Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

catachip

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 7, 2007
224
0
Vancouver, British Columbia
I have one of the new Santa Rosa MacBook Pros (2.4 Ghz). I am wondering if it's possible to somehow circumvent the processor throlling that occurs when using the battery power? I remember on my old PowerBook you had options to have reduced, maximum or automatic processor usage while on battery. I know the Intel chips have this built in, but I was wondering if there is a way to get full power while on battery? Occassionally I get stutter etc. due to the slow performance, and at that point I'm not as concerned about battery life.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
 

Erasmus

macrumors 68030
Jun 22, 2006
2,756
298
Australia
Make sure it's set to "Better Performance" in the Energy Saver prefs, other than that, I don't know if it's possible, except with maybe some "overclocking" type stuff.
 

EvryDayImShufln

macrumors 65816
Sep 18, 2006
1,094
1
I believe you are mistaken...
Something weird going on if you don't have it...

he's talking about an old option that was dedicated to just the processor. You could set the processor to different levels depending on how much battery power you wanted to use.
 

Sbrocket

macrumors 65816
Jun 3, 2007
1,250
0
/dev/null
I believe you are mistaken...
Something weird going on if you don't have it...

"Better Performance" doesn't adjust the processor throttling anymore, just the computer and display sleep times. You can see this because if you change these sliders in Energy Saver to your own preferred settings, "Better Performance" changes to "Custom." Well I think its quite obvious that there's no secret mathematical connection between processor throttling and computer sleep times, so the only remaining option is the option for the user to change processor throttling settings has been removed (at least from the front-end). Of course, there could be a hidden setting somewhere.

At least, that's how I see it. I can't back it up with any statement from Apple or somesuch, but it seems to make sense.

Edit: I take that back...
2hev9y
 

Sbrocket

macrumors 65816
Jun 3, 2007
1,250
0
/dev/null
I'm not sure if the new MacBook Pros even use processor throttling (which Intel calls SpeedStep). On typical Windows BIOS-based computers there is usually a BIOS setting to enable or disable it, so I'm guessing it would depend on Apple's EFI settings. In any case, I don't see any decrease in core frequencies when I unplugged my laptop. This could be because its still near 100% charge, but who knows. Both of my cores are still sitting at 2.4GHz with my MBP unplugged (via the Processor preference pane from the Dev tools).
 

Sopranino

macrumors 6502
Sep 27, 2006
348
0
Alberta, Canada
Unfortunately I don't have access to the source code for the OSX Kernel, however most *NIX systems provide for processor throttle control (assuming that the processor can be throttled) within the Kernel.

I'll check with a Guru friend of mine and see if there might be an open source utility that can monitor the state of the processor.

I shall post back sometime tomorrow afternoon (local time) with an answer on this one.

Sopranino
 

kusanagi

macrumors regular
Jun 18, 2007
106
0
There also appears to be a significant amount of gpu throttling happening aswell, when running off batteries, i especially notice expose slows down completely wheni try and show all windows.
 

Sopranino

macrumors 6502
Sep 27, 2006
348
0
Alberta, Canada
There also appears to be a significant amount of gpu throttling happening aswell, when running off batteries, i especially notice expose slows down completely wheni try and show all windows.

You should be able to alter the power profile set in System Preferences/Energy Saver. Set the system while powered on batteries to 'Better Performance'

Sopranino
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.