thermal throttling More details about the throttling issues of the 15" core i9 MacBook Pro, this time with Final Cut Pro X

[D13H4RD]

4 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Lets "step it up" a notch, my good old laptop has a 3630QM(45W TDP), but unlike this heap of junk it has proper cooling and the CPU can maintain its boost clock over long periods of time(and by long period im speaking about days).

Well, the TDP is apparently measured at base clock.

 

The i9 at full turbo is a fire-breathing dragon.....almost literally

[exetras]

This is what QA and Testing is for, this heat issue would have popped up during either of those. the fact that they released it in this fashion is quite telling.

 

 

[ScratchCat]

2 hours ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

One thing I find funny

 

The cooling solution on the current MBP is barely adequate for a 7700HQ/7820HQ and their Skylake-based predecessors.

 

So I wonder what led them to believe that the same cooling system is fine for a CPU that kicks out tons more heat?

The never needed to ensure that it would not throttle, ensuring it would produce a better performing product was their task.

Theoretically having 6 vs 4 cores should allow you to drop the frequency by 33% and move to a lower voltage resulting in a higher efficiency and so more possible power per unit cooling, however this gamble does not seem to have paid off.

1 hour ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

Kinda makes me feel that the 4.8GHz advertised turbo won't ever be reached.

 

Because the laptop either throttles itself to oblivion (which it is currently doing) or it'll overwhelm the power adapter and start draining quite a bit of reserve battery power. Mostly the former though, as even some gaming laptops struggle at 4.5

The 4.8 GHz turbo is only designed to be present for a few seconds in order to briefly exceed the cooling power of the laptop in exchange for a page loading or document opening faster. In those few seconds the mass of the cooling solution could absorb the generated energy to prevent jittery fan speed adjustment.

2 hours ago, Ginger_ said:

I wouldn't say it's Intels fault at all. The fact is, the i9 is an enthusiast chip. It requires a lot of cooling. 

 

Apple engineers are just retarded and think their setup that is only adequate for an i3 will work for an i9

It is quite possible that Intel simply did not deliver what was promised, it seems that even the 13" MacBook Pro 2018 throttles heavily, however the power consumed by the new chip is higher than the 4-core chips used in other laptops. Apple is using Coffee Lake based chips which are using 14nm++ instead of the 14nm+ used by earlier Kaby Lake chips.

Quote

What we are particularly surprised about is the apparently poor efficiency of the Coffee Lake U processor. We've spent the past few months working hard on the Kaby-Lake-R quad-core processors because they're in just about every subnotebook. The normal Core i5-8250U is actually the best example here, because in the case of the ThinkPad T480s it is just as limited by the temperature as the MacBook. At a consumption of about 30 watts (ie even less than the new MBP 13), it works stably at 3.4 GHz and reaches more than 700 points, so it is just under 20% (!) Faster. Even the 48-49 watts at the full 3.6 GHz make us startling compared to Kaby-Lake-R. With the Core i7-8550U, where all four cores are operated with a maximum of 3.7 GHz (ie 100 MHz more), it is "only" 41-43 watts.

 

https://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Apple-MacBook-Pro-13-2018-Touch-Bar-i5-Laptop.316002.0.html

 

 I am not defending Apple for these design choices, I am merely pointing out that it was not exclusively Apple's fault.

[hobobobo]

Well, i can actually see a point in resting some blame on intel. 10nm was supposed to come 2-3 years ago and i can see apple getting a shittong of chassies manufactured on the promise of it finally being here and that 2c i3 being as an example "look, we are making those things, a bit of ironing out and well have 10nm i9s with 25w tdp". And by the time it became apparent that its all bullshit again Apple didnt bother to give a fuck and thought, rightfully so, that their core userbase will eat this shit up, declare it to be a sublime delight and ask for more.

I wonder, can zen2 macbook be a reality, a single die should be cheaper for apple than i7/9 and offer much better performance/heat. Intels sweet words and offers can only last so long

 

edit: i can actually see intel promising 10nm on the back of apples pondering about arm and being the first volume customer for tsmcs 7nm. Apple are scummy as always, but intel might be scrambling with their manufacturing lead evaporating and apple having already established deep relationships with tsmc, amd, samsung and qcom. Apple usually needs to get the latest and greatest for their marketing to function to its best and, soon, the latest and greatest in any field might not be intel at all. What else except top tier nand flash will intel have left? And might not even be that, if samsung get their way. Can tottaly see intel promising the world

[schwellmo92]

1 hour ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

So the laptop comes with an 87W power adapter.

 

I'm sorry, but I don't think that's enough for an i9 8950HK + Radeon Pro 560X combo.

That's interesting. I remember the surface book 2 got ripped to shreds for not having a powerful enough power supply, but this is next level, that CPU can draw more than the power supply alone.

[captain_to_fire]

44 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

The i9 at full turbo is a fire-breathing dragon.....almost literally

Just before you know it, Apple fixes the thermal throttling issues of the MacBook Pro in partnership with Carrier. 

 

[BuckGup]

Judging by the iMac Pro throttling we should have saw this coming. When the iPhone X came out it was heavier and thicker then the 6, 7, and 8 yet people DIDN'T care or actually liked it. So stop trying to make it as thin as possible sacrificing a keyboard that works and thermals

[AngryBeaver]

2 hours ago, Trixanity said:

If others can make it not throttle then Apple is to blame but the new processors seem significantly harder to cool which would be Intel's fault. So both it is.

 

And moving to ARM doesn't really solve much. It reduces heat and power consumption but you lose performance. And good luck without QuickSync; it'll make FCP look so much less impressive and I'm sure it'll cause a shit storm in Apple land.

The thing is, intel didn't design the i9 stuff specifically for laptops. That is more something the manufacturers wanted to try and market (like apple).

 

So the chip might run hot, then again look at what it is! So there is no surprise here it would be a hotter chip. So how is intel making a high end chip that runs hot their fault when a company like apple puts it in a poorly cooled laptop even after probably numerous demo and development stages.

 

Do you think that apply somehow missed the throttling and temp issues in the testing and development stages? If so then holy crap they might be the worst in the market now. What really happened is apply was being common apple trying to push something quickly so all the apply sheep have something to throw their money at. This is not the first time or the last time they have released a subpar product in order to grab some quick cash. It won't be the last.

 

I just don't know how this could EVER be intel's fault. They design and manufacturer the chips, they are not responsible for how it is used. The use case of these items falls specifically on the manufacturers.

[schwellmo92]

44 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

Apple is using Coffee Lake based chips while all other laptops are using the Kaby Lake based chips released a while ago.

I don't know what laptops you've been looking at but there are a tonne of laptops using coffee lake chips.

[Blade of Grass]

28 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

The 4.8 GHz turbo is only designed to be present for a few seconds in order to briefly exceed the cooling power of the laptop in exchange for a page loading or document opening faster. In those few seconds the mass of the cooling solution could absorb the generated energy to prevent jittery fan speed adjustment.

This so much. I understand people being upset that the chips can’t maintain the base clock, but outrage over it not mainting turbo is rediculous & a blatant disregard for what turbo actually is. 

 

Even calls saying that the higher end processor is categorically a useless $300 upgrade because it performs worse while doing long term intensive processing tasks isn’t correct. Not every “Pro” is doing video editing & 3D rendering, a lot of “pros” do photo editing, vector graphics, or software engineering (all tasks which benefit from bursts of speed, but regularly only have the computer idling, something that seems like the MBP is comfortable doing). 

 

Obviously Apple should have made the cooling system beefier, or atleast tuned it better for this processor, but they can always make tuning improvements with software updates in future releases (fan profiles, clock speeds curves, etc).

[D13H4RD]

Oh boy, when AppleInsider says “It’s Real”, shit’s a’brewing

 

 

[ScratchCat]

8 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

I don't know what laptops you've been looking at but there are a tonne of laptops using coffee lake chips.

A number of laptops use 8th Gen chips such as the i5 8250U and the i7 8500U, these however are Kaby Lake chips. Coffee Lake mobile uses a different node to 8th Gen Kaby Lake mobile and hence will have other characteristics regarding power consumption and efficiency.

Coffee Lake Mobile lineup:

[D13H4RD]

23 minutes ago, Blade of Grass said:

This so much. I understand people being upset that the chips can’t maintain the base clock, but outrage over it not maintaining turbo is ridiculous & a blatant disregard for what turbo actually is.

I think the way Intel, Apple and other manufacturers advertise their turbo speeds play a small role.

 

The Core i7 7700HQ in my laptop has a claimed turbo speed of 3.8GHz. The i9 8950HK has a claimed turbo speed of 4.8GHz. However, these are only when one core is active. When all of them are active, the 7700HQ turbos at 3.4GHz. The 8950HK turbos at 4.2GHz.

 

It's also worth noting that while heavy tasks would see the CPU go turbo until it reaches TJ Max, lighter tasks would see occasional bursts of turbo clocks.

 

I think it's kinda stretching it to expect a laptop with a subpar cooling system and an overly thin chassis to maintain turbos on a CPU known to double as a really nice space heater tbh.

[schwellmo92]

18 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

A number of laptops use 8th Gen chips such as the i5 8250U and the i7 8500U, these however are Kaby Lake chips. Coffee Lake mobile uses a different node to 8th Gen Kaby Lake mobile and hence will have other characteristics regarding power consumption and efficiency.

Coffee Lake Mobile lineup:

I'm well aware of the differences between Kaby Lake R and Coffee Lake, my point still stands, there are heaps of laptops using COFFEE LAKE mobile processors.

 

See https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-coffee-lake-h-core-i9-laptops,36810.html

[Trixanity]

12 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

The thing is, intel didn't design the i9 stuff specifically for laptops. That is more something the manufacturers wanted to try and market (like apple).

 

So the chip might run hot, then again look at what it is! So there is no surprise here it would be a hotter chip. So how is intel making a high end chip that runs hot their fault when a company like apple puts it in a poorly cooled laptop even after probably numerous demo and development stages.

 

Do you think that apply somehow missed the throttling and temp issues in the testing and development stages? If so then holy crap they might be the worst in the market now. What really happened is apply was being common apple trying to push something quickly so all the apply sheep have something to throw their money at. This is not the first time or the last time they have released a subpar product in order to grab some quick cash. It won't be the last.

 

I just don't know how this could EVER be intel's fault. They design and manufacturer the chips, they are not responsible for how it is used. The use case of these items falls specifically on the manufacturers.

The first paragraph is categorically false. It's designed for laptops. Primarily gaming/VR/content creation. It's in the damn marketing. All the pictures are of people on laptops too.

 

The TDP is rated the same but the TDP is useless for Intel chips. How Intel managed to come up with the idea that 4 cores at some 3 GHz runs the same as 6 cores with a maximum of 4.8 is beyond me but Apple should have caught that early on even if Intel sugar-coated it in their meetings.

 

Apple didn't really do much of anything quickly. Their refresh was late. Which this is: a refresh. The new Intel chips required a complete product redesign. That's why it's Intel's fault. They need to cater to their customers. They don't just blindly push out products in a vacuum and expect customers to adapt. Some of Intel's biggest customers are Apple and Dell: both have issues with throttling. Because they want chips that work with their existing designs. It's as much Intel's problem they can't deliver a compelling product as it is that partners don't redesign it when a bump in the road comes along which CFL is. They don't redesign every year. That's costly.

Somehow they've overshot each other.

 

I'm quite confident Intel pushed the i9 to Apple just much as Apple wanted to parade the i9 around in their laptop. Because everyone should know by now that the i9 runs rampant on power. And that's Intel's fault. 4.8 GHz in a laptop is stupid when it's past the efficiency curve. What Apple should have done was mess with the frequency curve and the fan speed curve to make it work if they didn't want another hardware redesign so early. Or just abandoned the idea of an i9 all together.

[D13H4RD]

4 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

Because everyone should know by now that the i9 runs rampant on power.

Which also makes me question why Apple stuck with USB Power Delivery when the i9 8950HK can consume over 100W at load and PD's maximum is 100W.

 

The supplied adapter is 87W.

 

Maybe they knew it wouldn't reach full speed?

[ScratchCat]

11 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

I'm well aware of the differences between Kaby Lake R and Coffee Lake, my point still stands, there are heaps of laptops using COFFEE LAKE mobile processors.

Corrected and edited. My point was to highlight that the comparison I quoted below contained Kaby Lake vs Coffee Lake mobile.

1 hour ago, ScratchCat said:

Apple is using Coffee Lake based chips which are using 14nm++ instead of the 14nm+ used by earlier Kaby Lake chips.

 

[S w a t s o n]

7 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

Which also makes me question why Apple stuck with USB Power Delivery when the i9 8950HK can consume over 100W at load and PD's maximum is 100W.

 

The supplied adapter is 87W.

 

Maybe they knew it wouldn't reach full speed?

That, but also the 8950hk aint gonna draw over 100W at stock, that's over 2x the tdp. It is an unlocked cpu but I'm pretty sure apple aint letting people try that shit in this housefire of a laptop

[Trixanity]

2 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

Which also makes me question why Apple stuck with USB Power Delivery when the i9 8950HK can consume over 100W at load and PD's maximum is 100W.

 

The supplied adapter is 87W.

 

Maybe they knew it wouldn't reach full speed?

As I said: it's a product refresh. They did not wanna redesign the thing so they worked with what they had and what they had wasn't good enough. Although it's silly that the richest company on the planet is nickel and diming to avoid fixing problems.

 

They could very well have had the idea that it wouldn't draw more sustained power than what the power delivery could, well, deliver. One thing is boost speeds, another is tuning it properly. I do believe Apple have enough control to manage the behavior. And if not, get Intel to help them with a semi custom software implementation. Either way: what we got was this crap. Perhaps Apple will issue a software update that rapidly changes frequency behavior. Perhaps they'll wait until the first couple of units burst into flame and accuse the customers of using it wrong and then sneak in a fix. Who knows?

[schwellmo92]

4 minutes ago, Swatson said:

That, but also the 8950hk aint gonna draw over 100W at stock, that's over 2x the tdp. It is an unlocked cpu but I'm pretty sure apple aint letting people try that shit in this housefire of a laptop

It can draw up to 150w in stock configuration for short periods of time.

[D13H4RD]

5 minutes ago, Swatson said:

That, but also the 8950hk aint gonna draw over 100W at stock, that's over 2x the tdp. It is an unlocked cpu but I'm pretty sure apple aint letting people try that shit in this housefire of a laptop

AFAIK, the TDP is measured at base clocks.

 

It goes much higher in turbo 

[S w a t s o n]

1 minute ago, schwellmo92 said:

It can draw up to 150w in stock configuration for short periods of time.

citation needed

[S w a t s o n]

2 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

AFAIK, the TDP is measured at base clocks.

 

It goes much higher in turbo 

TDP isn't measured it's set by intel. Yes the 45TDP can be exceeded but if you think any reasonably sized laptop is dissipating 100w of heat continuously just from the CPU, well GLHF

[D13H4RD]

2 minutes ago, Swatson said:

TDP isn't measured it's set by intel. Yes the 45TDP can be exceeded but if you think any reasonably sized laptop is dissipating 100w of heat continuously just from the CPU, well GLHF

I think we were talking about the amount of power consumed?

 

 

[S w a t s o n]

2 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

I think we were talking about the amount of power consumed?

 

 

If you consume 100w of power you need to dissipate 100w of heat