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

rMBP Battery Life Issues

D

dpnguye2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 11, 2012
14
2
Hi Internet,

So I have only been consistently getting 2:30 hours of battery life on my new retina macbook ... I am trying to identify if it's the way I am using the computer or if I have a defective machine.

A few details:
- I am running at 50% brightness
- Typically I run Safari, Spotify, and occasionally open up some Adobe programs like Premiere, Illustrator, and After Effects (Which may seem like the red flag to the problem ... but I tried not running those programs once and still the same battery life.
- I have "used up" about 9 cycles of the battery
- I checked the activity monitor and nothing is really running more than 15% of the cpu at any given time.

Any help would really be appreciated. I also run on the resolution for "more space" in the display settings. Could this affect my battery life? That's really my only guess at this point.

Thanks!
 
open activity monitor, select "all processes" and see if there are any out of control processes that are using a lot of CPU.
 
If you're running the "1920" resolution, you could possibly be activating the 650M, have you checked to see which gfx card is in use?
 
ryane67 said:
If you're running the "1920" resolution, you could possibly be activating the 650M, have you checked to see which gfx card is in use?
Click to expand...

Thinking the same, when my discrete card goes active it sucks the juice quick...
 
ryane67 said:
If you're running the "1920" resolution, you could possibly be activating the 650M, have you checked to see which gfx card is in use?
Click to expand...

Thank you all for replying!
How would I go about checking if the 650M has kicked in or not?
 
dpnguye2 said:
Hi Internet,

So I have only been consistently getting 2:30 hours of battery life on my new retina macbook ... I am trying to identify if it's the way I am using the computer or if I have a defective machine.
Click to expand...
There are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
 
the second that you open almost any adobe program or iPhoto or anything that will be doing anything visually tough it will automatically switch to the discreet gpu

install this http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33905/gfxcardstatus/
it will notify you which card you are using AND you can force it to use a particular card, like only the intel card on battery and stuff

Its quite interesting to know when you are switching card, i was quite shocked when i opened iPhoto, and it instantly switched to nvidia, iPhoto was just sat at the beginning interface, i had no photos in the library since it was a fresh install it was just sitting in the background but still forced the better card :eek:
 
Check for the dock process. If it is using a lot of CPU it will kill your battery in about 2.5-3. On mine, after running a restore, there is an error where it starts looking for a default desktop image that does not exist. There are no errors in the console so it is very difficult to find without some deeper knowledge. A quick google search found that someone ran opensnoop on their system against the dock process and saw the issue, a number of other people have reported the same thing. Fix is to either copy another .jpg to match the end link or relink to a new jpg.

Right now, with aperture open, firefox running and a few other things I show 4.5 hrs life left at 77% on my 2.6 rMBP.
 
Question - you guys with battery issues, are you using the machine cleanly or or you restoring from a backup? I wonder if like the iOS6 battery trouble folks if its better to just start from a clean start then to try and restore.
 
dhartung02 said:
Question - you guys with battery issues, are you using the machine cleanly or or you restoring from a backup? I wonder if like the iOS6 battery trouble folks if its better to just start from a clean start then to try and restore.
Click to expand...
That won't have any effect on battery life. It's strictly a matter of what apps/widgets/processes are running and what the configuration is (screen brightness, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.)
 
Thanks you all for your input! I installed gfxCard Status and switched to the integrated GPU but still 2:30 - 2:45 on the battery life :confused:

----------
tarjan said:
Fix is to either copy another .jpg to match the end link or relink to a new jpg.
Click to expand...

That made a huge dent! It's at 4:30 now ... not quite the 7 hours they said. but thank you so much! I would have never figured that out on my own!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back