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Clock speeds dropping to 1.5 ghz in cool environment while gaming

I play a lot of games on my Mac because its very powerful and can handle them I thought, but ever since I got in a couple of years ago I've gotten a significant amount of lag in games after a short period of time which gets really annoying, and the culprit is the clock speeds dropping while im gaming. Usually, my MacBook runs at the advertised 2.4 ghz when gaming but occasionally it goes down to 1.6 and 1.5 ghz for no reason, and you may be thinking its getting too hot but it is usually between 150 and 165 farenheit when gaming and under load, im really annoyed at this because its a very expensive and powerful machine, and instead of having a 8 core i9 CPU it feels like I have a dual core Celeron from 2006. And yes, I am aware you can get certain programs to set the clock speed on your Mac but I dont feel comfortable disabling the SIP nor do I feel like putting in the effort. Any fixes or help anyone is aware of?

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Nov 25, 2021 2:12 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 25, 2021 6:49 PM

Hi,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities,

We are not Apple, We are just users like you!


I do understand your conundrum... However, every CPU does not run at "Max Turbo" all the time. Every CPU has 2 speed ratings, the Base speed and the Turbo speed... for example:

So, depending if the game is loading or actually churning out graphics the CPU speed will fluctuate accordingly... Also, most games don't require 8 or 6 or even 4 cores to run. So, this will also cause your CPU speed to drop (CPU cores will turn off and on according to what the system might need. Hence why you feel like you are using a dual-core Celeron.)


You may have another problem, the GPU of the MBP and also how much memory the system has available...


There are a few things you could try:

Do these first:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201295

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204063

You can manage your disk space:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT206996

and run a First Aid (as a maintenance step):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210898


Make sure that when you are playing your games you always keep your Mac in a flat surface that allows for good air flow.

Hope that helps...


Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 25, 2021 6:49 PM in response to Mason_burtpenguin

Hi,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities,

We are not Apple, We are just users like you!


I do understand your conundrum... However, every CPU does not run at "Max Turbo" all the time. Every CPU has 2 speed ratings, the Base speed and the Turbo speed... for example:

So, depending if the game is loading or actually churning out graphics the CPU speed will fluctuate accordingly... Also, most games don't require 8 or 6 or even 4 cores to run. So, this will also cause your CPU speed to drop (CPU cores will turn off and on according to what the system might need. Hence why you feel like you are using a dual-core Celeron.)


You may have another problem, the GPU of the MBP and also how much memory the system has available...


There are a few things you could try:

Do these first:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201295

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204063

You can manage your disk space:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT206996

and run a First Aid (as a maintenance step):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210898


Make sure that when you are playing your games you always keep your Mac in a flat surface that allows for good air flow.

Hope that helps...


Nov 26, 2021 7:54 AM in response to Sonicray

Thank you for the help, although I have not tried your possible remedies to the problem I dont think they will do very much seeing that the base clock is 2.4 ghz and my ram is 32 gb and I have all other programs (apart from discord and Mac fan control) closed while gaming, and my storage still has 1.6TB free, also I am skeptical of the GPU being the issue because it runs just fine when the CPU isn't bottlenecking it. But I will try these methods and I appreciate your help!

Clock speeds dropping to 1.5 ghz in cool environment while gaming

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