2011 MacBook Pros Crash Under Load

Post by nikster » Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 3:35 PM UTC

Maci wrote: post #15

modoc wrote: post #4

I had the same issue. Instantly cured it by disabling the "Automatic graphics switching" option. Hopefully there will be a better fix forthcoming, but for now it's pretty easy to solve. Even with that headache, this is by far the best laptop I've ever owned. Amazingly fast.

Same here, it would appear Apple is a bit too aggressive with it's power management and it's confusing the living daylights out of the ATI driver when it's on automatic. Switching manually works a treat sofar... http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/

Post by jpitz » Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 3:47 PM UTC

nikster wrote: post #31

jpitz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally depends on what you do: I have a 2.6ghz 2010 MBP with an Intel SSD that has been the screamer at our office for quite a while now. My office mate just got a 2011, and even though he has yet to get an SSD in it yet, he runs our integration test suite ( java JUnit stuff, heavy mix of cpu and disk io ) in half the time I can ( thats 7 minutes vs 14 ), and where my cpus stay at 75-90% the whole time, his never br…

In my own tests compiling and building code I found that the OS X disk cache is very efficient and so the SSD advantage disappears after the first run. Still the best bang for the buck upgrade by far but for the purpose of compiling much less difference than I had expected.

Post by wmf » Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 4:58 PM UTC

count wrote: post #35

beedogs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but nothing uses Thunderbolt.

The internal display is Thunderbolt bus connected.

Post by Maci » Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

nikster wrote: post #32

Maci wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, it would appear Apple is a bit too aggressive with it's power management and it's confusing the living daylights out of the ATI driver when it's on automatic. Switching manually works a treat sofar... http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/

Good to know, thanks. I'd only ever run it in manual mode anyway. How is the computer supposed to know whether power or speed is more important at any given time?

Post by irons » Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 5:42 PM UTC

dvdhsu wrote: post #33

reitzensteinm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely second getting an SSD instead. It's the single biggest upgrade you can do to a PC today, especially for laptops. If you can live with 128gb of storage, a RealSSD C300, the current performance king (although check Anandtech for updates, this is changing all the time) is $264 from Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148... This thing will do 30,000 4k writes a second, which is or…

I would actually give the SandForce drives a try. They have better garbage collection. TRIM is coming in Snow Leopard, but it is always nice to have good garbage collection on the hardware. SandForce wins right now in $/gb, and 4K writes. It loses in anything that is limited by the SATA2 bus, such as sequential transfers.