Anyone had a comment from apple on this or forwarded them the issue?
How do I check my clock speed under OS X?
How do I check my clock speed under OS X?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Performance reduced after EFI update on MacBook Pro Retina
- Thread starter jisongkun
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
I'm totally surprised / shocked.
After the last EFI update, I did notice a significant drop in graphic performance on Windows. However, I thought it's just windows doing it's thing (ya know!)... I didn't quite relate it to the EFI update.
Anyway, the problem was not really noticeable under OS X so I figured I will re-install Windows in the near future. Now, after stumbling upon this thread, I've done a SCM reset and everything works amazingly well. Even OS X (Final Cut Pro X) feels much faster now.
Thanks for this.
After the last EFI update, I did notice a significant drop in graphic performance on Windows. However, I thought it's just windows doing it's thing (ya know!)... I didn't quite relate it to the EFI update.
Anyway, the problem was not really noticeable under OS X so I figured I will re-install Windows in the near future. Now, after stumbling upon this thread, I've done a SCM reset and everything works amazingly well. Even OS X (Final Cut Pro X) feels much faster now.
Thanks for this.
You're welcome. The annoying thing is, and you will notice this, that this solutino is only temporary. It will return. In my case it returns when I send my Mac into sleep.
Running the latest EFI and 10.8.2 update here. No problems in either Mac OS X or Bootcamp from what I can tell. I play COD: MW3 and Starcraft 2 when in Bootcamp.
That's very interesting. Can you tell me: Was your rMBP already featuring Mountain Lion when you got it? Or did you update yourself to 10.8.? If so: Did you do a new clean installation?
Trying to figure out whether reinstalling ML might be worth a shot to resolve this stupid bug. :-/
It had 10.7 on it when I opened it. However, shortly after booting up the computer, I installed the OS10.8 GM ISO that you can find floating around the internet.
I use sleep most of the time. I pretty much only reboot for System Updates and changing from OSX to Bootcamp (which I rarely do).
----------
BTW you aren't running Afterburner in Bootcamp are you? I find that it has really odd behavior WRT the Reset button.
It seems to keep all my clocks in low-power 3D unless I overclock the core and memory by 1 MHz. I don't know why this it the case but I can reproduce it on my GT650M and the HD7970 in my desktop PC too.
Just uninstall Afterburner, the rMBP doesn't have that much thermal headroom for overclocking anyways.
apple replaced my motherboard and the issue is still. so i guess there are large of people having this problem but not all of mac user uses windows and not all mac-windows user uses it for gaming.
----------
no, the afternurner is just for GPU clock monitoring. and yea, because of this issue, i couldnt play most of my favorite 3d games, so i went for a desktop and wait for apple release a new EFI upadate.
----------
it came with 10.7 and i tried erase the entire drive and recovery to 10.7 over internet (tested with bootcamp no fix) and update to 10.8 with no improve at all, thats y im so sure about this is the problem with EFI update. infect i dont think anything relate to mac partition will do any good to bootcamped windows.
I don't have Afterburner installed (frankly I don't even know what that is
).As I said, you are a lucky man not having the issue. ;-)
At this point I don't think there's any end user solution for this issue. It seems we would have to wait for Apple to fix this predicament. :-(
Thanks for the info.
I'm wondering what triggers the issue.
I saw someone asking before about if ones rMBP came with pre-installed ML and mine was one of these. I still can't tell if there's anything related with that fact.
So far the only problem I'm facing with my rMBP is a few Safari crashes which is probably a OS fault.
Edit: Also, I only partitioned for bootcamp after fully updating ML so I can't really tell if there's any performance decrease running Windows 7 on my rMBP but everything is working flawless on bootcamp running Steam and a few other games. Comparing to my brother's and friend's rMBP at least...
We have already discussed that. It's however only a temporary fix (at least for me. How about you?). I'm looking for a more permanent fix of that issue other than just waiting for an update from Apple. ^^
Of course it's only a temporary fix. Think about logically what's happening here. The new EFI update has more aggressive throttling parameters to reduce heat build up. The MBP CPU can easily hit 99 degrees Celsius. Even though this is just below T junction (max temp) it is still too high. The temps for these mobile quad CPUs should be kept below 90 degrees Celsius for throttling to not occur. Unfortunately the cooling system is not adequate enough to do this. The same problem is on the GPU side.
The SMC controls the cooling system and also sets parameters when throttling should occur, based on the temperatures that it sees in the system. When you reset it, those values are reset so SMC jumps in and checks out what's going on - so you see less throttling. Then it registers the hot temperatures and applies more aggressive throttling. So you can keep resetting the SMC, but you'll be back to the same point.
People that say they have no issue are either not noticing it or not pushing the thermal limits. There is no magical EFI that some people have and some people don't. If you've updated to the latest firmware, the parameters will be the same, until the day we have fully self-aware AI-like software.
The SMC controls the cooling system and also sets parameters when throttling should occur, based on the temperatures that it sees in the system. When you reset it, those values are reset so SMC jumps in and checks out what's going on - so you see less throttling. Then it registers the hot temperatures and applies more aggressive throttling. So you can keep resetting the SMC, but you'll be back to the same point.
People that say they have no issue are either not noticing it or not pushing the thermal limits. There is no magical EFI that some people have and some people don't. If you've updated to the latest firmware, the parameters will be the same, until the day we have fully self-aware AI-like software.
- Status