Apple Silicon finally got the "Intel Power Gadget"

[CMMChris]

On Intel Macs, if you wanted to know the stats about your CPU like clock, load, power usage and temps, there was a very handy tool called Intel Power Gadget, which listed all of this information in a nice UI with graphs. Now for Apple Silicon Macs a lot of people have been missing such a tool. Yes, command line offers powermetrics, but that's kind of inconvenient to use and just not as nice to look at as Intel Power Gadget used to be.

But now we finally have a solution. Developer Seense has developed the "Mx Power Gadget". This application is almost a 1:1 copy of Intel Power Gadget and a GUI for powermetrics, displaying the data in a much nicer format along graphs for visualization. IMO it's very well done and definitely worth a look.

You can download Mx Power Gadget here.

 

[Kazgarth]

Very useful tool for anyone who is into benchmarks.

 

[benwiggy]

What do you use this info for?

 

[Toutou]

What do you use this info for?

Aside from power-related troubleshooting, it's useful for the kind of people who can't stand not knowing how things work.

 

[venom600]

What do you use this info for?

On Intel Macs it's really useful to see if your computer just slowed to a crawl because of the task you're doing maxing out the CPU or if the computer has thermal throttled itself down to 800MHz. Chances are it's the latter, not the former.

 

[laptech]

It is a useful tool for macrumours AS owners to make posts whining and moaning about why their brand new AS is throttling.

 

[bluesteel]

Awesome. I was looking for an Intel Power Gadget alternative for my new Apple silicon. Thanks for posting

 

[Madhatter32]

What do you use this info for?

The OP probably uses this app to measure CPU power, frequency, temperature and utilization among other things. Just guessing. Looks like a great tool.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

Thanks for sharing! I wanna check something out when compiling this will be greatly appreciated

 

[Darkseth]

I tried it a while ago, it showed wrong Power Consumption numbers for me.
Didn't match with "sudo powermetrics" for me. Can anyone confirm? maybe it was fixed.

 

[CMMChris]

Yes there are still some issues. Edit: There is a new version now which fixes this.

 

[benwiggy]

The OP probably uses this app to measure CPU power, frequency, temperature and utilization among other things. Just guessing. Looks like a great tool.

But to what end?

You can use Activity Monitor to see if a process is running away with loads of RAM or CPU cycles, and kill it if you need to: but what do you do with this level of info? How much manual CPU/process management is necessary?

 

[throAU]

On Intel Macs it's really useful to see if your computer just slowed to a crawl because of the task you're doing maxing out the CPU or if the computer has thermal throttled itself down to 800MHz. Chances are it's the latter, not the former.

Yeah, since I upgraded to Apple Silicon I've not felt inclined to bother with fan control, power measurement, etc. because

1. less clutter - trying to avoid the notch with extra menubar crap
2. the machine does a pretty good job of thermal management by itself

 

[CMMChris]

@benwiggy Why do you question others preferences? Just because it isn't of interest to you (which I certainly understand!), doesn't mean the same for everyone else.
I for myself appreciate being able to monitor what my processor is doing in terms of clocks, temps, power draw. It's just an interesting thing to me, and activity monitor does not provide that kind of information. So far I was using Terminal and Apple's own powermetrics for that. Now I use Mx Power Gadget because it's just a much nicer solution with the graphical interface and charts.

 

[aevan]

I see they also make MenuBar Stats which looks nice. Does anyone know how does it compare to iStat Menus?

 

[Madhatter32]

But to what end?

You can use Activity Monitor to see if a process is running away with loads of RAM or CPU cycles, and kill it if you need to: but what do you do with this level of info? How much manual CPU/process management is necessary?

Many people like to monitor their system's temperature especially under load. Necessary? Not sure. Nice to have though.

 

[leman]

But to what end?

You can use Activity Monitor to see if a process is running away with loads of RAM or CPU cycles, and kill it if you need to: but what do you do with this level of info? How much manual CPU/process management is necessary?

Don’t know about others, but I use these tools to study the behavior of the new Apple CPUs. Call it academic curiosity.

 

[benwiggy]

@benwiggy Why do you question others preferences? Just because it isn't of interest to you (which I certainly understand!), doesn't mean the same for everyone else.
I for myself appreciate being able to monitor what my processor is doing in terms of clocks, temps, power draw. It's just an interesting thing to me, and activity monitor does not provide that kind of information. So far I was using Terminal and Apple's own powermetrics for that. Now I use Mx Power Gadget because it's just a much nicer solution with the graphical interface and charts.

I wasn't being judgmental: I was just interested in what the uses might be. Thanks.

 

[mi7chy]

Nice visual upgrade from CLI powermetrics. Power consumption will be useful to understand why MBA M1 battery tanks so fast playing games, running Blender/Cinebench, etc.

Update: Too bad it doesn't work with Big Sur 11.6.2.

 

[Darkseth]

Yes there are still some issues. Edit: There is a new version now which fixes this.

MX Power Gadget still shows 0,2 - 0,7 Watt, when powermetrics shows constant 1,5 Watt
However, if i close MX Power Gadget, powermetrics goes down to 0,02-0,05w again.

Any ideas what's going on there? My Guess is, either MX draws Power, and doesn't show it, or powermetrics detects a wrong value from mx.

 

[CMMChris]

I'd suggest you contact the developer about this. He does usually respond very quickly and is very thankful for suggestions and bug reports.

 

[Argon_]

Don’t know about others, but I use these tools to study the behavior of the new Apple CPUs. Call it academic curiosity.

Academic curiosity... nerd rage. Same difference.

Been waiting for this tool since ASi dropped.

 

[Spindel]

I see they also make MenuBar Stats which looks nice. Does anyone know how does it compare to iStat Menus?

I ditched iStat Menus for MenuBar Stats since iStat simply never came out with an upgrade that supported temp sensors and fan speed etc for the M1 (AppStore version).

MenuBar Stats does the job (even the AppStore version) but has a bit less costumization in how/what is shown in the menu bar. Over all pleased with it.

I did the switch a while ago and don’t know if iStats has come up to speed for the M1 since, but to be honest I don’t care now since it was months without a fix, or any communication from the developer about it, that made me change in the first place.

 

[CMMChris]

iStat was updated with M1 support almost immediately. No idea why you claim it wasn't.
Edit: Ah you are talking about the App Store version. This one has always been kind of unusable but that's Apple's fault.

 

[Eithanius]

I have a funny feeling that Intel might have sneaked in some malicious codes on the app to sabo the M1 chips...