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Performance reduced after EFI update on MacBook Pro Retina

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Even so, throttling to 1.2GHz under heavy load is not normal. Try to reset your SMC?
 
kurinzo said:
Damn it.
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But the test also said that the throtting didnt reduce that much of the performance. i can play bf3 With no problem of choppy/drop in framerate when throtting occure the only thing i notice is that the laptop gets cooler :)
 
Visnus said:
But the test also said that the throtting didnt reduce that much of the performance. i can play bf3 With no problem of choppy/drop in framerate when throtting occure the only thing i notice is that the laptop gets cooler :)
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Well, you're lucky, but i dont like to play on minimal settings.
 
kurinzo said:
Well, you're lucky, but i dont like to play on minimal settings.
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Hehe, well i do play at minimum on 1650x1050 to have a smooth framerate, the 650m can't handle more than that. On the other hand is to check for a more powerful magsafe psu(third party?) or an adapter for a standard psu. That should fix the throtting issue. but thats an extra cost for a already super expensive laptop i know. If i find something ill tell you.

Here's the throtting part in the Mbp R test on notebook check
"Throttling
This test wouldn't be complete if we didn't address the subject of throttling. Prime 95 and Furmark can extract the maximum performance out of the hardware. When both programs are run simultaneously, the core frequency drops (caused by Prime 95) to 1.2 Ghz. Running Prime 95 alone, we measured temperatures between 92 and 104 degrees Celsius (197.6 and 219.2 degrees Fahrenheit), and the word "Throttling" flashes repeatedly in HWiNFO. Furmark on its own cycles through all available Turbo Boost steps. After about one hour, the temperature settled at a fairly consistent 85 degrees Celsius (185 degrees Fahrenheit) with the fan system running. We never measured above 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) with Furmark. This limitation might be due to the power adapter: in the above scenario, the system would require 86.6 watts - but the power adapter can only supply a maximum of 85 watts. Immediately after running our different tests, we subjected the system to 3DMark 06 and CineBench R11.5. The results were identical to after a cold boot.

To simulate daily use, we ran DiRT Showdown under Windows at the maximum settings at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. After one hour o playing, we recorded all five minutes of one round using Fraps. After a fairly slow start (16 fps), the frame rates stabilized at 21 fps. We did not notice a decrease in performance at any time."
 
bill-p said:
I just got the time to run some stress tests and monitoring.

Running Unigine's new Valley benchmark, I get around 18-20fps at 2048 x 1280 resolution (DX11, High settings) and temperature never exceeded 80C.

That's with the GPU overclocked at 1000MHz (1GHz) and Memory at 3200MHz (3.2GHz) effective.

Looks to me like whatever they did to the firmware has made cooling a lot more efficient to me.
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Could you, please, point me to somewhere I can read about OCing on the Retina? Thanks
 
dastinger said:
I only play heavy games under Windows so that's fine by me. I'll give it a go. Btw, which app do you use to monitor temperatures under Windows?

Thanks, mate
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No problem.

I can either use Afterburner to monitor, or GPU-Z.

For CPU, I use Coretemp.
 
Ok, so at first, everything was running smooth (I didn't notice a difference since the update because my RMBP did not have the low performance issue for a while on the week it was out) but now, without me doing a thing, the games start to jitter and skip a bit even though they're running at a constant good FPS rate. It's driving me nuts.. SMC and PRAM reset didn't help and I don't know where to look. God, is something wrong with my MBP or is it just Apple that can't get it right? FFS. I know I'm not the only one with this issue. Someone, on another thread, complains about the same :mad:
 
Sorry for the double post but, since no one answered, I was wondering if I'm just one in a few that still has issues. I've been thinking about formatting the Bootcamp partition and reinstall W8. If anyone still has troubles, could you say if you already had Windows installed before the latest EFI update and if you reinstalled since?
 
I've had Windows 7 installed even before I updated the SMC the first time.

And I'm not having temperature or performance issue. To top it all off, I'm even overclocking my rMBP...

Edit:

Here's a screenshot so you know what to expect:

i5ZAr9QVUfB3Z.png


It may be because ambient temperature here is so low (~15C), but I also have a really hard time reaching past 85C even under full load.
 
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Thanks a lot for the info! Where I usually play the temperature is somewhere around 25ºC and, when I'm playing FIFA 13 or Assassin's Creed 2 (the only 2 games I now have installed to test), the GPU temperature is maintained at 80-85ºC. I used Kombustor to test and the GPU can go up to 95ºC before the fans start spinning full blast. After that, temperature is reduced to 83-84ºC. I wonder if the 95ºC are normal.

I also made an extensive hardware test (pressing the D key continuously on boot) and the results were ok.

I think I'll reinstall Windows. Just waiting for Deadmau5 to stop playing at Ultra :D

--EDIT--

I too OCed just for testing purposes (since I don't need any extra power for the games I'm actually playing) but same thing happened. Plus, the issues I'm getting atm are without any OCing.
 
This SMC update hasn't fixed anything for me unfortunately, I thought that initially it had done the job, but recently I've been getting major system slowdowns while playing civ5, which are only resolvable through a reboot of the system and a SMC reset.
 
EFI update on Macbook Pro Retina now will not Powerup

I have a July 2012 rMBP, I carried out the firmware patch, the system restarted with no problems. I shutdown the system and locked it in my draw, when I came to switch it on the next day there is nothing, the charger LED does not illuminate and there is no activity when you press the power up button.

Does anyone have any tips please.
 
I formatted and reinstalled W8 and the performance dropped even more. I don't know what to do, really. I'm probably taking this damn laptop in and pray that they solve it. I'm sick of this issue on a €2.5k laptop. FFS!

Btw, could someone please point me to the main thread about this over at Apple Support Communities? Can't seem to find it.
 
To everyone:

Are you still having issues?

- Yes and I'm using Windows 8 with the newest Boot Camp drivers.
- No and I'm using Windows 8 with the newest Boot Camp drivers.
- Yes and I'm using Windows 7 with the newest Boot Camp drivers.
- No and I'm using Windows 8 with the newest Boot Camp drivers.

Could you please, answer?
 
So first I thought the issue was resolved with the latest SMC update. For a week now I haven't have to reset SMC everytimg I booted the goddamn Windows 7 Partition. However, just an hour ago I was playing a little bit Battlefield 3 only to notice that the performance has dropped again, with the game being sluggish, jumpy and jittering although the frames seemed to be fine. SMC and PRAM reset did not do the trick unfortunately.

Using Windows 7. 2,7 GHZ, 16 GB, 512 SSD, mid 2012.

It seems like with every (purported) solution Apple somehow manages to implement some new problems just to give us a good time...
 
Junkyman said:
So first I thought the issue was resolved with the latest SMC update. For a week now I haven't have to reset SMC everytimg I booted the goddamn Windows 7 Partition. However, just an hour ago I was playing a little bit Battlefield 3 only to notice that the performance has dropped again, with the game being sluggish, jumpy and jittering although the frames seemed to be fine. SMC and PRAM reset did not do the trick unfortunately.

Using Windows 7. 2,7 GHZ, 16 GB, 512 SSD, mid 2012.

It seems like with every (purported) solution Apple somehow manages to implement some new problems just to give us a good time...
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Exactly what happens to me. In FIFA, per example, I always got 60FPS on High settings and 1920x1200 apart from when I had to reset the SMC. Now, I still get 60FPS but the game jitters and skips a lot! I don't understand, it's just stupid that the frame rate is high and constant but the performance choppy.

And I thought that, after 6 months, Apple released a fix.
 
Could anyone please give me a list of 3/4 heavy graphics games so I can test under OSX, please?
 
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