Hello all, I know we’re all sort of over the throttling issue with the new MacBook, but I thought I’d contribute my own test results considering I don’t see too many people with my configuration. More data is always better haha. I specifically got the 2.2GHz model, thinking it would be less constrained thermally than the other 2 processor models. I did upgrade the Radeon Pro 555X to a 560X for the prospect of gaming, so that may have contributed some additional heat to these tests as well. I didn’t tinker around with any of the fan controls since the few tests I ran, it performed better in the beginning, but then stabilized to be equal near the end of the rounds.
I also waited a few days after getting my MacBook and finished installing everything to make sure Spotlight wouldn’t be indexing anything while these tests are run. During idle, CPU utilization is under 0.5% which I felt was safe enough to conduct these tests. All tests were run on MacOS.
My MacBook Model:
15-inch MacBook Pro - Space Gray
Hardware:
2.2GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz
Radeon Pro 560X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory
16GB 2400MHz DDR4 memory
512GB SSD storage
My MacBook spends 80% of its time plugged into my single cable setup, so I figure I would run all the tests using that single cable setup. 1 single cable will charge the laptop, power a 4k monitor, power keyboards and mouse, and a cooling fan. It also has a hard shell case on the laptop itself.
There were 6 main rounds of testing, round 1 is unlimited where I didn’t touch any of the power limits so unlimited, round 2 is where I limited it to 50W, round 3 is where I limited to 45W. Rounds 4,5, and 6 are the same except tests are done after the patch is installed. I had considered running the processor at 40W, but at that level, I began to saw performance lost and halted any further testing on limiting it to 40W. The room temperature is 72 F (~22 C) and there was very little moisture in the air.
I waited until the CPU temperature would drop to 47 C before starting the next round to maintain consistency between the rounds.
Rounds 1-3 Testing
It was quickly evident that without any thermal limits, the processor swinged back and forth in frequency and power dramatically. Its probably due to these swings that it ended performing the worse out of the 3. Limiting the processor to 45W proved to be the best before the patch was applied. It reduced temperatures dramatically compared to the other limits, and thus, it was able to maintain a 2.9 GHz speed during the entire testing. It is probably why it could maintain those high 900 values through 15 rounds of back to back testing.
With those tests out of the way, I then downloaded and installed the patch. The whole process took about 20 minutes.
I then waited for the laptop to cool once again and finish indexing before conducting the next rounds.
Rounds 4-6 Testing
Temperatures spiked up very quickly, but it was no longer ping ponging around from high to low in frequency. Patch was wonderful in what it did for the laptop performance.
There were a few interesting results. On average of 15 runs, limiting power to 45W still returned best result since it maintain very equal scores. Unfortunately, it seems to be doing worse than it was before the patch. For initial spikes in performance, 50W seems to be the sweet spot for performance.
On The Go Testing
Now that I’ve determined, at least for my laptop when plugged in, that the most optimal performance occurs when it is thermally limited to 45W, I then sought out to determine what performance of the laptop would look like if I thermally limited even further. This scenario would most likely play out when I am on the go using battery power and want to conserve energy. I wanted to compare these values from my previous laptop as well. Optimally, I would want it to be at least 1.5X faster to make the purchase seem worth it and keep it fully usable.
For reference, my previous laptop was:
2017 13-inch MacBook Pro - Space Gray
Hardware:
3.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650
16GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 on board memory
512GB SSD storage
It averaged about 330 on Cinebench and for geekbench, would get 4741 single core and 9680 on multicore.
All of these tests were run 3 times consecutively. I don’t imagine I would be doing very heavy work on the go anyway, so 3 tests, I felt, was sufficient to prove my point.
Looking at these values and comparing how fast my old MacBook was, setting the thermal limit to 25W is optimal for battery life while still retaining the performance I’m used too. I’ve tested the MacBook at this voltage and I easily see 14 hours battery life remaining with medium usage and 75% brightness! Fantastic!
Overall very satisfied with the product.
