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  1. #1
    Herald of the Titans Maharishi's Avatar
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    Macbook Pro benching at half power.

    I have Macbook Pro 4.1 (Early '08) with Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T8300 @ 2.40GHz, 4gb Ram , and GeForce 8600M GT.

    I've been running it through some benchmarks, and practically every single metric from Geekbench comes up as half of what it should be. The first though I had was a dead core, but activity monitor shows both taking even load, and it wouldn't seem to affect memory.

    Are there any issues you can think of that would just cut performance in half across the board? If anyone is using the same setup what sorts of FPS do you get in wow, and with what settings?
    Last edited by Maharishi; 2011-03-27 at 11:47 AM.

  2. #2
    Are you on battery/power save mode?

    Plugged in?

  3. #3
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    Plugged in, MBP batteries have a short life, alas, and i haven't gotten around to a replacement.

  4. #4
    What are you basing your expect scores off of?

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by ayako View Post
    What are you basing your expect scores off of?
    Benchmarks of both my friends with same gen systems, as well as stored benches from Geekbench. While obviously, in abstraction, the numbers mean nothing, I should get a ~3400, but get ~1700. I get almost perfectly half of my friends in every metric (Geekbench is memory and cpu only).

  6. #6
    Same gen as in identical models or desktop models?

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by ayako View Post
    Same gen as in identical models or desktop models?
    One of them is completely identical, the other has an extra .1 ghz thrown in.

  8. #8
    Are you doing anything else while it benches? I have looked into it and it seems your model gets ~3100

  9. #9
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    I mean obviously I don't expect an accurate diagnosis click and clack style from very vague benchmarks, I guess i'll be more specific.

    1. Do you know if a core died, the other core could live on? Would this show in activity monitors readout? Any good software for checking these things?

    2. Similar in game FPSs would be nice. I haven't noticed major performance loss as of late, but I don't know how long the benches have been abnormal.

    For reference, standing in a relatively abandoned 8 AM Stormwind, on "Good" default settings, i go between 15-20fps, which rate drops if i spin quickly (more of a gpu issue, a fairly weak card).

    Edit: No, benching while cool after a reboot to make sure it was fresh.

    Edit 2: 1440x900 res on the good settings.

  10. #10
    I doubt it would effect it that much, but what OS are you running when you do this, as well as the computers your friends have that you're comparing to?
    EVGA Classified SR-2 | Intel Xeon X5680 x 2 | Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 6 x 2GB | XFX HD5970 x 2
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  11. #11
    Herald of the Titans Maharishi's Avatar
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    All are on 10.6.7 .

  12. #12
    Try cleaning out your fans

  13. #13
    Blademaster
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    Check if you have any background work being done. Utils/activity monitor.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by ayako View Post
    Try cleaning out your fans
    :-P

    My heat rarely gets above 80 C on the GPU or CPU, and when i benched it was at 65 C. Alas, overheating is not the easy fix this time :-(.

    And i benched when i started up, and nothing else was above .1% CPU usage or 30MB of real memory


    Edit: is 15-20 fps Reasonable for my setup on the Mac client for good settings at 1440x900?

  15. #15
    If you're talking about WoW, 15-20 FPS is pretty low. What settings are you using?

  16. #16
    Macbook pros are designed in such a way that if the battery is not plugged in the MBP will underclock the CPU & GPU by 50%. This is because Apples powercord will not always be able to provide the full power during a full load. Do a test with the battery on and then do a test with the battery out. If they are similar, then its your battery.

  17. #17
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    Default "Good"

    High texture / 4x filtering/ projected on

    "Good" view distance, good detail, good ground clutter

    Good shadow/liquid, low sunshafts/ good particle density

    1440x900, AntiAliasingx1

    keeping in mind it's the mac client, and at least in wotlk when i had a windows boot, i'd pick up almost 50% performance gain on the windows side, so 30 windows FPS.

    ---------- Post added 2011-03-27 at 12:58 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by gmike View Post
    Macbook pros are designed in such a way that if the battery is not plugged in the MBP will underclock the CPU & GPU by 50%. This is because Apples powercord will not always be able to provide the full power during a full load. Do a test with the battery on and then do a test with the battery out. If they are similar, then its your battery.
    Thanks, do you know if a battery so dead it just does a "Sorry bro, can't charge this" message, it will still improve preformance?

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by gmike View Post
    Macbook pros are designed in such a way that if the battery is not plugged in the MBP will underclock the CPU & GPU by 50%. This is because Apples powercord will not always be able to provide the full power during a full load. Do a test with the battery on and then do a test with the battery out. If they are similar, then its your battery.
    I didn't even know the batteries were removable. I thought they put them in the unibody.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by ayako View Post
    I didn't even know the batteries were removable. I thought they put them in the unibody.
    They only have an expected life of 400 cycles, so a year or so under heavy usage. Couple that with MBP heat, and they go like candy. Super expensive candy.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Maharishi View Post
    They only have an expected life of 400 cycles, so a year or so under heavy usage. Couple that with MBP heat, and they go like candy. Super expensive candy.


    Self replaceable if you know what you're doing I guess. Another reason I don't buy apple

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