Serious issue with the retina macbook pro, I had the heat spike to over 100C on my laptop after just a few minutes of gameplay, never seen anything do that including benchmarks. There must be something really off about the GPU usage, the CPU was using a only 250% of my core i7 which isn't terrible for a game like this...although there is something majorly wrong with it. This probably has to do with the optimization but I wouldn't recommend playing that for a long time as you might do some serious damage to your GPU or run into the system freeze that people have been complaining about. Runs fine on my PC at home. The laptop has a 650M series nvidia GPU driving a retina display. The desktop has a 660GT.
I doubt PA could put more strain on it than any GPU stress tool. I have no idea what kind of tools are available for Macs, but have you tried some GPU stress tool that does 100% GPU load? If that does not overheat your Macbook it is indeed something weird with PA. But I would expect such a stress tool to overheat your mac even faster than PA. Which would mean that either the cooling of macbooks is just under dimensioned or your cooler is broken/dusty.
the tools only run for a few minutes tops and test several different aspects, PA was running for about 5 minutes solid, maybe i should look for a GPU monitor tool and see what PA does...but it does seem odd that it is using a full 650M?
it indeed seems odd, as it has a magnitude of performance problems that actually reduce the gpu usage. Look for a gpu burner tool. I am assuming there is one for macs. Dunno for sure. If the macbook cant handle 100% load it's a defect of the macbook, even though ofc PA should indeed not use that much gpu anyway.
http://www.geeks3d.com/20130507/gputest ... r-mac-osx/ Try that. I can't see any way that it'd be PA-specific - your machine is trying to drive quite a few pixels with not a lot of heat dissipation.
I ran each test for 3 minutes, the system spiked at about 80C then dropped back down to 70-72C. Could be that PA uses a combo of GPU/CPU which taxes too much, but still feels off that a stress test doesn't do it, I guess I could run a CPU/GPU stress test at the same time?
Don't run it for 3 Minutes. Run it for 60 Minutes. Keep an eye on the temps ofc. I mean, you play PA more than 3 Minutes, don't you And if you think it's a combination of CPU and GPU put a CPU benchmark loop next to the GPU tool. If the macbook is build well (and not broken in any way) it should be able to deal with 100% on CPU and GPU for hours and hours. If it can't, well go complain to apple for selling you crap
I had to shut down PA after about 5 minutes of gameplay because the temps were that high and the machine was locking up. Same complaint that other users are having. They do sell overpriced crap for any gaming purpose, however for work purposes their computers are fantastic. I work as a grad student doing research so visualizing graphs, multiple PDFs and images on a 2880X1800 screen really is useful. I guess I'll just keep alpha testing on the PC in the meantime until they fix the graphics pipeline some more.
Given a "retina" screen is probably great. But if it cant cool itself from 100% load it's broken in my eyes
It most likely doesnt crash from the heat level, its just stalling the system or just crashing it, as in BSOD. Have the same on my iMac.
Also - Even if you're running 10.7, or 10.8, please make sure you have all the latest updates from Apple. They sneak a lot of driver updates and other changes into their periodic system patches, and if you're not running on the absolute latest, it's hard to say what will happen. The two macbooks we've tested on here fairly extensively are my 2011 MBP unibody, and a 2013 retina 15. While the build still has a ways to go, it should be quite playable now. Your machine WILL get hot, as it probably will with most games. I generally only game for longer than 10 minutes when I have my cooling base handy.
I had to change the thermal compound between the heatsink and the processor and GPU of my HP dv6t to be able to play PA for more than 10 minutes.
On my late 2011 MacBook Pro it heats up all the time, when I play Kerbal Space Program, Minecraft or PA it heats up to about 80-100 degrees C. I have never come up with any issues with this except one time where (I think) the fan was hitting the shell wall for the fan, aside from being annoying, it didn't affect anything,
Macbooks have always had a heating issue, and I mean always, if you don't have external cooling, then expect your macbook to get to temperatures that will literally burn your skin. It's not designed for gaming, pure and simple, the excess processing power isn't really there for constant use. It's there so you wont lock up when it suddenly has to process something complex for a few seconds. That is how a mac works, it will heat up to temperatures that would melt butter simply by running indie games on steam. It can get to boiling temperatures when trying to render 2 hours of video in final cut pro.
