MacBook Pro throttling not a CPU issue, but rather power throttling of the VRM
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I've also seen a couple of youtubers and the number is growing, returning their macbooks [1], [2], due to the performance and the number is growing daily.
I really think this issue is down to a few things.
1) The need from Apple to be thinner each iteration, is really costing them the ability to have better thermals and fans.
2) Putting an 14nm chip where a 10nm should be. Unfortunately Intel is having issues with that.
3) No vents at the sides or the back, only where the screen is. Poor design considerations when it comes to heat.
I'm going to be keeping onto my MBPr 2012 for another year. I want to see some of these issues being resolved.
I would not be surprised if this spurs on Apple to phase in Arm processors in 2020.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DcIP6FtuRk
It astonishes me how well that old laptop does what I need, considering any laptop from 2006 or 2004 would have been slow as molasses in 2012, and total garbage today.
Not if you put an SSD in it. Core 2 Duo is an acceptable processor. People seem quite surprised to learn that their slow pc is caused by disk io saturation.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-addresses-macbook...
https://www.ultrabookreview.com/14875-fix-throttling-xps-15/
There have been mistakes in the past, but this is something that should have been caught immediately, which suggests that they were aware of it at release.
Is it just nostalgia goggles telling me that Jobs would not have let these out the door?
It appears the i9 isn't a good fit for thin and light laptops (Apple's also not the only one using the i9 in this form factor). Of course, a laptop using this i9 and properly cooling it is not going to be small or pretty[1].
Getting back to Apple, there are a couple of ways of looking at this.
For people who are bursting (as opposed to doing long running sustained loads) the i9 is probably the fastest Macbook Pro you can get. For people who are using optimized media apps like FCP, this is also not necessarily a bad buy, since you'll likely reap the benefits of the faster CPU.
For people who are doing sustained loads and/or running non-optimized apps like Premiere, this is probably not a good Macbook Pro to buy. For people who care a lot about getting advertised baseline clock rates, irrespective of bottom line performance gains, this is also not the Macbook Pro to buy.
For some, it's an easy choice, and for others, it's complicated.
I mean, Apple sourced the chip and shipped the laptop, and you pay Apple. I don't see how you _can't_ blame Apple engineering for this?
Which is why I said "not blameless"
Hopefully the firmware can take care of the issue for those impacted.
Looking at the Macbook Pro design, it is suppose to be able to cool the Radeon 560X which has a TDP of 75W with a similar set of fin sizes and fans on the opposing side. This should mean in theory be able to handle even a grossly overpowered CPU. I think they can fix it.
Obviously there are issues as many have reported but I am using this for iOS and Android development and this thing is a good 30-45% faster for builds compared to my top-spec 2017 model. The Android emulator starts up (cold boot not from save state) faster as well (just measured it at 9 seconds to boot a Nexus 5X API 28 AVD vs 16 seconds on my 2017 i7).
Once things have settled down a bit I will look into things again but I am in no rush to start modifying firmware values when, for my needs, everything is great.
For those interested the new keyboard is a little "softer" and quieter. My wife commented on how different it sounds. I would say it sound similar to a Dell XPS 15 or ThinkPad T480 in terms of how loud it is.
The TrueTone option for the display is lovely for programming imho. Really nice little new feature. Other than that not much has changed externally though. It is still a very nice machine and I hope Apple tweaks things to address the thermal throttling people are seeing. For development though it is a dream.
Edit: Seems Apple has released an update to fix this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17603063
[0] The whole "omg it is so loud!!!" thing kind of made me laugh as everyone that I knew who made such a complaint had a mech keyboard with some obnoxiously loud cherry mx switch in it. I mean yes I did feel the 1st and 2nd gen butterfly keyboards were too loud but they were still quieter than any mech keyboard I have used!
> it feels really good to me
Just forgot to put the good in and can't edit it now ;)
Effectively, they skip clock cycles till voltage recovers in power supply capacitors.
It ain't clever and people are going to notice.
now, do i cancel the i7 and re-order the i9? argh.
it's painful to just delay my order for a month, knowing a much higher performing laptop is available now.
i'm inclined to keep the i7 as i understand from one of the many vids that the "normal" operating temperature is much lower. even on my older i5, i am very sensitive to the keyboard getting hot.
[Edited to add note: From messages others have sent me, it seems that this MSR is actually not Intel's default, but rather this is what Apple has been setting the MSR value to on all intel chips in Macbook Pro and Macbook Air for a number of years ... This is just the first chip to actually be capable of drawing enough power for this to matter. Previous chips just couldn't draw that much power, so they never hit the VRM limit before]