We discovered SEVERE thermal throttling with Apple's new M2 MacBook Pro, proving that it needs a BETTER cooling system with two fans instead of one.
We exported 8K Canon RAW and saw temps hit 108°C, more than we've ever seen on a Mac, even an Intel Mac.
But it gets worse...
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The fan was maxed out at 7200RPM the ENTIRE time, so there was nothing the MacBook Pro could do to cool itself down except for HEAVILY throttle down the M2 chip. This led to much worse performance than the M1 Pro chip, which didn't have to max out its fans.
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In a split second, the M2 chip would cut its P-core clock speed from 3200MHz to 1894MHz, its E-core from 2228MHz to 1444Mhz, its GPU from 1393MHz to 289MHz. This resulted in total package power dropping from 29.46W to 7.31W.
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This would happen in WAVES whenever the temps hit a peak of 108°C, causing the temps to drop down to 84°C almost instantly, before ramping up the clock speeds again and repeating the cycle all over again. This led to the export taking much longer than the M1 Pro MBP.
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Just for reference, the base 14" M1 Pro MacBook Pro didn't throttle like the M2 did, with the CPU and GPU running at full blast the entire time. That's because the fans were able to keep temps low enough to not throttle. This is how PROPER cooling behavior looks like!
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Now this is the most demanding real-world video editing test we have, but it proves that the M2 chip NEEDS a better cooler to avoid throttling.
If you want to watch the FULL video and more throttling details, here it is: youtu.be/pc8Wi5EWQx0
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Moral of the story: It's not looking so good for the M2 MacBook Air..
Apple will either permanently cap the performance to keep temps down or they'll let it overheat and throttle as this M2 MacBook Pro did. Can't wait to test it ;)
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Update: Just tested the base M1 MacBook Pro.
Max CPU temp: 94°C
Fans maxed out only towards the end of testing
GPU was at 100% load the entire without throttling. CPU didn't run at 100% all the time because it was limited by GPU.
Avg wattage 21.87W compared to peak 24.06W.
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This shows that the M1 MBP didn't severely throttle like the M2. The single fan is enough to keep temps down. Never went above 94°C, compared to M2 which hit 108°C with maxed-out fans.
Never dropped clock speed as M2 did.
Export time: 21 min 40sec compared to M2: 19 min 40 sec.
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Even though the M1 was held back by the lower 8-core GPU performance compared to the 10-core M2 GPU, the M2 was only 10% faster in this export test because of the severe thermal throttling.
Keep in mind: This is WITHOUT stressing the RAM at all, which would hurt performance.
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Let me once again stress that this is the most demanding test we could find that puts a heavy load on both the cpu and gpu to intentionally push it to its limits so we can see if the cooling system is adequate or not.
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