2018 Macbook Pro terrible thermal design

[Mr. Scram]

probably like the Nvidia fix by other laptop makers, agressive fan and lower clock.

Quite possibly they're allowing the chip to run hotter.

[CJay]

Don't know the details yet, we have a guy here who's registered and able to obtain Apple betas for MACOS and iOS, he also seems to get update and fix news quickly too, I'll press him for more later if there's interest?

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I just have to open a few tabs in chrome with dodgy web pages and the fans sound like if the MBP was gonna lift off. But maybe it's my fault:

you know it's funny, Rossmann was saying in one of his video's that the problem with the "cult of apple" is users often blame themselves for the defects!!
and here you are - doing exactly that. 
NO, it's not your fault that the damned computer can be cooked via the browser.

Hey, look at the picture I posted. I can set there the slope of the fan speed= ƒ(temp). I don't want to cook it, hence the ~ steep slope, hence the "maybe it's my fault".

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

It's apparently been 'fixed' with a software update, no idea how that's meant to work.

Tweaking the ƒ() that sets the DVFS (or whatever that is in Intel's CPUs, speedStep?) point?

[CJay]

DOn't know exact details as yet, even though I've asked him, he was vague. He thinks they've altered clock speeds and temperature settings so, being sarcastic, we'll probably see users with cooked thighs fairly soon.

[bd139]

I think I've mentioned in another thread that burning your dick off is a modern laptop feature

[stj]

I think I've mentioned in another thread that burning your dick off is a modern laptop feature

that's o.k. because the wifi module will sterilise you first anyway! 

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

To make popcorn double click a .torrent

[bd139]

To make popcorn double click a .torrent

Not such a bad idea. At university we made popcorn on a 7404. If you ran them at 9-12v they do the job quite well, for a while anyway 

[senso]

"Apple this morning released a new supplemental update to macOS High Sierra 10.13.6, which is designed to address a bug that caused the new eighth-generation quad-core and 6-core Intel processors in the 2018 MacBook Pro models to throttle inappropriately. "

"While there were many theories as to what was causing the throttling, Apple has discovered that there was a missing digital key in the firmware that impacted the thermal management system, driving down clock speeds under heavy thermal loads. This is what has been addressed in today's update. "

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/24/2018-macbook-pro-throttling-bug-fix/

seems to me like they just told the CPU/GPU to not use maximum power at the same time, so instead of throttling
a lot half the time at high loads, they just throttle a little all the time at high loads

By a little, you mean, a LOT.

Running at less than 3Ghz is depressing.

But, half the blame is to Intel, TDP was before used to specify TDP at max turbo, now its to specify TDP at base clocks, Turbo on an i9 means anywhere from 75 to 100Watts.

That and CPU's binned for laptops with VID's over 1.25V is also not helping..

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I guess there's a reason why a desktop CPU has a TDP of 140W and the laptop one 45. You can't/should not expect to be able to render at the same speeds (for a long time, perhaps in short bursts yes), when one CPU can dissipate three times as much power as the other.

[stj]

looks like it's more fundamental - oh shit!!

[BrianHG]

looks like it's more fundamental - oh shit!!

I posted that video over 34 posts ago in this thread on page 2!
See here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/2018-macbook-pro-terrible-thermal-design/msg1695641/#msg1695641

I also said it was the VRM settings, not the CPU temps...

[Cerebus]

I think I've mentioned in another thread that burning your dick off is a modern laptop feature

Not that modern a feature even. I had cause yesterday to get my old 2004 vintage 17" G4 notebook out and, as it hasn't been used or powered since Christmas, it had a flat battery. My, that thing gets warm when charging from nada, and as in this weather I was just wearing shorts it soon became a floortop rather than a laptop.

On the subject of thermal performance, I've got an old Intel Mac Pro (MacPro1,1) sitting next to me that I'm typing this on. It's currently 31.2 C ambient in this room — that's why I'm still up rather than asleep — and the CPU temperatures are both only 44 C and the fans are as near silent as makes no difference.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

If the CPU can't even get the full power it needs, that's a serious design error, isn't it? A defect of the kind the warranty is made to cover, right?

[ebastler]

In video he says "the Macbook is going to inherently be slower, that's normal, Adobe Premiere is not as well optimized for Mac OS as is for Windows, but that has nothing to do with Apple..."

And then this graph. That shows that if you are using Apple Adobe Premiere on  MacOS  it is 4,5-5,3 times SLOWER that running on 2300 USD Win laptop..

"the Macbook is going to inherently be slower, that's normal, Adobe Premiere is not as well optimized for Mac OS as is for Windows, but that has nothing to do with Apple..."   See, I don't care whose fault it is . Using that program on that platform is unacceptable with such margins of slowdown.
Tough luck, it is unfair, but I would switch to Win platform if that is the difference, if Premiere is my main tool.

That post dates a few days back already, but I think nobody has commented on one relevant aspect:

I think what the performance comparison highlights is not a MacOS vs. Windows optimization difference. It's mainly (purely?) about a difference in graphics card performance, and maybe optimization to a specific graphics card architecture.

The Windows notebook used in the comparison is a Gigabyte Aero 15X gaming machine, with a pretty potent Geforce GTX 1070 graphics card. Adobe does make use of graphics card computation for tasks like rendering videos, and it seems that the GTX 1070 is better suited to that than the Radeon GPU used in the Macbook -- or Adobe has done a better job optimizing for that GPU.

Still a relevant comparison for those who want to do video rendering with Adobe Premiere. But a rather specific test case which cannot be extrapolated to general performance of CPU-intensive tasks.

[CJay]

Not that modern a feature even. I had cause yesterday to get my old 2004 vintage 17" G4 notebook out and, as it hasn't been used or powered since Christmas, it had a flat battery. My, that thing gets warm when charging from nada, and as in this weather I was just wearing shorts it soon became a floortop rather than a laptop.

On the subject of thermal performance, I've got an old Intel Mac Pro (MacPro1,1) sitting next to me that I'm typing this on. It's currently 31.2 C ambient in this room — that's why I'm still up rather than asleep — and the CPU temperatures are both only 44 C and the fans are as near silent as makes no difference.

I seem to remember reading about a reviewer for PCW or one of the other telephone directory thick PC mags of the 80's telling a story of their testing lab disabling the fans on a 386 portable (they weren't laptops those days, unless you had girder reinforced legs) and them pressing a thermometer to the case to check temperature and the thermometer went through the plastic because it'd got that hot.

Have been playing with a 2013 MBP this past week and it's reinforced my beliefs about Apple gear, nice quality, well integrated but I still can't force myself to like the OS, which is a shame because it was a freebie, oh well.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

To see what's the throttling speed using six cores just paste:

yes > /dev/null &
yes > /dev/null &
yes > /dev/null &
yes > /dev/null &
yes > /dev/null &
yes > /dev/null &

To stop it:

killall yes

And if you want to put some load on the GPU at the same time, launch itunes, play a song and turn on the visualizer in as big a window as you can.

That's it!

It'll be cooked in a minute, ready to lift off:

[bd139]

Have been playing with a 2013 MBP this past week and it's reinforced my beliefs about Apple gear, nice quality, well integrated but I still can't force myself to like the OS, which is a shame because it was a freebie, oh well.

I share this sentiment.

I've got a top end 2013 rMBP. i7, 16Gb RAM, 1TiB SSD that I bought new that cost a small fortune. Engineering is indeed top notch.

However I mostly use a shitty old recycled HP core 2 box that I don't even know how fast it is that is full of dust, with 4Gb of RAM and a cheap ass Samsung evo SSD I found lying around all running windows 10. And an equally shitty old i5 Lenovo T440.

If it had a proper keyboard, not the bastard Apple variety, and the OS had much better keyboard control capability I'd probably be happy with it but it feels like I'm wearing oven gloves all the time. Also fuck me it's difficult trying to frig a USB driver device ID due to the signing. Grr.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

The last decent OSX, the only one that's not full of silly bugs everywhere, is Snow Leopard. Works fine in any i5/i7 MBP up to 2011. And you could get one of those in 17", now not any more.

[stj]

if i had an apple product, i would sell it or put Linux on it, although the keyboard would be a pain.
does apple still think you only need one mouse button btw??

[bd139]

No you can use two buttons since about 2002

[CJay]

No you can use two buttons since about 2002

Yep, Apple invented the 2 button mouse and claimed credit for it after everyone else had been using them for years

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

They also invented windows, but everybody credits Microsoft for that

[bd139]

Xerox invented windows