
Miserable Battery Life on 2016 MacBook Pro with Radeon Pro 460 - asd
http://eatupmartha.com/2016/12/12/miserable-battery-with-the-new-mbp-with-radeon-460
======
andreasley
The 2016 MacBook Pro (15-inch) has a 76.0-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery.
The AMD Radeon Pro 460 has a TDP of 35W and will have to run at close to full
power to fill a Retina display's 5 million pixels at reasonable frame rates
(running with less-than-optimal OpenGL drivers; Civ VI doesn't support Apple's
"Metal"). The 2.6Ghz "Skylake" i7 (i7-6700HQ) has a TDP of 45W that won't be
maxed, but there's also display backlight, WiFi and some other stuff to be
powered. So yeah, one hour seems reasonable.

------
iwritestuff
At this point it seems "My MBP 15" has sucky battery life" or "The new MBP
sucks!" is a karma gold mine -- I actually own a tbMBP 15" and haven't had any
battery nor functionality issues with it. It's an all day programming device
for me and suits that purpose very well.

~~~
alfalfasprout
I'm just using vim and spotify and get like 4 hours of battery life. I really
do think some MBP's have faulty batteries and it's not a software issue. My
13" 2014 MBP gives me 7+ hours under the same workload.

~~~
iwritestuff
Do an exchange. I program using eclipse and get all day battery life.

~~~
alfalfasprout
Sure, but I'm not a masochist :P

------
dolphinGrid
[jaw hits floor] I'd like to see a timelampse of this. It's not that I don't
trust you, but I find it hard to believe that a new battery could safely
discharge that quickly. Also, for your next test, keep playing until your
machine fully dies. Maybe the low battery warning is faulty. Worth as shot.

~~~
centizen
I can corroborate; I have the new 15", 2.6Ghz version and spent the weekend
before last playing Civ while travelling. With the brightness settings on low,
native resolution and all game settings on low, it took 1 hour and 26 minutes
for it to go from 100% to shutting itself off.

I was just as surprised as you are. The laptop got uncomfortably hot as well.
I was very disappointed and had to purchase an inverter on the road to use my
adapter.

~~~
zaphoyd
This is nothing new though... Every laptop I've owned (including many
PowerBooks and MacBook Pros) has gotten about 1-2 hours when playing a game
that maxed the GPU and CPU. How does a ~80-100Watt hour battery get more than
1-2 hours of running a ~40-50W CPU and 30-40W GPU? Physics says no.

~~~
centizen
I'd be more inclined to agree with you, if my last MacBook has compatible
performance. I got easily double the playtime out of my MacBook Pro Retina.

------
jdlyga
That's pretty typical for windows laptops when you play games. Or at least it
used to be. Still not good though.

------
_ph_
While of course there needs to be a review about a possible bug in the
software/hardware implementation of the new MacBook Pros, one just needs to
divide the battery capacity of the machine by its TDP to get a lower bound for
the battery life - so one hour is not off for a machine as powerful as the
MacBook Pro. I am using the 2015 version. It has a larger battery - 99 Wh, but
still, depending on the software, I can use it up in 1-2 hours easily. Of
course, on less taxing loads I do get around the advertised run times.

------
ksk
So then the trade-off seems to be, don't use all of the hardware you paid for,
and the battery will last for a while, or use all of it and it will die out in
an hour. Its weird to have such an extreme tradeoff for a pro device that's
meant to be used as such. How long before the OS throttles the CPU like a
mobile OS when you use "too much" CPU?

~~~
matt4077
If only these Macbooks came with a dongle to connect to some source of
electricity! But nooo – Apple just had to remove this "MagSafe" connector! I
have no idea how they can call this a "Pro"! I've been in this business for a
long time, and I know very many very professional professionals, and they are
all moving to Linux to play Civ VI.

~~~
ksk
But we're beyond wires now. Moving away from wired headphones, certainly no
wired ethernet because that's only for those filthy non-professionals, I
figure they would have designed it so you can squeeze 3 hours out of it like
the competition. But maybe they want us professionals to take more breaks,
because we're working too hard, because you know.. we're professionals using a
professional device.

------
MR4D
Unless several other games exhibit this issue, I'd consider this to be an
issue with Civ VI.

I'd bet that this same program eats the battery of any Mac, hence it being a
Civ issue, not a Mac issue.

Call me on this if I'm wrong.

------
bdcravens
So what's the battery life like on the same test with the last gen MBP?

~~~
uncoder0
My 15" 2013 with discrete graphics has 95Whr battery but can't run civ VI on a
decent frame rate without going into strategic view (which reduces graphics
load somewhat). In that mode I've been able to get ~ 2 hours maybe just a hair
under the last time I tried it on a flight.

