Sudden rMBP graphic performance issues

Here's a more detailed description:

Hello,

I've a MacBook Pro with Retina display, running 10.8.2 and Win7 64-bit (via Bootcamp). 1660x1330

It's since a couple of days now, that I'm noticing a sharp drop in my rMBP's graphic performance. This is best observed in games, running both on OSX and Windows. For example, I've played a lot of Diablo 3 on this computer, under OSX, with standard resolution settings (not retina), and it played very well, and really smooth. When I ran it today, it lagged really bad (i.e., ran at very low FPS). It's was unplayable. This shift occurred overnight. Two days ago it worked, and now it suddenly doesn't.

It's really noticeable in Borderlands 2, under Windows (Bootcamp). This game used to run just fine until this 'performance drop' occurred.

Did some testing;

- Ran System Information while simply idling and browsing the net, System Information reported that my machine was using the Intel HD 4000.

- I then ran Diablo 3 - System Information switched to the Geforce GT 650M. At this point, the game was running with very low performance.

- Ran Activity Monitor - 93% CPU Idle, 10.5GB free RAM, hardly any disk activity with peaks of 1MB/sec. So I'm assuming the CPU, Memory and Disk are not the problems.

- Ran atMonitor, which monitors GPU load and temp - The GPU idles at 0% load and at a temperature of 40c. With the game running; the GPU was at 99% load and went as high as 66c. When I quit the game, it dropped down to 0% and 55c within ~2mins.

I then canceled Automatic graphics switching, under 'Energy Saver', so that my system was always running on the NVIDIA Geforce GT650M. I've confirmed that it is running on it. At this point the atMonitor app displayed standard values. So, I'm assuming the GPU is not totally gone.

I'm not sure what exactly caused this shift. Is any familiar with this? Any bright ideas?

Thanks. All the best,

-w00fa

Just tested the 650M with Cinebench. I'm getting really bad results compared to similar setups.

Well done! Went through the process, and now D3 on OSX runs smooth again, same goes for Borderlands 2 and Torchlight 2 on Windows (via Bootcamp).

I actually saw this SMC reset proposal yesterday, but didn't see how it could relate. My bad. Reading more reveals that some people had to go through this process several times already, so I'm guessing that with time, the problem will re-surface, and another SMC reset will be in order.

In any case, let's just hope that Apple is aware of this, and that they'll patch a permanent solution sooner than later.

Cheers everyone! Thanks for the attention and assistance!

-w00fa

Please keep us updated with what they tell you! Thanks again!

Just woke mine from sleep. Still working fine.

yay! (lol)

As always, let us know what you find out.

I'm just happy there's a way to fix this, even for a single gaming session. By the way, did you notice performance drops in non-game usage as well?

Thanks again for being uber helpful on this!