
Some MacBook Pro users complain about throttling issues - AnatMl2
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/19/some-macbook-pro-users-complain-about-throttling-issues/
======
virtualritz
I am just flabbergasted. Apple is ruining the MacBook brand with every update
they release. My 2017 MBP keyboard is ready for the mandatory replacement. The
power brick has no 'ears' and the cable no clip for safe transport any more.
USB C only means I always have a bunch of adapters dangling from my laptop
that make it look like a bad attempt at adding some 'cyberpunk' feel to it.
And now they finally upgrade the MBP hardware and then this?!

~~~
coldtea
> _I am just flabbergasted. Apple is ruining the MacBook brand with every
> update they release._

Yeah, first by not releasing "MBPs with 32GB RAM" and then by releasing them.

They can never get a chance...

> _USB C only means I always have a bunch of adapters dangling from my laptop_

Or, you know, just buy USB-C to whatever cables and be done with it. It's like
a $50 investment for a $2000+ laptop, if having an adapter is so much of a
problem.

I have USB-C to A, USB-C to that bizarro USB B BS 2.5 external hard disks
have, USB-C to lighting, and USB-C to HDMI. End of story, no adapters to
carry. YMMV.

~~~
function_seven
> _I have USB-C to A, USB-C to that bizarro USB B BS 2.5 external hard disks
> have, USB-C to lighting, and USB-C to HDMI. End of story, no adapters to
> carry. YMMV._

You listed the four adapters you have, then said "no adapters". :) Just
because the adapter is more than 3" long doesn't make it something else. You
still have to buy it separately and carry it with you. When a machine has more
than just one kind of port, you're freed up to use whatever standard cable is
already connected to the projector, or came with the hard disk, or was
included with your phone.

~~~
runesoerensen
USB-C to USB B, USB-C to lightning and USB-C to HDMI are available as cables
without any adapters. Not sure what parent uses USB-C to A for, but guessing
there's a USB-C cable for that too.

Otherwise the USB-C to A + USB-C to HDMI is one adapter if you get Apple's
version. So maximum one adapter is required here.

~~~
coldtea
> _Not sure what parent uses USB-C to A for, but guessing there 's a USB-C
> cable for that too._

For my external audio interface (I do computer music).

It's also common in MIDI controller keyboards -- USB from the computer to USB
B on the keyboard (though I have mine setup with BT MIDI).

But also many printers use one, especially older ones.

------
tlb
It's underappreciated how much thermal capacity varies from machine to
machine, and over time. It makes benchmarking hard.

Clock speeds, because they're crystal-controlled, don't vary by more than
several PPM between machines. Thermal capacity varies by ±10% easily.

The thermal resistance depends on a bunch of mechanical factors that are hard
to control in manufacturing, like how well the thermal grease fills the tiny
pores in the metal of the heat sinks, and how well the air flows through the
ventilation ducts. And these usually get worse over time as bubbles form in
the grease and dust sticks to the fan blades. And of course it depends on room
temperature and pressure.

It means that benchmarks will have to be done under more tightly controlled
conditions. The automotive world has standards for this, where horsepower
measurements are adjusted by a correction factor that depends on temperature
and pressure.

~~~
jdietrich
Those are all reasons why you should engineer in a thermal margin. If some
proportion of machines are throttling out of the box, then most machines will
start throttling as the thermal management system degrades. You're supposed to
account for the ageing of the thermal material and clogging of the airflow
path and degradation of the fan bearings. You're supposed to leave in some
headroom for warm rooms, high altitude and partially blocked vents.

It's yet another symptom of Apple's preoccupation with thickness. The 2015
MacBook Pro was 18mm thick. The new MacBook Pro is 15mm thick. After all the
furore over USB-C and unreliable keyboards and the loss of MagSafe, was that
3mm of z-height a worthwhile tradeoff?

~~~
tlb
I don't think there's room for margin any more. Margin means fixing a power
limit slightly lower than what the worst machine can sustain. That probably
means leaving 10-20% performance on the table for average machines.

~~~
stefan_
No, you don't get to blame this on the processor. Modern processors are
perfectly capable of operating exactly at the limit of the cooling system they
are provided. No worries there. There is no "setpoint" you need to set; the
processor ramps up, then sustains.

This is purely a mechanical engineering issue. They haven't designed it
properly.

~~~
tlb
Chips vary considerably in the amount of power they use at a given frequency,
as a result of silicon process variations. Consider table 5 in
[http://charm.cs.illinois.edu/newPapers/16-08/paper.pdf](http://charm.cs.illinois.edu/newPapers/16-08/paper.pdf).
So even with identical cooling systems, some chips will outperform others.

~~~
EpicEng
Yet that's all rather irrelevant im context considering that apple controls
every aspect of their machines.

------
Ambroos
To be honest, Apple's MBP CPU upgrades have never been worth it. They are
advertised with these big turbo frequency increases that are rarely ever
achieved. Even the base frequency doesn't matter because they'll clock far
lower if needed to save battery life.

For both the 13" and 15" MacBook Pro's, the performance differences between
the base and upgraded CPUs are negligible (always less than 10% increase from
the slowest to the fastest CPU for the same size, according to Geekbench).
You'll get a higher frequency for a tiny amount of time before thermal
throttling brings everything down to the same level anyway. They are not
limited by Intel's software settings but purely by the cooling hardware.

For example, the cheapest 13" MBP from 2017 has a 2.3Ghz base / 3.6Ghz turbo
and scores 9079. Most expensive one (3.5Ghz / 4.0Ghz) scores 9552. That is an
increase under 6% for a price difference that is far, far larger. Madness.

If you buy a MacBook, please don't spend money on CPU upgrades. Thanks.

~~~
lkramer
I don't own a Mac, so I'm asking out of curiosity, but does this apply when
it's plugged in as well?

~~~
JohnTHaller
With the new i9, it doesn't matter if it is plugged in. The cooling setup in
the laptop is just inadequate to keep it running at speed for more than a
couple minutes according to David Lee and other tech reviewers.

~~~
infogulch
According to Lee, the i9 _can 't even idle_ without thermal throttling. I get
having a chip with a higher max wattage than your cooling can support: that
can still be pretty good for bursty workloads. But your cooling being so
insufficient that the chip can't even _idle_? That's where the manufacturer is
supposed to draw the line. I'm surprised that Apple even released this.

~~~
JonathonW
How do you show that it's "thermal throttling" at idle? Intel processors (at
least, when managed under macOS) _always_ downclock themselves when idle,
regardless of how much headroom's available. You'll rarely (if ever) actually
see the processor running at its quoted base frequency, even when plugged in.

~~~
Karunamon
Windows too. Just watching the task manager on any recent Intel can show you
that the machine spends most of its time _way_ under its rated clock, until
you really start loading it up.

------
geden
The big issue for me with the new MacBook Pro is that USB C ports and
connectors are not fit for professional use.

They are too small and delicate and don’t connected solidly and ‘grasp’ firmly
enough. Over the last year they have also worn to a shocking degree on a top
spec 2017 15” model. There wasn’t enough friction in the first place and now
there’s none.

I work with a professional touring musician and we’ve reverted to his 2015
model for stage use because wobbly poor connectors that have to be gaffer
taped to the chassis are not fun.

That said, I have seen a badly tuned Funktion One PA vibrate out a USB A
connector from a MBP port in just a few seconds...

~~~
cageface
I’m seeing this in my 2017 model too. I have to reseat the power cable half a
dozen times a day. My 2015 MBP was the best computer I’ve ever owned. This
2017 model is shaping up to be one of the worst.

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ancorevard
Looking forward to the day when Apple will dump Intel and ship its own "A
chip" in the MacBooks.

~~~
spamizbad
The thermal overhead of x86 instruction decoding isn’t holding these machines
back.

~~~
coldtea
No, but Intel's failed promise to keep total thermal output down in the last 3
generations did.

They failed their TDP and die shrink projections when those machines were
designed.

So, Apple would have had to redesign the whole case to match the new reality
(which they could, but for their kind of redesigns it takes more time and
people were already complaining about the lack of a 32GB option).

~~~
komali2
But why then did other laptop manufacturers not get affected by the issue?

~~~
coldtea
Others are as well (e.g [1], [2] -- similarly you'll find for Lenovo and
others).

It's just that Apple gets preferential negative reporting (who would click on
an Asus link?)

Plus, those with clunky "gamer" / "desktop replacement" style cases are not.

(1) [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-
series-f...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-series-
facing-heavy-throttling-issues.232538.0.html)

(2)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/7wqzhg/dell_not_solvi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/7wqzhg/dell_not_solving_its_laptop_cpu_throttling_issues/)

------
bhouston
My dell xps 15 9570 with an Intel core i7 8750h throttles to 2 GHz after
sustained load as well. I think it is a general cpu issue with this series of
8th generation core i7/i9 chips rather than apple specific.

I get throttled after about sustained usage of a couple minutes.

~~~
jasonlotito
The throttling isn't the issue. The issue is that the 2017 MBP i7 is faster
than the 2018 MBP i9 in tests. That throttling is making this happen is
immaterial. That the 8th gen chips are problematic aren't the issue. The issue
is that the newer higher end MBP is slower than the older MBP.

------
dawnerd
Have any of these reviewers checked if the fans were running at max? I know
Apple tends to prefer lower fan speeds.

~~~
thinkythought
you shouldn't have to use a utility to force the fans to max. if it's not
running them as hard as it could, then it's badly designed. that's a choice on
their part.

~~~
dawnerd
Totally agree. I hate having to force the fans higher when in clamshell mode.
Ideally they could have a settings page to choose between quiet or cool.

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rhacker
This is why my wife wants a beefy, heavy laptop that has cooling systems that
wrap around the moon once. We haven't chosen one yet, but we it will probably
be one of those inch+ thick ones, not the razor thin laptops. She's going to
run circles and then some around my MBP 2014. and I'm really really jealous
and ready to go back to the PC now.

~~~
noir_lord
The new 4C/8T T480's are incredible, they get about the same work rate as the
7700HQ in my T470P with about half the TDP.

Outside of that you are into the P range which are deathstars (Xeon's in a
laptop...).

------
dharma1
I've got my i9 mbpro on order. I've got a couple of ideas for cooling for
getting around thermal throttling when doing something super intensive (like
compiling or exporting RAW video).

1) Freeze board under the bottom [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Reuseable-
Freeze-Board-800](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Reuseable-Freeze-Board-800)

2) Running this in reverse to help with airflow
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7X25NR](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7X25NR)

Will measure temps and blog on it

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chendragon
I have the 2016 version of the machine, base model, and it throttles. Not
nearly as badly as anything else in it's thinness class, but the CPU can only
run at 37w as measured by Power Gadget under p95 with fans forced to 6500rpm.
PC manufacturers often throttle the CPU with the BIOS on purpose or set PL1/2
which Apple doesn't do.

Similar PC notebooks tend to keep the CPU at 85C and run them at 15-20W. Apple
runs the CPU at 102C before throttling them, and there aren't apparent power
limits.

They're trying pretty hard to solve this problem and to be honest there's not
very much more they could be doing short of putting last-mm^3 heatsinks
everywhere or making the fans even louder. I'm personally okay with the form
factor they've chosen and they've done their best with that.

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jtbayly
The cooling problem is Apple's but the heating problem is Intel's. In my mind
this is more evidence of the need for Apple to simply produce their own chips.

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amanzi
CPU throttling appears to be a common problem with these new powerful CPUs and
the thin, light chassis that most manufacturers believe we want. So while this
doesn't affect just Apple, I think Apple needs specific calling out since they
price and market their laptops as the most premium of all brands.

------
azdacha
I'm getting tired of putting my hand on a 40 degrees hoven all day.

My hands hurts, it's painful, tiring, enough for me to buy a new keyboard
without much tough, and certainly enough to make me think twice about buying a
Mac again.

Get your shit together.

------
Endama
I feel like Apple is making similar mistakes that Microsoft made a few decades
back, its walled garden has become so ubiquitous that they assume that there
isn't any trimming that needs to be done. Specifically,Macs are basically the
only FreeBSD-based machine with a consumer-friendly interface (ironically this
may no longer be true once Windows gets first-party linux support).

However, issues like these make me resentful that my day-to-day is dependent
on OSX. I hope that some other competitor really steps into the currently
(admittedly slim) hole in the market that is growing between professional
users and the average Macbook user.

EDIT: corrected my mistake about linux!

~~~
nothrabannosir
_> Macs are basically the only Linux-based machine with a consumer-friendly
interface …_

Someone will point this out sooner or later, so I might as well do it ;)

Macs are neither Linux, nor the only. Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD. Linux
machines usually come with GNU tools, and BSD have their own set, with subtle
differences causing no end of confusion for the up and coming developers :)
sed, grep, ls, etc. All slightly different interfaces (this is why brew offers
a package to install the GNU version of all those tools, iirc “gnuutils” ?).
The kernel itself is completely different, of course.

Android, however, would fit that description quite well.

~~~
jolux
it's "brew install coreutils" these days :)

~~~
lozf
Similarly, `bsdutils` exists for Linux.

------
cheshire137
Hmm I thought the throttling stuff was just affecting the 15" with an i9, but
this article mentioned the i7 had problems, too. Is the i7 in a 13" affected?

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jtbayly
Perhaps insulating the new keyboard with a thin layer of rubber wasn't such a
good idea after all.

~~~
mort96
In case you haven't seen the pictures: [https://betanews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/07/macbook-pro-...](https://betanews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/07/macbook-pro-keyboard-membrane.jpg)

It's mostly a big hole with some silicone on the sides. That's not to say that
it doesn't affect cooling at all; saying the keyboard is insulated is probably
exaggeration though.

~~~
jtbayly
Meant to be a joke, mostly, but still, I would expect most of the heat escapes
out the sides, not through the key. The sides are what are covered.

------
antoinevg
Strike two.

------
tomovo
Almost feels like they are making things worse on purpose to make the ARM
transition truly justified for everyone.

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laythea
This kind of trick reminds me of broadband internet where you buy X MB
connection but actually get X/Y MB. Should be laws against this behavior.

~~~
rayiner
Those laws would be a great example of legislators being technologically
ignorant. Optimizing for bursty behavior is not only acceptable, but is what
you typically want. Even if you're a developer, your compile-edit cycle
typically will be on the order of a couple of minutes of load, or less. Being
able to ramp up to 4 GHz during that time and then rushing to idle is what
maximizes performance within a given thermal constraint.

As to advertising, advertising the burst speed, with the appropriate caveat,
is usually the correct decision too. Under full load, almost any modern laptop
will get under 2 hours of battery life. Should they be advertised as such? No,
that's a completely un-helpful metric. Under typical use, where the machine is
idle most of the time, you will in fact get 8 hours or whatever of use.

Apple actually advertises these machines as 2.2 or 2.6 GHz machines, with "up
to 4.3 GHz Turbo Boost" in smaller font below. This is actually probably
deceptive (though in a way that is not favorable to Apple). In typical use,
the machine will feel more like a 4.3 GHz machine than a 2.6 GHz one. ( _E.g._
comparing it to your 2.6 GHz Haswell-era Mac.)

~~~
Karunamon
Where we can bring this analogy back to relevance is when you deal with ISPs
that offer "up to X", but in reality, they're so (oversold/badly managed/other
excuse) that you will never reach that quoted speed in daily usage.

Apple, here, has sold a machine that thermally throttles _at idle_ , basically
guaranteeing that its quoted clock speed will never be used, even under load.

------
j-c-hewitt
Isn't this not so much an issue with the Macbook itself but with this
generation of processors? Yeah, when it gets hot (and it runs hotter) it will
throttle. The Apple reality distortion field only works on people -- it
doesn't do much against thermodynamics.

It seems a little misplaced to rail against Apple as if this is a design flaw.
That's how this CPU will perform even in a completely different form factor
without sufficient cooling. Want to prevent throttling? Here's a big heatsink
with a couple fans attached to it. Want even more cooling? Here's a tank of
water and a giant radiator.

Want a slim form factor and an i9? It's going to throttle because it will get
hot when you actually use it for something that makes use of that processor.
Unless you live where I live and want to use the computer outside in the
winter when it's -20F.

~~~
pasbesoin
If the i9 profile doesn't fit what is approaching an ultrabook, then don't try
to put it into that ultrabook.

If your customers want an i9, be more honest with them. Don't just sell them
what ends up being a crippled i9.

If Intel could make an i9 that burned less, I'm sure they'd be happy to.
(Well, at least now, given their increased need to compete.)

I guess in that regard, you could "blame" Intel. If AMD really has pulled
ahead in the race to 7 and 5 nm, interconnect data throughput, and whatever
else.

~~~
dguaraglia
This is the part I don't understand. Apple has been pushing for thinner and
thinner laptops on the Pro line, when all I want is a laptop that can run a
workload without throttling immediately, a good keyboard and a reasonable
battery (that's the one thing they still do well, considering the legal cap on
battery sizes).

This is totally my personal opinion, but the MacBook Pro 2015 was the perfect
laptop. I still use one as my main driver, and I'm agonizing on what my next
(long overdue!) move will be.

