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Macs May Be Getting 'Pro Mode' Option to Boost Performance, According to macOS Catalina Beta
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Ever had a 12" Macbook? They pretty much are that "silent mode" Mac you describe. I had them since the first on came out in 2015; however those silent, passively cooled Macs run under such tight thermal conditions that it can take weeks to sync iCloud or optimise the Photos library if you are working in hot ambient conditions lest the CPU gets too warm (me: Australia & Thailand) BUT... if you're working in nice temperature controlled environment they are a silent running dream
As much as I loved it (perfect size & weight), I ended up switching to a 13"MBP last year because I really needed active cooling - watching Console to see if the OS was going to allow "that-background-service-you-really-need-right-now" to run and jury-rigging fans to cool the underside of a 12"MB to try to appease the thermal monitoring gods within the OS to make it happen, is not conducive to a productive workflow 😅
Yes, A REAL Pro's Pro!
Apple's marketing has done a good job messing up the meaning of 'Pro' While the systems are powerful they are not in what I would call a real Pro's system. While weight and size is always a concern they both take a back seat from performance and usability! Again the magic words here are function over form.
What does a photographer need? The ability to import from their cameras and see the images in a large enough size to be informationally useful as well as reflect the same colors as what the camera took. What does a videographer need? the ability edit and render the the video as quickly as possible.
And the list goes on and on ...
What does an artist need?
What does a writer need?
What does an engineer need
Some of these disciplines needs are similar! So one system might fit two or more.
Almost nobody around here has Mac Pro lol. And few bother reading the article, they just skim and don’t even realize Mac Pro was mentioned.
Be that as it may, when you say the core speeds are staying relatively low... relative to what? Relative to the all-core base clock or relative to the single-core turbo spec?
Base clocks range from 2.5GHz for the 24-core to 3.5GHz for the 8-core. Turbo speeds are 4.4GHz for all CPUs except for the 8-core, which maxes out at 4.0.
In any case, I’m sure higher clock speeds will be attainable if you don’t mind the increased fan noise.
Nope.
Overclocking was pushing CPUs beyond their maximum spec’ed clock speeds. This is trading fan noise for increased thermal performance, which allows the processor to increase the clock speed opportunistically, per Intel’s Turbo Boost and Thermal Velocity Boost capabilities.
Most MacBook consumers don't know that Apple has already throttled their computers to keep fan noise down. It's about damn time that Apple allows the USER to decide whether performance is more important than fan noise. I am hardly surprised that this option didn't appear until BOTH form-over-function guys, Steve and Jony, were out of the company.
Didn't these actually DOWN clock the CPU for native backward app compatibility, instead of them running at Sonic The Hedgehog Edition speeds lol.
bless you for not having to deal with computer-less-literate people.
How apple implemented it is exactly why i won't get 5 support calls from my mom and sister.
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Well yeah, if you disabled turbo they ran slower.
If something is faster when you press a button it's usually slower when you disengage it...
I do a lot of data-intensive work on my Mac and I have always thought it a little odd it takes so long to do some analyses. Now I know - Apple was throttling the machine for reasons that seem rather crass to me (uness their ultra-thin enclosures can't actually handle the heat from the full utilisation of the CPU). FFS
If I recall, the issue had to do with software that used the CPU speed for timing, which particularly affected games but other software too.
The Turbo button could be connected either way though. At first in the 286 days, it was normal to wire it so "Turbo" meant the CPU was running at the fastest speed and it was on by default, and you turned Turbo "off" to run older games. Later, wiring it backwards became the norm, where Turbo was "off" by default and you turned it "on" to play older games. But the button was just connected to a pair of pins on the motherboard, and you could easily switch it however you wanted.
By 486 times, most people didn't even bother connecting the turbo button at all. If I remember correctly, motherboards for the first Pentium didn't support the Turbo button anymore but for some reason case manufacturers continued to put in a turbo button into cases for a while longer. Thus I think most people remember the Turbo button doing nothing at all.
I remember using an older case that had a turbo button in a newer Pentium II build back in the day, and I wired the Turbo button to sort of control the fans by putting in a resistor. With turbo on, the fans ran at full speed. With turbo off, the power to the fans ran through the resistor and the fan speed was cut roughly in half.
Wow... interesting and informative reply man, thank you! So if I'm understanding this correctly, essentially the "Turbo" button was initially put there to gain faster clocks, for obvious reasons because who wouldn't want that, then it almost became a "time capsule" to maintain compatibility with software written and coded to the frequency of said clock when Turbo mode was commonly used, correct?
Now Apple's "almost" literally bringing it back - quite literally in the "it's a switch" sense - doesn't have to be a hardware switch, just something that's toggle-able and enables faster performance. Now hopefully macOS isn't coded like the 1980's and the system starts making Safari snappier due to Turbo mode.
Kidding, because everyone wants a faster Safari. Amazon especially (think about ittt! HAHA. Ahem.)
Thanks again Rssn. Super cool info!
I admit I don't actually know in precise detail what turbo did in a technical level. I know it had something to do with CPU clock rates - I suspect it just jumped certain pins that set the clock rate on the mobo but I don't actually know for sure.
It's not really the same. My first post was entirely tongue-in-cheek. What Apple seems to be suggesting here is just changing the power-management profile, which isn't like the Turbo button at all.
CPUs for a long time, since mid 2000s, have had dynamic clock rates where the clock can adjust on the fly as needed by the OS. Obviously faster uses more power, and slower uses less power. Back in the day, Intel called this SpeedStep and AMD called it PowerNow. There were nifty little utilities in Windows that let you set when and by how much the speed increased or decreased, and showed you the clock rate in real time. I remember seeing my old ThinkPad idle at 100mhz, and then shoot up to 333mhz when launching an application, then going back down to 166mhz while I was using the application. Most of that stuff is handled behind the scenes these days and its optimized so well we don't even need to think about it. Windows still lets you choose to prioritize battery life or performance, or "balanced." I understand Apple is thinking of adding something similar, where you say say forget battery life I want maximum performance.
In another thread, someone pointed out the utility called Turbo Boost Switcher for macOS. TurboBoost is sort of like the dynamic clock rate feature, but goes further. On multi-core CPUs, it can turn off one core and temporarily clock the other core of the CPU really high to do something really CPU intensive. But it can only do it for a little bit of time, until the CPU gets too hot. So if you're rendering a photoshop filter or something, and you need that extra speed for only a few seconds, it works well. But its also not power efficient. Sometimes TurboBoost kicks in when you're doing something simple like launching an app, and do you really need it to be done 0.2 seconds faster if it takes 5 seconds off your battery life? If it happens over and over, those seconds add up. People have found that disabling TurboBoost entirely actually doesn't affect day-to-day performance of basic apps (browser, email, word processing, pdf, excel, etc.) in any noticeable way, but increases battery life noticeably. THAT to me is a closer equivalent to the old Turbo button.
Cheers!
I've noticed way lower FPS in XCOM since the later catalina release builds. Hopefully this will allow the game to override this throttling.
Once my iMac got stuck with a faulty SMC setting and the fans were running full blast. FPS was almost doubled from my normal and there was zero stutter
Once my iMac got stuck with a faulty SMC setting and the fans were running full blast. FPS was almost doubled from my normal and there was zero stutter
Damn. That’s basically what I was going to say. ’Sounds just like the old turbo button.’
The difference though, it seems, is that they shipped it with turbo button functionality built into the motherboard, but without the actual, physical turbo button itself, and nothing connected to the header on the motherboard where the turbo button would connect, or even without the header but it COULD have one, based on the way it’s designed, and so the devices LOCKED into non-turbo, or slow-mode. Another way to look at it: Apple ships its devices UNDER-CLOCKED, or throttled, or whatever.
I smell a class-action lawsuit for Apple deliberately crippling the machines they ship, when someone establishes, or at least alleges, that they did this to sell more Macs. Though I could be wrong. That could just be garlic.
No basis for a lawsuit or complaint at all. If they do this, it will be no different than the "Power Mode" setting that's in Windows and other OSes, that lets you select how aggressive you want the fans and CPU dynamic speed settings to be, choosing to prioritize battery life and quietness (the default) or prioritizing power.
I don't object to it being the default and I don't object to it being user unfriendly to change. What I object to is Apple ignoring those of us that need to actually use the power the computer is capable of and not provide any way for experienced users to control their own device. Both of us could be happy with very little effort on Apple's part.
The first thing I do with a Windows laptop is modify power plan. Saving power when on battery, maximizing performance while on electrical power. I know MacOS has similar option but since I do not have a MacBook, I do not know if it is similar.
I know when my Mini, I want the most performance I can get without damaging the hardware.
I know when my Mini, I want the most performance I can get without damaging the hardware.
I doubt I’d have any need for this but maybe it ties in with a new era of mac gaming? Time will tell...
I still run my G5 servers with nap mode turned off. My Intel Linux servers with CPUs set to full speed.
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Just reinstalled Catalina on my mid 2012 MBP to see if it's worth to stay there into the sunset.
Hoping Big Sur is solid and some type of way to put it on older units compatible with Catalina.
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Just reinstalled Catalina on my mid 2012 MBP to see if it's worth to stay there into the sunset.
Hoping Big Sur is solid and some type of way to put it on older units compatible with Catalina.
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Big Sur will certainly be compatible with any Mac shipped new in 2018 or later. There are laws and international agreements that force this issue. Since there weren't really any new Macs in 2018, it's a safe bet that 2017 Macs will have no issue—especially since some of those are still shipping new in 2020 (says an iMac Pro owner).
This is no guaranty that this will go all the way backward to 2012—but it could. We just won't know for a few months.
My guess for the Mac most likely to have issues will be any based on AHCI SSDs. This includes all Mac Pro 6.1 plus 2013–2014 iMacs and MacBooks. In fact, it's possible that 2012s, being SATA III based could be compatible while 2013–2014 might not.
Replacing AHCI blades with NVMe 3 x4 might fix that for the iMacs, 6.1 and 2015-on MacBooks. The 2013–2014 MacBooks have deep sleep issues with an NVMe blade but a Terminal command disables that.