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mbp gaming and cpu throttling :(

T

TheGrand

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2008
23
0
well, i'm pretty new to mac and the whole bootcamp scene, but anyways i was trying out a few games the other day on my new unibody mbp; namely left 4 dead and CoD4 and i found out that the CPU throttles down to 1.59 ghz from the supposed 2.53 ghz during gaming. Now, I had my fans going at 6200 rpm with clearance all around the laptop and even the bottom of it ( i have a laptop stand for ventilation while gaming). I don't know if my laptop is defective or the mbp's fans just cant handle the heat or whatever. Please comment, and share your gaming experiences with the mbp unibody
 
yea the battery is in and is connected to ac power, just to clarify.
 
Is your power setting set to Performance? Is the laptop hot?
 
I played COD4 on Windows Vista which i installed on my MBP using bootcamp and my CPU isn't throttling down or being bottlenecked anywhere, are you sure you have the latest drivers? done an update? perhaps its a sensor failure in the CPU core, i would take it to your local Apple store for them to run a few tests before the warranty runs out.
 
TheGrand said:
well, i'm pretty new to mac and the whole bootcamp scene, but anyways i was trying out a few games the other day on my new unibody mbp; namely left 4 dead and CoD4 and i found out that the CPU throttles down to 1.59 ghz from the supposed 2.53 ghz during gaming. Now, I had my fans going at 6200 rpm with clearance all around the laptop and even the bottom of it ( i have a laptop stand for ventilation while gaming). I don't know if my laptop is defective or the mbp's fans just cant handle the heat or whatever. Please comment, and share your gaming experiences with the mbp unibody
Click to expand...

How can you tell your CPU is throttling? Is there a special program to download? I felt I may have been experiencing the same issue, but wasn't sure how to check...
 
But not much use for testing games under windows..

coretemp is probably best tool for the job, it will dump out a log file of temperatures, and I think cpu speed too, whilst running.
 
I use rivatuner to monitor freqs. and gpu temps. on my unibody...I also use it to overclock a bit. I haven't seen any evidence of throttling on mine.
 
you can check cpu speed very easily in windows by going to system properties and looking at the general tab
 
I think if cpu throttling is occurring it's probably because most newer games heavily rely on the gpu and not the cpu and doesn't require max cpu power and maybe windows doesn't handle mac hardware the same as OSX would.
 
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