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There you go. Magsafe can only provide 85 Watts by design. GPU is just throttling to meet the power draw since exceeding it will result to battery drain while being plugged in. 3D mark does not max out both CPU and GPU at the same time unlike GTA V so you see heavily throttling there. Just switch to iGPU for consistent FPS since the power consumption will be reduced to 47- 60 W which Magsafe can easily provide.
 
You missed the keyword in that sentence, "peaking" to 91w. The throttling is not related to the Magsafe or temperatures. Just throttling for the heck of it. Those with this machine experiencing similar or just me? I should also add that the reason it stays at 60c is because I'm using MacsFanContol to spin up the fans earlier. It stays at around 70w most of the time with it jumping to 91w once in a while due to CPU as disabling turbo would eliminate it from drawing that much power.
 
Lol great solution. Switch to the iGPU for gaming.
I think the M370X just has some power issues. It is basically a new stepping of the 8870M which was a much higher TDP card than the 750M. Being more experienced on 28nm they probably brought down the power draw but still it is worse than the 750M. But if limiting the CPU helps nothing, there should really be more complaints to Apple. Because that thing just doesn't seem to work.
BTW the iGPU with display and everything still needs about 80W. It is in the 85W but just barely.
 
Agreed, definitely not as advertised but being that this is my first MacBook Pro and not an upgrade from an existing MBP w/ 650/750m, it doesn't bother me too much. I got GTA V along with this rMBP and finished the entire game with it so it's not all that bad. Just no where near 70% faster. I'll keep it and pass it to the wife when something worth getting comes along. But really just wanted verification that this is happening to others and not just my machine. I've thought about repasting but don't really feel like opening it up.
 
14/16nm should offer a worthwhile cpu upgrade in mid 2016. Maxwell would have been better than the M370X. Given the price of those machines they should have used the best product on the market.
Really great will be pascal which would be epic if it came with HBM in the mainstream notebook gpus.
But even AMD's Greenland is supposed to offer a new improve power efficiency architecture and along with 14/16nm it should be substantially better.
 
What is problematic about this analysis is that the rMBP was found in all cases to power throttle (the wattage on the power brick is too low) before thermal throttling. I don't know the intentions of other users who state that what you've mentioned is not fact - but I can tell you that the rMBP's processor runs between 70-80 degrees Celsius under a full GPU and CPU load like prime95 and furmark being run simultaneously, this is in a stable state after 15 minutes of running. The cooling system on the rMBP is superior to the majority of laptops given its thin dimensions, Apple has just ensured that the cooling system is never tested near its maximum cooling capacity by giving us a power constrained laptop.

I've switched from a Late 2013 rMBP to a 2015 14" Razer Blade. I miss MagSafe, doesn't play as well w/ my iPhone, I don't like the HDMI connector (instead of Thunderbolt)... but Windows 10 is nice, and the 970M is amazing. It's impressive to be able to run newer games at 2560x1440 on Ultimate.
 
There you go. Magsafe can only provide 85 Watts by design. GPU is just throttling to meet the power draw since exceeding it will result to battery drain while being plugged in.

Macbooks are designed to do just that. Apple intentionally allows the system to draw from the battery while plugged in to handle situations like that. It's been that way for years.
 
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I've switched from a Late 2013 rMBP to a 2015 14" Razer Blade. I miss MagSafe, doesn't play as well w/ my iPhone, I don't like the HDMI connector (instead of Thunderbolt)... but Windows 10 is nice, and the 970M is amazing. It's impressive to be able to run newer games at 2560x1440 on Ultimate.

Yeah Maxwell is nice for gaming and is very efficient (I bet rMBP would rock in games with an Nvidia 950M). What I don't like about laptops with dGPU is that you have to do a lot of maintenance to keep it performing like it should. On desktops, it's very easy since you only open up the case and blow the dust out but on laptops, some allows easy access to fan while a lot of them don't.

You can still get an rMB or a 13" rMBP if you miss OS X.
 
Yeah Maxwell is nice for gaming and is very efficient (I bet rMBP would rock in games with an Nvidia 950M). What I don't like about laptops with dGPU is that you have to do a lot of maintenance to keep it performing like it should. On desktops, it's very easy since you only open up the case and blow the dust out but on laptops, some allows easy access to fan while a lot of them don't.

You can still get an rMB or a 13" rMBP if you miss OS X.

I can't speak about the gaming performance, but the performance of the CPU and graphics card for photo editing in lightroom and affinity has been fantastic for me. For my uses it is a complete desktop replacement.
 
Yeah Maxwell is nice for gaming and is very efficient (I bet rMBP would rock in games with an Nvidia 950M). What I don't like about laptops with dGPU is that you have to do a lot of maintenance to keep it performing like it should. On desktops, it's very easy since you only open up the case and blow the dust out but on laptops, some allows easy access to fan while a lot of them don't.

You can still get an rMB or a 13" rMBP if you miss OS X.
Surprisingly, I felt like I could live with Windows 8.1 and now that 10 is out, it's even better. All my applications transferred over just fine, and once I'm working in an app, I don't even remember that I'm not on OSX. Windows is definitely snappier than OSX. Anyways, all that to say, I'm quite happy with Windows 10, which makes the hardware switch that much easier.

But if Apple ever ups their game and adopts the latest gen hardware, I'll gladly switch back. =)
 
Surprisingly, I felt like I could live with Windows 8.1 and now that 10 is out, it's even better. All my applications transferred over just fine, and once I'm working in an app, I don't even remember that I'm not on OSX. Windows is definitely snappier than OSX. Anyways, all that to say, I'm quite happy with Windows 10, which makes the hardware switch that much easier.

But if Apple ever ups their game and adopts the latest gen hardware, I'll gladly switch back. =)

Well, they pretty much copied Mission Control albeit horribly organized compared to OS X's Mission Control. Of course the benefits of Direct3D and DirectDraw hardware acceleration pretty much makes the UI buttery smooth through and through. Wish OS X 10.11 can be as buttery smooth as iOS/Windoze regardless of how many apps are running.
 
Opposite for me, I just switched back to the Mac for the first time since the late 90s and I find OS X to be much faster, much more efficient and the UI much more pleasing. Winblows 10 is nothing more than a skin, which I've upgraded all my 8.1 machines to, to include my Parallels VM. Yes, it is much more user friendly than 8.1 but too little too late. The hate I have for Winblows 8 and Microcrap is permanently engrained and will likely never be erased. But at least they owned up to their mistakes and made the upgrade free.
 
Well, they pretty much copied Mission Control albeit horribly organized compared to OS X's Mission Control. Of course the benefits of Direct3D and DirectDraw hardware acceleration pretty much makes the UI buttery smooth through and through. Wish OS X 10.11 can be as buttery smooth as iOS/Windoze regardless of how many apps are running.
They simply added virtual desktops a feature Linux had long before OSX ever got it. They also used to have tiny apps that allowed for virtual desktops but they where well hidden and not officially promoted or supported. I don't understand why it took them so long to officially put that feature in after such a long time. Linux had it forever and it was useful for managing lots of windows.
 
So I did some more reading and read that some people were seeing the throttling while attached to an external monitor, which I was HDMI'd to the TV. Unhooked it and ran the game and it ran much better, throttled from 800 to 400 here and there but much improved from before where it would drop to 700 and 600 and then alternate between that and 400, never going back up to 800. Weird, guess I'll play GTA on the retina display.....

Disregard... Back to throttling like crazy.
 
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They simply added virtual desktops a feature Linux had long before OSX ever got it. They also used to have tiny apps that allowed for virtual desktops but they where well hidden and not officially promoted or supported. I don't understand why it took them so long to officially put that feature in after such a long time. Linux had it forever and it was useful for managing lots of windows.

You're right! When I used Fedora at school I remembered multiple desktops back then
 
El Capitan fixes the throttling issue. GTA now runs smooth as butter for hours and hours.
 
So I did some more reading and read that some people were seeing the throttling while attached to an external monitor, which I was HDMI'd to the TV. Unhooked it and ran the game and it ran much better, throttled from 800 to 400 here and there but much improved from before where it would drop to 700 and 600 and then alternate between that and 400, never going back up to 800. Weird, guess I'll play GTA on the retina display.....

Disregard... Back to throttling like crazy.

Maybe it throttled more on the external display, because you had the lid shut and it was heating up more?
 
Macbooks are designed to do just that. Apple intentionally allows the system to draw from the battery while plugged in to handle situations like that. It's been that way for years.

My 2010 MBP with the 330m doesn't draw power from the battery. Apple needs to stop being cheap and include adequate power bricks for these $2000+ laptops.
 
Just read through the entire thread, was hoping to read more about throttling issues. I've benched my m370x with 3dmark and found that it doesn't throttle nearly as much as when I'm playing GTA V. I've turned the CPU way down to see if that helps but doesn't. The m370x not only throttles but peaks at much lower MHz in GTA V than in 3dmark. Makes me think they did that on purpose for benchmark numbers. The laptop runs GTA V great for about the first 5 mins and then you can see the micro stuttering from the GPU throttling. Still playable but irritating. Would be great to stop the GPU from throttling because it runs relatively cool, just above 60c and doesn't draw too much wattage, around 70w peaking to 91w. Are others having similar experience?

I don't experience any throttling with my m370x when playing GTA V.
 
Maybe it throttled more on the external display, because you had the lid shut and it was heating up more?
No, temperatures were consistent lid open and closed because I have a cooling pad. I also tried running with the lid opened and brightness turned down, same results. El Capitan fixed the throttling issue completely though.
 
No, temperatures were consistent lid open and closed because I have a cooling pad. I also tried running with the lid opened and brightness turned down, same results. El Capitan fixed the throttling issue completely though.

Oh, nice. That's good to hear.
 
hi everyone, I am going to buy a mbpro 15 inch 2015 with M370X gpu and 2.5ghz cpu, I would use it mainly with photoshop, illustrator and indesign, do you guys think it's a good choice? how are the performance of M370X with the adobe suite? should I go on a faster processor?
thank you
 
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