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Re: undefined

#11

Post by sys_64738 »

colordrops wrote: post #7

I tried this and it doesn't work. Turns out my MacBook was throttling to 30% due to overheating. This happens more frequently if you drive the GPU with an external monitor. Unfortunately the OS does nothing to notify you of overheating and throttling, which is an insanely stupid oversight by apple. I only found out because I noticed that the computer ran fine while running the AC, so I installed an app through Brew c…

Thanks for the heads up for Hot.app!

Re: undefined

#12

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

Aeolun wrote: post #2

Oh yes! My brand new macbook pro had been sitting at 300% kernel process usage ever since I bought it. I thought it was just ridiculously badly optimized. Why doesn’t the system inform you when it’s spinning it’s wheels with no work just to cool down it’s chassis?

I think that’s sort of what the kernel_task usage is now: it’s minimally documented, but I guess the scheduler is now designed to attempt to throttle the system it it’s overheating.

Re: undefined

#14

Post by peanut_worm »

sprite wrote: post #3

My 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro (2.3ghz i9/64gb ram) becomes unusable with 2 of the LG 5k monitors plugged in (one on each side). Worst MacBook I have ever owned.

My 2019 Macbook air becomes unusable when I plug in any external display... or let the battery fall below 20%... or have 2 electron apps open... or if I look at it funny

Re: undefined

#15

Post by tmpz22 »

Tinfoil hat: they knew the M1 macs would be a big draw and got intentionally soft on optimizing 2019 intel models.

Re: undefined

#16

Post by pram »

sprite wrote: post #3

My 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro (2.3ghz i9/64gb ram) becomes unusable with 2 of the LG 5k monitors plugged in (one on each side). Worst MacBook I have ever owned.

There is a fix coming for the 5500m heat/wattage issues in the next OS thankfully. The MacOS drivers for RDNA are apparently just crap. This problem wasn’t present on the Vega GPUs, and it isn’t present while booted into Windows. To think this lasted all the way through Catalina and Big Sur is insane.

Re: undefined

#17

Post by b9a2cab5 »

skavi wrote: post #8
j45 wrote: post #6

Also applicable to 2018 MacBooks. Apple laptops are not able to cool themselves if used to any medium or higher capacity. A laptop cooler or cabinet fans underneath to draw air away are a must if you want anywhere close to the cpu power you are purchasing. An external keyboard is also a must to own a MacBook 2015-201i+ if it’s from the special years of dust existing on Earth,

the 13" ones cool themselves fine. They can usually keep the CPU at higher power for longer than other ultrabooks. The 15" models definitely have worse thermals than the competition though.

The 15in/16in ones actually have better thermal cooling than the competition. You can usually get the 16in i9 to boost to 60w turbo, which is 30% more than you can get an XPS 15 to do.

Re: undefined

#18

Post by the_pwner224 »

colordrops wrote: post #7

I tried this and it doesn't work. Turns out my MacBook was throttling to 30% due to overheating. This happens more frequently if you drive the GPU with an external monitor. Unfortunately the OS does nothing to notify you of overheating and throttling, which is an insanely stupid oversight by apple. I only found out because I noticed that the computer ran fine while running the AC, so I installed an app through Brew c…

Unfortunately this is a very common problem with basically all modern high-end laptops that have a macbook-like form factor (e.g. not bulky gaming laptops with lots of cooling & ventilation). It's just not physically possible to make a machine that combines high end power hungry hardware, adequate cooling for that hardware, and a compact form factor. It's very sad that this is such a widespread problem and that there is so little public awareness about it - most of the machines like your macbook are indeed defective.

The only solution unfortunately is to do some more research & read reviews which cover throttling & thermal management before you buy your next laptop to make sure you're not buying something that is defective. On my previous Dell XPS laptop the CPU and GPU shared one heatpipe & heatsink. It could handle 100% CPU with an external monitor, but the GPU was much more power hungry and placing any significant load on the GPU made the CPU throttle significantly. Each manufacturer & product has different thermal management solutions and you need to do research before buying to see if a laptop will work for you. You'll also want to see whether external displays are always driven by the discrete GPU instead of the integrated GPU on the CPU - even if not being heavily used, just turning on the discrete GPU creates a fair bit of heat.

Or just buy a gaming laptop if you can accept with the added size & heft - they're often cheaper for equivalent CPU/GPU than the 'premium' laptops like MacBook, XPS, but sometimes don't get the newest features (Thunderbolt, USB-C charging, etc.) as early. One of my friends had a gaming laptop with the same specs as my XPS and when under load his laptop would blow out enormous amounts of hot air from its big vents, whereas the XPS clearly had a much lower heat removal capacity.

Re: undefined

#19

Post by walrus01 »

I also recently discovered that something like 12% of CPU on my 2020 macbook air is used whenever I'm in a room with anything greater than perfect silence, by 'coreaudiod', because it apparently is constantly listening to the microphone built in near the keyboard and spending cpu cycles trying to filter out background noise. Apparently running the signal desktop app in the background is enough to keep coreaudiod constantly wasting battery. Because signal is open and has been granted permissions for microphone and speakers, even if no call session is open?

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=macos+c...

meanwhile, "Slack Helper" is reporting 15% cpu usage just sitting there doing nothing. Imagine the cumulative kilowatt-hours wasted globally by all the CPU cycles spent by slack just to exist as basically a glorified IRC app.

If you really want to see slack waste CPU and battery, leave a channel open that somebody has pasted a high FPS animated GIF into, in the slack window in the background. Easily 35% usage.

Re: undefined

#20

Post by bombcar »

colordrops wrote: post #7

I tried this and it doesn't work. Turns out my MacBook was throttling to 30% due to overheating. This happens more frequently if you drive the GPU with an external monitor. Unfortunately the OS does nothing to notify you of overheating and throttling, which is an insanely stupid oversight by apple. I only found out because I noticed that the computer ran fine while running the AC, so I installed an app through Brew c…

To monitor throttling, you may run:

    pmset -g thermlog
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