[alex_kac]

So I'm reading alot about these heat issues and how running XP via BootCamp cools things down. So then I read this blog here:

http://www.longhornblogs.com/default.aspx

The Bad Stuff
There's a lot more I like, but it's late and I have ranting to do. Just to prove I'm done snorting Kool-aid lines for the day, here's the stuff I don't like thus far:

* Heat - Forget chemical castration for sex offenders. Most of these guys are hooked on internet porn anyways... just give them a laptop with a free net connection and a souped up graphics card running Windows Aero. Use sensors and that new FlexGo system to make sure they can only use the laptop when it's in their lap. After their nuts melt to their legs, they won't be able to do bad things to people anymore. The heat problem is so bad, I'm seriously considering modding my Toshiba Tablet Dock II for liquid cooling and/or fans.
* Heat - Did I mention Vista makes my laptop scalding hot yet?
* Heat - if I put a pot of water on my laptop, I could cook spaghetti. And if I put it in my lap, the meatballs would be cooked at the same time. Man, Windows Vista really does make life easier!

and one of the things they mention with Vista on their laptop is that using the Aero Glass theme which uses the GPU like Quartz Extreme does makes their Vista laptops HOT. Very hot.

So perhaps the reason the new MacBook Pros are:

1) The fans don't come on often enough
2) The GPU is used a lot and is a more powerful GPU than in PowerBooks
3) The fans don't come on often enough

That's just my thoughts. My wife's MBP is actually pretty cool.

[harrisjamieh]

The GPU in the MBPs are already underclocked, so there was obviously a heat concern from Apple when they designed the machines. However I don't rekon this is the cause of the heat problem, as other laptops with similar cards dont suffer from such heat problems

[alex_kac]

Other laptops don't use the GPU for handling the entire UI like OS X does. Considering that the blog posted above says that only installing Vista caused his laptop to heat up dramatically and Vista now uses the GPU for handling the UI, I think its quite possible that its the GPU/fans causing it to be hotter than other laptops.

[Simon]

It's indisputable that the GPU is a major heat contributor in notebooks. For example, in order to get the fans in my MBP and Al PB to really rev up, I just have to start playing an OpenGL game. That gets them up faster and higher than the scientific number crunching I do at work - even though those codes max out both cores of my CPU (most of these routines are really CPU and not bus limited).

I also know that my 12" PBs always have their fans running at full speed when one of my ACDs is attached. As soon as I disconnected the external screen, the fans go back to low speeds.

I don't know how much of the total heat comes from the GPU, but it is certainly a substantial part. And as somebody else already mentioned, Apple underclocked the GPU for a reason.

[bloodline]

I'm pretty convinced that any heat issues with the MBP are due to the gfx chip. use Quartz Debug to disable Quartz and notice the cool down...

[alex_kac]

Also adding to this is I hear some people complain about the battery life on OS X laptops compared to Windows ones. An interesting data point is that according to MS and CNET, Vista laptops will suffer deteriorated battery life due to the graphics chip use in Aero

[n8236]

subscribed

[zac4mac]

My guess is that all 3 chips on the heatpipe are major heat producers, otherwise they wouldn't be there; they'd have their own little heatsink.

Battery life is another issue. There appear to be a bunch of bad batteries in the first batch. I got one, waiting for a replacement. Last time I unplugged my MBP it ran 2 minutes after showing a full charge.

Z