Sorry I meant using that tool to see if on beta 7 we can achieve turbo boost on and low voltage GPU at the same time.
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(2019) 16" is HOT & NOISY with an external monitor! :(
- Thread starter Appledoesnotlisten
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I really hope that there is some kind of workaround to achieve that. I really don't want to use my machine with turbo boost disabled all the time.
Low power mode with 6 watts is pretty nice solution so far, but 14 watts in normal mode seems to still be little high for proper fix. The perfect fix would be to achieve 6 watts with normal mode.
I shouldn't have to purchase an OWC dock to get the laptop to do 1/4 of it's stated specs (i.e. drive 1x 4K monitor when the specs claim it can drive 4x).
Thanks for the suggestions re: cleaning and new thermal paste. I will do that after the Genius Bar appointment.
For those who have gone this route, and seen an improvement, what do you experience when plugged into an external monitor? Running just a bit hot, or do you get to the point where kernel_task throttles the CPU to the point that the system is unresponsive?
Hello there. Yes, Cleaning the inside of the MBP regularly for dust & lint buildup inside does indeed improve the thermal performance.
-> To answer the question in your previous post about CPU throttling:
The throttling we experience is NOT CPU thermal throttling NOR is it GPU thermal throttling. We face power throttling due to the VRM chips overheating. VRM chips (Voltage-regulating modules) take the high voltage electricity, convert it down to low voltage & supplies to to different components like CPU, GPU, PCI-e/thunderbolt bus etc. In process, the VRM chips heat up and require cooling. If the VRM chips overheat, they reduce the power supply to cool down. The CPU becomes the first candidate to get power-throttled & does so massively.
For some more info, I'll quote another post I made here a few days back in response to some apple fanboy.
Please stop spreading that non-sense/fake news. You clearly lack the technical & scientific understanding on this issue.
The TDP of the base model CPU (9750) is about 45 Watt at base clock & the 5300M is rated at around 50W.
Intel® Core™ i7-9750H Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.50 GHz) Product Specifications
Intel® Core™ i7-9750H Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.50 GHz) quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.ark.intel.com
AMD Radeon™ Pro 5000M Series
The Apple MacBook Pro is powered by AMD Radeon™ Pro 5000M Series graphics, which have 24 compute units and a memory speed of 12 Gpbs. Learn more.www.amd.com
This means under max load on CPU & GPU (without turbo boost), the power consumption would be 45W+50W=95 Watt.
With turbo boost, the power consumption can go as high as 120W for a very short period of time.
1) The VRM chips on the 16 inch MacBook Pro are quite terrible (lack any active cooling) & barely manage around 55W of sustained power supply to CPU&GPU. By sustained, I mean after running for more than 20 minutes. With only the internal display, if you run any intense workload that maxes both the CPU & GPU, the VRM chips can supply as high as 120W of total power (battery+adapter) at the start. However, after a few minutes the VRM chips overheat and the 16" MBP prioritizes the GPU. This means the CPU can get throttled to as low as 0.8 GHz. However, this by itself is not an issue for most people as most don't max out the CPU & GPU at the same time. But...this is why the Thermal Pad mod can dramatically improve performance by letting the VRM chips sustain as high as 80-85W of Power.
2) When an external monitor is connected, the GPU by default draws 18W of power. Any extra load on the GPU causes even more power draw upto a total of 50W. This means less power available to the CPU and the CPU starts throttling below the base clock to as low as 0.8GHz (Kernel task occupies something obscene like 500-1200%).
3) If you install Xcode -> Instruments, you can disable cores of your Intel CPU. Turning my 6-core i7 into a 2-core i7 reduces the power draw by quite a bit, but the performance takes an absolutely massive hit. Only recommended for the absolute desperate (who might wanna just surf the web or type emails) with an External monitor+Internal Monitor setup. This is not fix kernel_task under full load though.
4) Monterey Beta 4 & 5 did fix it. Apple wouldn't accept it, but the Engineering department clearly knows after hearing at least 100s of complaints against the 16 inch MBP. Obviously, nothing can fix the VRM throttling I mentioned in point 1 that occurs when you max out the load on GPU+CPU. That's just poor engineering when they provide no cooling mechanism for the VRM chips. I don't see Apple ever accepting their design mistake unless they face a class action lawsuit. In that case, Apple would just announce "A very small percentage of our 16" MacBook Pro customers might face diminished performance under heavy workload & external display. The vast majority of our 16" MBP customers are perfectly fine with no problems whatsoever."
P.S. Regarding the 99 Watt-hour battery & 96W power adapter. 99 Watt-hour is the battery's capacity: the total energy. 96 W is the Power the adapter can supply. The battery can supply additional power and the Laptop can consume as much as 130W total (in which case the battery will start draining slightly).
So will Monterey Low Power mode fix things completely? No. The issue with VRM chips will still remain as they cannot sustain a load beyond 55-60W of Power. This is a design defect. IF the VRM chips were able to sustain 80+W of power, we would only face loud fan noise but not face any CPU power throttling. However, Monterey* (edited word) should fix the throttling when connected to an external screen && dGPU non-intense workloads.
Cleaning up the MBP regularly will help. For an average user, I would not recommend messing with thermal paste or thermal mods. There's always a risk of damage and voiding your warranty.
I hope this helps.
Regards !
Oh, I get it now. Genius, really! Best of both worlds (or: finally the laptop behaves like it should...)
obviously but if it was a problem for a year, one could take care of it in anyway they could and just not give apple any money in the future.. hopefully the monterrey upgrade will fix it for you.
I suggest you to install beta on seperate drive partition. That's exactly what I've done. I still use Catalina for my everyday work and video editing, but I've got beta installed on seperate partition and I'm still able to choose which one I want to boot in when starting the mac.
I am also using it with termal mod. Fan noise is OK I think but most annoying issue is poor battery life with open lid. Every time I want to watch full length movie (approx 2 hours) via connected TV, I need to plug my power brick. Otherwise my battery drains too fast. Of course I can turn off lid while watching movie on TV but -as a Cinema student-, I need to control player during the movie.
Monterey Beta 7
MBP display and 1080p monitor at 60hz getting 5-6 watts with low power mode.
I think this is because GPU clock is reduced.
Normally my CPU temps are 60-65C but with Beta 7 and low power mode its decreased by 10C
and my temps are 50-55C.
MBP display and 1080p monitor at 60hz getting 5-6 watts with low power mode.
I think this is because GPU clock is reduced.
Normally my CPU temps are 60-65C but with Beta 7 and low power mode its decreased by 10C
and my temps are 50-55C.
In the name of science, I tried using the Turbo Boost Switcher app in Low Power Mode (Monterey Beta 7) to check if it'd allow me to maximize CPU while keeping GPU at ~6W. Here's my findings:
1) Normal Mode (NOT low power): Turbo Boost switcher works. I can freely enable or disable turbo boost.
2) Low Power Mode: Turbo boost switcher can NOT enable or disable turbo boost here. The Low Power mode overrides the app. It is possible that Low Power mode disables or locks out the required KEXT (kernel extensions) for turbo boost switcher app to work. So no bueno here, yet at least.
For anyone with some free time to experiment, I would suggest disabling SIP (System integrity protection) and then trying if Turbo Boost Switcher works in low power mode. I'll also take a look at it this weekend.
1) Normal Mode (NOT low power): Turbo Boost switcher works. I can freely enable or disable turbo boost.
2) Low Power Mode: Turbo boost switcher can NOT enable or disable turbo boost here. The Low Power mode overrides the app. It is possible that Low Power mode disables or locks out the required KEXT (kernel extensions) for turbo boost switcher app to work. So no bueno here, yet at least.
For anyone with some free time to experiment, I would suggest disabling SIP (System integrity protection) and then trying if Turbo Boost Switcher works in low power mode. I'll also take a look at it this weekend.
wait for full release. Still not as smooth as Big Sur 11.6 but smoother than Big Sur when it was in beta.
It has been quite stable for me. I use it on my work machine, and haven’t had any show-stoppers.
Maybe we could try to enable the turbo boost via terminal with voltageshift. I use voltageshift to reduce CPU wattage and enable/disable TB on Catalina and it works flawlessly. I'll try it for myself and let you know!
GitHub - sicreative/VoltageShift: undervoltage Tools for MacOS
undervoltage Tools for MacOS . Contribute to sicreative/VoltageShift development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Update for VoltageShift. I can't make it run on Monterey so far, so for now I'm not able to test the ability to enable/disable TB and reduce/increase wattage on CPU. It seems that Monterey, as well as BigSur is far more internally protected. I can't even make a root drive writeable on Monterey and BigSur. So for now I need to stay on Catalina.
It really drives me crazy how Apple is trying to lock the MacOS and make it more like iOS. The reason I've loved the MacOS was UNIX based system and ability to use Linux commands and 3rd party apps that used the benefits of the open system. But each new MacOS update seems to be more and more closed and protected.
Apple is really not what it used to be in the past.
It really drives me crazy how Apple is trying to lock the MacOS and make it more like iOS. The reason I've loved the MacOS was UNIX based system and ability to use Linux commands and 3rd party apps that used the benefits of the open system. But each new MacOS update seems to be more and more closed and protected.
Apple is really not what it used to be in the past.
Important Finding: I did some more digging into Low Power Mode & Turbo Boost.
Turns out, Low Power mode does NOT disable turbo boost. It does, however, cap the frequency to 2.6 GHz on all 16" MacBook Pro CPUs (a number Apple decided for some reason we don't know). It could even be 2.6 GHz cap on all MacBooks but not relevant to this thread, I digress.
1) The base CPU is an i7 9750H 2.6 GHz 6 core -> The base clock is same as Apple's 2.6 GHz cap. So we wouldn't notice here.
2) The upgraded i9 9880H 2.3 GHz 8-core -> gets capped at 2.6 GHz. 300 Mhz above base clock.
3) The final cpu upgrade possible is the i9 9880HK 2.4 GHz 8-core -> I suspect this also gets capped at 2.4 GHz?
So Turbo Boost Switcher does indeed work. But cannot override Apple's lower level tweaking. It'd be great if someone with the i9 9880HK 2.4 GHz 16" MBP could post their findings.
->Here's a blog post from Ruben Perez, the developer of Turbo Boost Switcher.
->Someone on reddit also posted on this thread that Low Power mode caps the CPU 300 MHz above 2.3GHz base clock.
Turns out, Low Power mode does NOT disable turbo boost. It does, however, cap the frequency to 2.6 GHz on all 16" MacBook Pro CPUs (a number Apple decided for some reason we don't know). It could even be 2.6 GHz cap on all MacBooks but not relevant to this thread, I digress.
1) The base CPU is an i7 9750H 2.6 GHz 6 core -> The base clock is same as Apple's 2.6 GHz cap. So we wouldn't notice here.
2) The upgraded i9 9880H 2.3 GHz 8-core -> gets capped at 2.6 GHz. 300 Mhz above base clock.
3) The final cpu upgrade possible is the i9 9880HK 2.4 GHz 8-core -> I suspect this also gets capped at 2.4 GHz?
So Turbo Boost Switcher does indeed work. But cannot override Apple's lower level tweaking. It'd be great if someone with the i9 9880HK 2.4 GHz 16" MBP could post their findings.
->Here's a blog post from Ruben Perez, the developer of Turbo Boost Switcher.
->Someone on reddit also posted on this thread that Low Power mode caps the CPU 300 MHz above 2.3GHz base clock.
It’s funny you talk about Terminal commands, Apple actually added a lot of NEW terminal commands in macOS Monterey.
I suspect the removal of write on root drive as to do with Apple Sillicon. A lot off things Apple did these last few years like removing 32bit was to do with Apple sillicon.
macOS is still open as long as you can disable SIP and you can still do that on Intel and M1 Macs.
If Apple wanted to make macOS into iOS, not giving a option to disable disabling on Apple Sillicon would sure do so. The fact that they didn’t do that and rumours now indicate HDMI and SD card returning to MBP (something iPads will never get) indicates that macOS will remain as it is now and also shows the Mac hardware is not being dumbed down.