Power (Watts) Leak

Power (Watts) Leak

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Posted by: Piia.7659

Piia.7659

I’m having what I’m pretty sure is a hardware issue with how the game interacts with my Macbook Pro. I’m also curious if anyone else is experiencing this. I’ve had it happen in both Bootcamp Windows and now the Mac Client.

I have an early 2011 Macbook Pro with some upgrades (Ram, Hard Drive). When playing I always use the Magsafe adapter to power my machine. It would seem that during gameplay, the game “suspends” the power adapter and my machine runs on battery alone. When drained, the machine dies. This just happened for the second time in the past few days.

I have done the following:

Diagnostic of Battery: Pass (not reporting any issues)
Checked the power cord/connector for damage: Pass
Rotated the Magsafe connector

The machine charges fine and the battery holds a normal charge. When I start the game up, the battery slowly starts to deplete. When the game is running, the amber light on the Magsafe connector turns from Amber to Green, and the battery indicator changes from “charging” to simply “battery percentage”.

The hardware does not seem to be the issue. I can’t reproduce this problem with any other application (including Adobe CS 5.5 applications). It seems exclusive to this game.

Anyone else having this issue, or a suggestion on how to fix it? In Bootcamp I was able to resolve it by unchecking all boxes at the bottom of the Graphics settings in-game, but in the Mac Client this did not resolve the issue.

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Posted by: Magoo.5726

Magoo.5726

That sounds like your computer is consuming more power than the power adapter is able to supply. First time in my life that this would actually happen.
Maybe a more powerful power adapter could solve this.

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Posted by: Phato.5831

Phato.5831

I have the same machine, early 2011 17" MBP with 16GB ram upgrade and 750GB 7200RPM HD upgrade. The Same thing happened for me, although my battery level stayed the same or crept up slowly. This is definitely an issue with how the GPU and CPU are being taxed by the game. I kept checking my battery level (cmd+tab out of game) and sometimes it showed charging with like 2k hrs until it was at 100% or it would show that the power connector was attached but not charging. When I run the game in bootcamp I overclock my GPU and the led is amber while playing, but battery level never seems to go down, like it has just enough power to keep it steady. I recently got a new power adapter because my old one died, so I’m wondering if your power adapter is on it’s last legs.

(edited by Phato.5831)

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Posted by: Piia.7659

Piia.7659

Phato thanks for the feedback. It could be, however, I checked with a service tech friend of mine who has a similar machine to yours (17 inch) with similar upgrades. We are pretty sure it’s related to the 85 watt power supply and unfortunately Apple doesn’t make one stronger than 85 watts.

I’ve noticed that minimizing the game or playing in windowed mode seems to bring the charge back on (indicator light goes back to amber). I tried resetting the SMC and PRAM with no results.

I’ve just noticed that there is an SMC update for Mountain Lion which I’m running now. I will report on any progress shortly.

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Posted by: Phato.5831

Phato.5831

Good to hear. Yea, Mountain Lion was updated to 10.8.2 today. Minimizing the window or playing in windowed mode would make sense as the game wouldn’t require as much power because it isn’t rendering graphics at full screen. This issue should be looked into by the devs though. Figure out some way to make the system not have to work so hard.

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Posted by: Piia.7659

Piia.7659

SMC update had no effect.

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Posted by: Piia.7659

Piia.7659

Update

I played for several hours this evening and while the behaviour described above has not changed, I did notice something that I felt was relevant to the techs looking into this issue.

After setting my in-game graphic settings to “Low”, the battery drain remains but has slowed down substantially. I started with a charge of 76%, and after several hours I ended up at 74%. This leads me to believe that the game is using the full charge coming from the AC adapter, and on occasion draws extra from the battery. There is no power left over from the game to keep the battery charged (or to continue charging it to full). Higher graphics settings drains the battery faster.

I’m not sure if this is isolated to the Macbook Pro 15 inch and 17 inch models that have a dedicated GPU, but I’d be interested to know if anyone with a laptop model using any integrated (HD Graphics 3000/4000) is experiencing the same issue? This would include all 13 inch Macbook (Pro and White/Black varieties) and all Macbook Air models. It’s important to note that these models use 60 Watt and 45 Watt power supplies respectively.

I don’t think this could be exclusive to Macbook Pros, but I do know that PC varieties have different wattage power supplies, and I’m sure this has something to do with 85 Watts just not being enough to power the dedicated card running the game. I may try running the game using a tool that suspends the dedicated card and see if the integrated card causes the same issue.

(edited by Piia.7659)

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Posted by: Phato.5831

Phato.5831

I too played the game for several hours last night and this time, I had what happened to you happen to me. Started playing at 22% and after I was done (about 3 hrs later) my battery was at 18%. I have a mid 2012 macbook air with intel 4000 so I’ll try and see if the same thing happens on that machine.

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Posted by: Tick Tock.9602

Tick Tock.9602

I think I remember this being a known issue in the 2011 MacBook Pros… I myself experienced it under Lion but it had to be a full load. I have not experienced it in a while though.

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Posted by: Phato.5831

Phato.5831

I think I remember this being a known issue in the 2011 MacBook Pros… I myself experienced it under Lion but it had to be a full load. I have not experienced it in a while though.

Interesting… this is the only instance I’ve ever experienced this and I work in the MoGraph and VFX industry, so all 4 cores are constantly at work.

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Posted by: Tick Tock.9602

Tick Tock.9602

I think I remember this being a known issue in the 2011 MacBook Pros… I myself experienced it under Lion but it had to be a full load. I have not experienced it in a while though.

Interesting… this is the only instance I’ve ever experienced this and I work in the MoGraph and VFX industry, so all 4 cores are constantly at work.

Just remembering something I had read, here is a link to it:

“While you can’t remove the new built-in batteries, this method of using both AC power and battery during periods of peak power demands is still applicable. This is why you may find your battery may temporarily stop charging or even drain somewhat, even though you have your AC adapter plugged in. This is working as designed and will only be used during periods of peak power demands.”

Source: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=9875442&postcount=23

I think it has to be a pretty extreme load, like me working in CS5 isn’t enough to do it but WoW used to display those symptoms.

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Posted by: Piia.7659

Piia.7659

Great link Tick Tock!

I have to say, while “working as intended” I’m glad I took out Applecare. I’m sure tasking the battery like that is not good for it’s overall lifespan. Not even running Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Bridge, & various Apple Apps simultaneously has produced this issue for me. I’m pretty sure it’s related to the GPU somehow, which those apps don’t make complete use of. Running all of those apps makes more use of the processor.

If there is any way the client could be optimized to reduce this “load”, that would be fantastic! In the meantime, I will just try to start my longer gaming periods at a fully charged battery.

I’m hoping that in the near future, Apple does a complete redesign of the Pro models that recognizes gaming more seriously. Obviously this means designing a system with a larger power supply to accommodate faster GPUs and handle the load. Developers are recognizing the platform… now it’s time for Apple to really answer the demand. Every game I’ve played on the Mac OS has been better overall experience under this OS environment than in Windows. Happy to see innovation moving forward!

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Posted by: Phato.5831

Phato.5831

I’ve ran some more tests with interesting results. On a mid 2012 Macbook Air I got no charging issues whatsoever. Played for an hour and a half and battery was at 83% when I started and 100% when I finished. Also played on my early 2011 Macbook Pro again for about an hour and started at 100% battery and when I was done, still at 100% battery. Played last night on the early 2011 Macbook Pro (same machine as 100%/100%) and I started at 92% battery and 2 hrs later when I was done I was at 96%.

For the last session, however, I lowered the resolution of the game, which I think I’ll actually keep it at now because I was able to get an average of 40fps on medium settings and it didn’t seem like the computer was trying as hard. I guess it just doesn’t like 1920×1200 on this particular MBP model.

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Posted by: Xellahmai.4350

Xellahmai.4350

I had a lot of issues with the supplementary power (drain) mode on my early-2011 MBP 17", mostly when running two instances of the-MMO-that-shall-not-be-named and with a high battery cycle count. It might be worth taking a look at the health of your battery under About This Mac->More Info->System Report (see attached screenshot) to check if your battery is in good shape or not.

If you’re using an appropriate framerate cap then it shouldn’t be draining if you’re only running one 3D game under Mac OS X. Also check to make sure you don’t have flash animation crap (ads, etc.) running in a web browser in the background – that uses the GPU too and sucks power.

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Posted by: lilz shorty.1879

lilz shorty.1879

Yeah I am having this same problem

“Morfeus X” || Team: Apex Prime
“Best Guardian NA”

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Posted by: lilz shorty.1879

lilz shorty.1879

I’ve ran some more tests with interesting results. On a mid 2012 Macbook Air I got no charging issues whatsoever. Played for an hour and a half and battery was at 83% when I started and 100% when I finished. Also played on my early 2011 Macbook Pro again for about an hour and started at 100% battery and when I was done, still at 100% battery. Played last night on the early 2011 Macbook Pro (same machine as 100%/100%) and I started at 92% battery and 2 hrs later when I was done I was at 96%.

For the last session, however, I lowered the resolution of the game, which I think I’ll actually keep it at now because I was able to get an average of 40fps on medium settings and it didn’t seem like the computer was trying as hard. I guess it just doesn’t like 1920×1200 on this particular MBP model.

What did you do to get your mbp 2011 to not drain anymore? Were both sessions windowed and medium settings?

“Morfeus X” || Team: Apex Prime
“Best Guardian NA”

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Posted by: Tsubaki.8732

Tsubaki.8732

Like others already posted above, this is a known issue with Macbook Pros which have a separate graphics adapter (ATI, Nvidia) and do not only use the integrated CPU graphics (HD4000, …), it is not a Guild Wars 2-specific problem. The power supply simply cannot keep up with the combined demands of the CPU plus the graphics card when you use programs which heavily use both (i.e. games) – and so the battery not only does not get charged, it actually gets drained and, if you play long enough, the computer may actually power off. An obvious solution would be a bigger power supply (e.g. Dell or Lenovo have 150+ Watts power bricks for their notebooks), but sadly it seems for Apple looks are more important.

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Posted by: Todd.8162

Todd.8162

If there is any way the client could be optimized to reduce this “load”, that would be fantastic! In the meantime, I will just try to start my longer gaming periods at a fully charged battery.

Options … Graphics Options … set Frame Limiter to 60 or 30 to ease GPU load.

Also try reducing the levels in Advanced Settings. Try the “Best Performance” preset and work from there.

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Posted by: loseridoit.2756

loseridoit.2756

If there is any way the client could be optimized to reduce this “load”, that would be fantastic! In the meantime, I will just try to start my longer gaming periods at a fully charged battery.

Options … Graphics Options … set Frame Limiter to 60 or 30 to ease GPU load.

Also try reducing the levels in Advanced Settings. Try the “Best Performance” preset and work from there.

yea, the only fix is to make sure that the gpu and cpu are not under full load. A frame limiter will do wonders. I hope apple will fix this design issue in future macbooks.

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Posted by: Kyllaa.1385

Kyllaa.1385

You guys pretty much hit the nail on the head! I had this issue during the 1st beta weekend running on bootcamp. Windows apparently sucks for this! But yeah, the MacBook pro power supply doesn’t give enough juice to supply a load on the system like that. So using anything that is graphics intense or creates a high demand on the system causes the battery to have to compensate for the energy required. If you never lighten the power requirements, the system will eventually tax the battery and shutdown.

Also, I’ve found that once the system gets too hot for comfort, prior to an overheat situation, it will stop xharging the battery. You will see the MagSafe indicator go green (indicating a full charge), but if you check the battery level it could say 60% charge (not charging).

So yeah, apparently this is “as intended” and will not be fixed. Turning graphics settings down helps. Also, under energy saver, there is a setting about automatic graphics switching. Enabling that for both battery and power adapted could help. I find mine runs more hot with it disabled, but it looks a little prettier. So it’s a trade-off of sacrifice appearance for performance as usual.

Good luck.