Apple Addresses Thermal Throttling On 2018 MacBook Pro With Core i9
Earlier in July, Apple announced a surprise refresh to its MacBook Pro line. The company added a number of hardware updates to its 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros with Touch Bar. However, almost immediately after purchasing, one user encountered a serious flaw with Apple’s new machines.
According to reports from BGR, YouTuber Dave Lee noticed that Apple’s latest 15-inch MacBook Pro with 6-core 2.9GHz Intel Core i9 processor was not able to provide enough cooling for the machine, which caused the CPU to throttle down its performance speed in order to prevent overheating and damage to the machine.
In the tech world, this is known as “thermal throttling” and is usually not ideal for users who run intensive software such as Adobe Premiere, which is used for video rendering/encoding. After a quick comparison, Lee realized that the 2018 MacBook Pro with the Core i9 processor was actually clocking slower speeds while rendering video than the 2017 MacBook Pro with the Core i7 processor.
Lee explained his grievances in a YouTube video posted to his channel, and soon other users of the powerful machine were also sharing their own experiences via Reddit and other platforms, as previously reported by the Inquisitr.
Apple has since acknowledged the complaints and says the company has investigated and found a bug which will be corrected with a software update.
“Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement obtained by MacRumors.
“A bug fix is included in today’s macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended. We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems.”
Apple Says 2018 MacBook Pro Throttling is a Bug, Fix Available Now in New macOS Update https://t.co/NIl5QP544h by @julipuli pic.twitter.com/1BZ6wFXb4t
— MacRumors.com (@MacRumors) July 24, 2018
After updating, users can expect their machines to perform the way Apple originally intended. The spokesperson said users can expect a 70 percent increase in speed on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2X faster.
According to MacRumors, before Apple officially addressed the bug, there was quite a bit of speculation surrounding the issue. One user believed the “throttling may have related to the power delivery chip, known as a voltage regulation module, reporting an over-power condition, throttling the CPU clock speed to scale back power.”
The software update is available for download now.
