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MBP '11 throttle CPU while doing something GPU intensive? Power requirement related?

2hvy4grvty said:
I think you're missing the point. I'm talking about if and when both components are being stressed while being powered by JUST the battery, throttling can't be helped.

I understand what you're saying, you can stop linking me to that thread now. You're saying power draw exceeds what either the battery/magsafe can provide, so it "makes up" for it by drawing power from both. Ok. That's fine.

But I'm saying, throttling when caused by lack of power will ALWAYS occur when one is running solely on the battery. You can't just "complain to Apple" and expect it to be resolved. Connected to power? Yeah, that's fine. Larger power brick, simple. It's the equivalent of getting a brand new PSU on the desktop analogy. That's a easy fix.

But short of a battery recall (not happening), we're stuck with throttling while gaming/whatevering on battery. Apple can release all the updates it wants to tell the mobo to "draw more power", but the battery isn't going to listen. It does what it does.
Click to expand...

Maybe we can give it more power by shutting down non essential power requirement, like disabling the macbook LCD screen and using external monitor. I am gonna test it soon. Good theory guys
 
I tested it, it is not heat related! It the power requirement, I Turned off Wifi and disabled the LCD Monitor & plugged in external lcd .
I am using the same program and same tool like the last one.
http://i.imgur.com/etls3.jpg
1.4 GHZ is better than 800mhz :)
 
Curious - would the situation be helped at all, by using a thunderbolt hard drive and/or thunderbolt graphics card (if those come out in the future)?
 
I don't think you guys realize:

There are only hardware fixes to a problem like this; Apple can't just release a patch that magically generates 50w out of thin air. Two solutions: larger powerbrick (AW M14x uses a 150w adapter with more or less the same specs) to help it when it's on power, or a completely revamped sheet battery spec'd out (however 150watt hour is highly unlikely). So in short, both fixes are not very likely, the battery one being nigh impossible. In the size of a MBP, apple would have to be some 20-30 years ahead of technology to create something that small and powerful.

@above: eGPU solutions a la tbolt should have its own power brick (at least the Vaio Z does), so theoretically that'd take the load off the existing PSU (assuming you can somehow shut down the 6490/6750 inside).
 
Fwiw, I've never seen my 2011 MBP 2.2 ghz go above about 80 degrees C playing Team Fortress 2.

Just last night, I played a fun game, at maxed settings, while charging my iPhone via USB, using the other USB port to power my Razer mouse, wifi turned on, and headphones. I saw consistently good frame-rates...
 
... this issue was quite noticeable on my MBP 6750m while playing Deus Ex.

Gaming on the go is nice, but I will stick to gaming on my Mac Pro now.
 
nnoob said:
I tested it, it is not heat related! It the power requirement, I Turned off Wifi and disabled the LCD Monitor & plugged in external lcd .
I am using the same program and same tool like the last one.
http://i.imgur.com/etls3.jpg
1.4 GHZ is better than 800mhz :)
Click to expand...

Are you sure it is power related? The laptop is designed to eat into the battery should the magsafe fail to produce enough power and I've experienced this myself. In fact, it was a popular complaint around the time these MBPs came out.

When both my CPU and GPU are stressed, it's the combined heat that limits the performance, CPU won't turbo as high and even then, it's still running about the advertised stock clock speed.

Maybe try run ThrottleStop to force a certain multiplier level and see what happens.
 
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