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mactinkerlover

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 20, 2020
173
113
Okay, so seriously. I don't see any performance gains from high power mode. All it seems to do is when you have a cpu+gpu workload at the same time, it allows the fans to ramp up all the way, which just makes the machine run cooler. So, is that all high power mode does? Makes the machine run cooler?
 

F23

macrumors 6502a
Jan 4, 2014
787
2,067
yes it's just a fan mode, it does not actually ramp up processing power. i saw it's stated somewhere officially by apple that it's just higher fan speed
 

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
9,199
7,354
Perth, Western Australia
I believe it slightly raises the CPU clocks from 2.9 ish to 3.2-3.3 ish ghz and enables the fans to run harder to maintain performance rather than throttling the CPU to keep within thermal specs.

I've seen claims of ~10% performance improvement which unless you're benchmarking (or running batch workloads that take several minutes/hours) you probably won't notice (regular interactive snappiness is pretty much the same).

Personally I prefer low power mode to keep the machine mostly silent.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,521
19,677
I believe it slightly raises the CPU clocks from 2.9 ish to 3.2-3.3 ish ghz and enables the fans to run harder to maintain performance rather than throttling the CPU to keep within thermal specs.

I've seen claims of ~10% performance improvement which unless you're benchmarking (or running batch workloads that take several minutes/hours) you probably won't notice (regular interactive snappiness is pretty much the same).

Personally I prefer low power mode to keep the machine mostly silent.

I haven’t noticed any performance difference. Or difference in fan behavior for what matters. My CPU clusters peak out at 3.2 regardless of the mode. No difference in GPU throughput either.
 

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
9,199
7,354
Perth, Western Australia
I haven’t noticed any performance difference. Or difference in fan behavior for what matters. My CPU clusters peak out at 3.2 regardless of the mode. No difference in GPU throughput either.

I can definitely notice a difference in fan noise when running say, Baldurs Gate 3. Fans are much quieter / slower to ramp up when on low power mode.
 
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