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2018 i5 quad core MacBook Pro 13” throttling?
- Thread starter Rasta4i
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Yes, it does throttle pretty badly in sustained loads, as you can see here (german article, but the benchmarks tell the full story if you scroll down):
https://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Apple-MacBook-Pro-13-2018-Touch-Bar-i5-Laptop.316002.0.html
Performance under normal workloads should still be great as shown by Geekbench, sustained loads like video encoding or rendering will suffer quite a bit though.
https://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Apple-MacBook-Pro-13-2018-Touch-Bar-i5-Laptop.316002.0.html
Performance under normal workloads should still be great as shown by Geekbench, sustained loads like video encoding or rendering will suffer quite a bit though.
Here's a review that discusses the throttling in English
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-13-2018-Touch-Bar-i5-Laptop-Review.316648.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-13-2018-Touch-Bar-i5-Laptop-Review.316648.0.html
I never had an Apple laptop that never throttle under heavy load
My needs are lot more humble then others, so I think I'll be ok, but I'll certainly put my computer through its paces when it arrives.
Thanks I’ll check this review, it’s also quite worrying as I won’t it for video editing and we mostly deal with 4K footage. As the 15” seems to throttle badly I was hoping to grab a quad core 13” so I can have something powerful but really small while away from the iMac...
Hmm.. looks like Apple will need to have redesigned cooling to allow for better heat dissipation.
My late 2013 15” 2.6 GHz can run 4 core turbo at 3.4 GHz for hours without throttling. It sounds like a jet engine, but the temperatures are stable around 80C.
Guys, all ultrabooks on modern CPUs throttle. It's not unique to Apple, and it's not unique to the 2018 models either. The 2017 models throttled too. I don't think anyone should expect these types of machines to reach peak performance for hours under heavy load. For short benchmarks it's often not so bad, which is why you may end up seeing pretty good benchmark numbers but not get so much real world performance gain. This is why I've been saying since release that the CPU upgrades are not worth it. The base models should still be fine. Or you can repaste them yourself and possibly gain more out of the upgrades, but that's a bit involved for most users.
I agree, but doubt that replacing thermal paste will do anything.
These new CPUs run hot doing hard tasks like video rendering. The impact on these long tasks is a 40+% increase in time to render. And this is unacceptable since these these are "pro" systems designed for pro user doing things like creating videos and rendering them for publication to youtube or corporate presentations.
It is just shame, but you cannot beat the laws of thermodynamics.
Well, people have done it on past MBP's and have seen the throttling disappear or be significantly reduced. I haven't done this myself, but I have delidded my 8700K and it's running cool as a Canadian winter even under full load. It's anecdotal evidence and it doesn't guarantee anything, but I think there's enough there to at least have some hope that it could improve the situation on MBP 2018 also. Probably not worth it to most people though.
But yeah, thermals and power, those are the limits to computer performance ever since 2005 ish and they're not going away with current CPU technology. And considering that the thermals are proportional to the square of the voltage, that makes it a pretty solid wall.
Repasting of the windows laptops that throttling with the i9 has not improved the situation. However, some of the systems with better cooling systems have been able to handle the i9s heat from the beginning. My guess is that really fixing this would require a redesign of the MBPs cooling system and likely the chassis.
jerry wrote in 13 above:
"These new CPUs run hot doing hard tasks like video rendering. The impact on these long tasks is a 40+% increase in time to render. And this is unacceptable since these these are "pro" systems designed for pro user doing things like creating videos and rendering them for publication to youtube or corporate presentations."
I would think that a "pro user" doing heavy-duty video editing and rendering would not normally work on such projects on a laptop -- but rather on a desktop machine (Mac or PC) appropriately configured for such work.
Having said that, the thermal/throttling issues we see with the MacBook Pro line are inherently there due to design compromises made to achieve the all-important Apple goal of "thinness"...
"These new CPUs run hot doing hard tasks like video rendering. The impact on these long tasks is a 40+% increase in time to render. And this is unacceptable since these these are "pro" systems designed for pro user doing things like creating videos and rendering them for publication to youtube or corporate presentations."
I would think that a "pro user" doing heavy-duty video editing and rendering would not normally work on such projects on a laptop -- but rather on a desktop machine (Mac or PC) appropriately configured for such work.
Having said that, the thermal/throttling issues we see with the MacBook Pro line are inherently there due to design compromises made to achieve the all-important Apple goal of "thinness"...
Ok, good to know. I agree that it would probably take a chassis redesign to improve the thermals. From what I understand, the actual cooling system is pretty good given the space they have to work with. But apparently not so good that it bends the laws of physics.
[doublepost=1531924492][/doublepost]
Hmm I think many do actually. That's the impression I get at least. And it's probably fair to expect the 15" to be a reasonable video editing machine, for whatever that actually means in practice. Whether the 13" should be, that's maybe more of an open question.
[doublepost=1531924740][/doublepost]Can undervolting (and possibly underclocking) be done on MBP's? I've never had reason to try, but if that's possible then it might be a way to improve performance.
Can we wait until we have more than one test for any of these models before jumping to conclusions?
People on the forums actually have these machines now, does anyone have any throttling to report yet?
I'm not saying there isn't an issue, just that you shouldn't make conclusions based on a single data point.
People on the forums actually have these machines now, does anyone have any throttling to report yet?
I'm not saying there isn't an issue, just that you shouldn't make conclusions based on a single data point.
Throttling unto itself is expected, for sure. The issue is that hysteresis seems so acute that observations like this are being reported
"it's actually slower than the 15W CPUs according to the german article... that's bad."
If this is true, then a last gen with less than half the capability per spec is more performant at sustained loads.
For the 15", it's looking like the power users who would buy the i9 out of an actual need would be better served by the base model. And it could very well be the same situation with the 13", buy the slowest proc if you're going to really push it.
Apple will not redesign the chassis to fix this, the 10nm process will.
Well, this is exactly what I was saying from release day, even before any benchmarks, and kept recommending that nobody get the CPU upgrades. Of course, people don't listen and still get the upgrades, and then complain that they're not getting the extra performance.
And it's a bit weird to me that people are surprised that computers are limited by thermals and power in 2018, when this is effectively what we've had since 2005
. I agree that it's a bit weird that the 15W parts are faster, but it's also not like Apple had any choice if they wanted to continue with Iris Pro graphics. Which they apparently do.Not necessarily defending Apple here, I'm just not sure they're doing anything significantly worse than any other manufacturer in this regard.
Very true!
Expectations are too high still for thin form factor and extreme workloads.
ESPECIALLY a 13" one. In the Windows world workstation replacement laptops tend to be relatively thick and heavy, something like a ThinkPad (not the Carbon which is an ultrabook)
If the Intel CPU ran at their claimed TDP then the 13" i5 MBP thermal management would be fine with room to spare. What we do not understand is why the new CPU is pulling nearly double the watts claimed in the Intel specification. At the moment the new CPUs are running at desktop power levels (rather than laptop) and we do not know why.
I really don't think this is same situation as the i9. The frequency here doesn't seem to get below base frequency, so it works somewhat as designed (oscillating between base and boost frequency), whereas the i9 gets throttled below the base frequency.