
 
  • Like
Reactions: throAU
This issue is an indictment of the tech review press and YouTube channels, who only focus on largely useless benchmarks and don't consider things like thermals over the course of a day or during routine work and not exporting 4k files for an hour. These are clearly pro models, but even pros don't use them that way all day. Not to mention the dGPU issue impacts performance at the high end as well.
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: foliovision, CMMChris and AAPLGeek
Corncab44 said:
This issue is an indictment of the tech review press and YouTube channels, who only focus on largely useless benchmarks and don't consider things like thermals over the course of a day or during routine work and not exporting 4k files for an hour. These are clearly pro models, but even pros don't use them that way all day. Not to mention the dGPU issue impacts performance at the high end as well.
Click to expand...

To add, it seems like these tech reviews, whether it's an article or video, always try to get first dibs on posting. I get that probably helps their channel, but 1 day of running benchmarks doesn't really give information for how the computer is going to perform in the long run. One week of testing might (e.g. doing music production, video and photo editing), and that's on the time scale of a new product delay so it would give the buyer time to think more about what it is they're actually buying.
 
  • Like
Reactions: foliovision, AAPLGeek, CMMChris and 1 other person
If there are other people like me, this problem is costing Apple money.

I currently own a MacBook Air 2013 and an iPad Pro 12.9". I am itching for an upgrade with more ram/storage/processor power.

Here are the current Apple offerings:
- 16" MacBook Pro, overheats when connected to external monitor.
- MacBook Air, overheats with three chrome browser windows open.
- iPad Pro, nothing 'pro' about it I use mine for banking app and looking at photos. You can't even install browser extensions, ios is just useless.

Please Apple get a grip and release a product your customers can actually use.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AAPLGeek
Peptide said:
To add, it seems like these tech reviews, whether it's an article or video, always try to get first dibs on posting. I get that probably helps their channel, but 1 day of running benchmarks doesn't really give information for how the computer is going to perform in the long run. One week of testing might (e.g. doing music production, video and photo editing), and that's on the time scale of a new product delay so it would give the buyer time to think more about what it is they're actually buying.
Click to expand...

I never see anyone testing the software I use.......

My MBP 16” is fantastic in all Mac apps and very quick. A total pleasure to use.
Move onto the pro apps however and things start to unravel.

it can only go in 2 directions - Apple Silicon is a fresh start and is embraced, or they don’t bother as it is a small market.
Hopefully we don’t get the half arsed development for the Mac side compared to windows side, however I wont hold my breath as 95% of their users are on windows.
I know if I was a developer of these apps, where my focus would be [and it is very obvious where it is and has been up to now!]
 
jaze22 said:
If there are other people like me, this problem is costing Apple money.

I currently own a MacBook Air 2013 and an iPad Pro 12.9". I am itching for an upgrade with more ram/storage/processor power.

Here are the current Apple offerings:
- 16" MacBook Pro, overheats when connected to external monitor.
- MacBook Air, overheats with three chrome browser windows open.
- iPad Pro, nothing 'pro' about it I use mine for banking app and looking at photos. You can't even install browser extensions, ios is just useless.

Please Apple get a grip and release a product your customers can actually use.
Click to expand...

add the iMac turns into a vacuum cleaner when pushed and have no doubt this new model is the same.

I disagree with the iPad Pro though - I use mine in lots of aspects of my professional use.
 
jaze22 said:
16" MacBook Pro, overheats when connected to external monitor.
Click to expand...
I seem to recall some saying that the upgrade to the 5600m dGPU mitigates this to some extent. Did I read incorrectly or am I remembering wrong?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back