Stop MBP Retina GPU from throttling.. (Bootcamp)

M

maxiedaniels

Gawd
Joined
May 25, 2005
Messages
1,006
I was reading about overclocking my 650m in Bootcamp with my MBP Retina 2012, and in the process started metering my clock speeds and noticed they are fluctuating like crazy when I play games.

I tried using Nvidia Inspector and -forcepstate:0,1 and -forcepstate:0,2... things are bugging out. -forcepstate:0,2 doesn't work. I read on forums that the retina actually needs pstate:0,1, so I tried that... I still get it to stop throttling.

Any thoughts?
 
Been there. This is just how those MBP GPUs are, they're not really meant for gaming. You will never have a good experience without lighting yourself / your notebook on fire, which I guess is still not a good experience.
 
Which is why I bought an iGPU version, hoping for an eGPU solution in the mean time. I'd rather get full speed, all the time, than pay more and get throttled speed most of the time.
 
A big problem in Boot Camp Windows, at least it was 3 years ago when I last tried, is the CPU is always running at its 100% power state. So even without adding a dGPU to the mix you're blasting out a lot more heat than normal just doing mundane web browse-y type stuff. But throw in some Nvidia graphics and that's where it gets ugly.

The tiny heatpipe cooler on that laptop just can't keep up with a CPU and GPU doing full tilt for prolonged periods. It can barely handle one (I've seen just my CPU go up to 95 C on a MBPr), but throw a boiling hot GPU into the mix and something's got to give. And that's why it throttles.

There is no solution for this. If you find a way to disable the throttling, you will have also found an effective way to cook your $2600 laptop.
 
I don't think that explains it though... my laptop is not running that hot while this is happening.. and my temperatures are not reading high.
 
Hmm... I've never noticed any throttling with my 2012 rMBP. I bootcamped it with Win7 shortly after receiving it, and ran it that way for a year and a half. The only thing I had to to to manage temps was to use SMC Speedfan for OS X and set the fans to about 3/4 maximum speed, then restart and go into Windows. The fans won't (or didn't) spin up properly under Windows. Not that it made much of a difference, but I also used a laptop cooler whenever using Windows.

Are you running Win7 or Win8 on the rMBP? I'm wondering if Apple has made changes to the Bootcamp drivers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top