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Tests Confirm Apple's Throttling Fix Improves Performance for 2018 MacBook Pro Models [Updated]
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The XPS doesn't throttle as badly under CPU load as the MBP because it's a thicker laptop so more breathing room as well as a larger cooling solution and Dell dropped in higher quality VRM's for 9570 which was the primary cause of previous generations throttling. The issue with the current generation XPS is that Dell have tuned it very conservatively and it throttles when the CPU and GPU are placed under load simultaneously.
All thin and light laptops will throttle under persistent load when compared to a gaming laptop or desktop. There's no point denying physics.
Looks like a big improvement and the crucial factor is that owners of i9 MBP's are finally getting something approaching the performance they paid for.
Well...you're also talking about gaming laptops that get two hours of battery life tops versus eight or so with the MacBooks...and they run quieter. And they don't run MacOS.
Choices man.
no one has access to the sales number. dell is a private company.
there wasn't an outrage when XPS 15 laptops were released however.
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i wasn't limiting the scope to this site only.
The people who bought those i9s should thank the YouTubers. Fair play to Apple for fixing it quick, but one wonders if they would have bothered if there wasn't as much negative press.
That's it, thin and light or a desktop replacement. Both have their place in the market.
Because one cannot possibly test out every possible usage of a product. Apple is already criticized for lack of frequent updates, so you can’t have both.
"So one YouTuber is now a credible source?"
"Do you trust some kid more than Apple?"
Spit your words people. I guess, now he is credible source since he confirms that Apple fixed the issue?
"Do you trust some kid more than Apple?"
Spit your words people. I guess, now he is credible source since he confirms that Apple fixed the issue?
Possibly true, but pure speculation. At least it can be said he drew attention to the issue and likely helped propel a quick fix.
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Also not a huge fan of the touchbar. I sort of wish for a hybrid solution though as the bar does work well for sliders. And Touch ID is an obvious win, though I suspect Face ID will be coming soon. The lack of a physical esc key is particularly jarring, as others have noted. It’s frustrating to have each product have significant trade offs over the other products. Maybe I’m dreaming, but a product with a physical function key row and a touchbar couldn’t be too difficult? Instead we get a massive touchpad.
Much improved. I see where the larger laptops from other companies may have better scores. But I mean, if you need a light machine that can do some moderate level of computing, this thing is a good buy. I mean, I'd like to see it 300-450 cheaper, but that's just me being poor. lol.
Hmm, tore the machine down after the update, the pre-cpu regulation is still too hot, Apple definitely wrote something into the firmware to change how this is functioning but I would say this will be their next class action. Even post-fix this thing is marginally superior at burst performance than last years. It's getting hot enough pre-cpu that this will be a fail point for them, and I would say in about 12 months the fails will start rolling into repair shops. This machine should be advised against. Reading the comments though, as an Apple user (I buy used, except to test and sell, sorry guys).
If you're really on team Apple, and I AM, then you guys need too top excusing this stuff. Apple is taking us all for a ride here. These machines should be avoided and we should all be speaking with our wallets here. When you excuse and ignore this they just consider it acceptable. Quality has gone down every year and the only reason it's consistently going down is because some of you have your heads buried in the sand.
If you're really on team Apple, and I AM, then you guys need too top excusing this stuff. Apple is taking us all for a ride here. These machines should be avoided and we should all be speaking with our wallets here. When you excuse and ignore this they just consider it acceptable. Quality has gone down every year and the only reason it's consistently going down is because some of you have your heads buried in the sand.
Lol. What basis for the class action? you guys are going deranged. Spitting things out with no proof. Most apple laptops of the past few years have hit 90-100 degrees om the regular. No huge fail rate yet.
Maybe focus on actual fails instead of blowing everything up.
"Marginally superior" lol like nobody read the original post even prefix it was superior in burst instances. It was sustained that was hurting. Seriously bravo on your imaginary world.
There's probably an algorithm that is yet to be written that could maximize your battery life for high CPU activities like gaming.
The problem is that users want the brightest screen and the best frame rate (say 60 fps).
Those two components have the highest impact on battery since you're powering an LED to refresh every 1/60th of a second.
Additionally, most games require internet so you are pulling power to fetch and send server data for each frame.
An algorithm might enable a "game mode" to benchmark that would dim the screen to 70%, say 300 nits, throttle the CPU, limit network requests, and force 30fps.
Then you could target this "game mode" to maximize your performance, which might increase gaming to 4 hours.
Then the art team would be tasked on making "game mode" look colorful.
But when you target 500 nits, or maximum brightness, and 60fps - 120fps, as your base, adjusting those settings results in a bad user experience. Keeping those settings results in 2 hours of gaming life.
I wouldn't use the word hate but I do dislike modern Apple but I continue to like some of their products which leaves me in a bit of a predicament.
This algo willbe different for every laptop so seems undoable. Not every laptop has same screen brightness. Not every laptop uses same combo of components. Not every chip will hit 30fps on same power consumption.
Running this algo would prob killyour battery even faster if its using ML.
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No predicament. Buy what you like. Only sales will teach apple to change. Not complaints from users who dont even own or plan to own the product theyre complaining about aka noncustomers.
Lol, because rendering a video file is a so uncommon task, while the MBP targets the creative people and multimedia audience ?? Come on, the fact that no one at Apple did a video rendering to check behavior and cooling behavior is just stunning.
And the lack of frequent updates would mean to the contrary that they concentrate on quality test, not bypass them to save time.
Just out of interest, are you calling someone who criticised Apple prior to this fix an "Apple Hater"? Because, you know, they paid (or considered paying) a huge amount of money for a laptop that wasn't performing to spec?
Posts like this, and the one you replied to using language like "Apple Hater" and "Apple Defender" or "Fan Boy" are juvenile and degrade this site. In my opinion, there are very few people (as in I can't recall blocking anybody because of it) that could be considered Apple-hating trolls; i.e. appear to be a paid-for Apple-basher who do nothing but attack Apple in baseless ways. Far more often I've found the reverse; those who seem to defend Apple no matter what and use language like "Apple Hater" as if to deny somebody's (or even everybody's) right to express criticism or dissatisfaction. That's my personal opinion from experience anyway; and it's probably to be expected given that it's predominantly Apple users (of which I'm one) who read and post here.
This is a pretty good turnaround time from Apple, as well it should be given the seriousness of the performance issues demonstrated. I tell you what, if I was D2D and paid that much for the laptop that needed to be in a freezer, I wouldn't have been as calm and grounded as he appeared to be on camera!
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They screwed up for sure.
But its also believable that they did test it and some mixup caused the release software to screw this up. Its believable. Mistakes happen. That's why you look to see how companies rectify mistakes.
Their new keyboard on the other hand...
It's actually pretty easy to do on the OS level.
When you write a game, you pass the frame rate into the code for metal or OpenGL. Here's an example for SpriteKit:
skView.preferredFramesPerSecond = 60.0
What the OS would do is override your initialization to a maximum of 30 fps when GameMode is enabled. This is similar to turning off Background Notifications or BlueTooth. It would also limit the brightness to n nits, limit network requests, disable background processing, etc.
Technically, all game developer could do this themselves, but an algorithm that has some scientific basis for results would be easier than making up numbers.
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Game Mode would be enabled by the user when on battery life.
Dont most games give you the option for framerate caps via vsync? I dont play a terrible number of games myself. Unsure if the power benefits scale with this tyoe of vsync.
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Terrible response times. Disappointing it took a class action threat to do something about it.
During Discovery well find out how big of an issue it actually is I guess.
I do, too.
Thank you, "haters", for posting videos, comments, etc about an obvious problem and oversight by Apple, which will fix my > 5000 USD laptop.
An obvious bug, which I would expect any responsibly tech company to have found during some basic testing. Especially if they charge such a premium price. In the past I would have expected that such a premium price is warranted also due to the huge amount of research, development and testing going on.
Looking at the keyboard debacle and now this issue makes me quite angry -a "hater" if you will- because I get more and more the impression, that massive Research and Development and/or testing is not taking place. So we are only paying a premium for thinness now?
None of their engineers or testers has fired up a 2018 MPB off their production line and compared it to other models? Fired up the most common video software which is used by Apple to market and promote their laptops?
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People are gonna be so disappointed, they thought they had found something to **** all over the new MBP for. They're gonna have to keep looking.