2011 Macbook Pro FPS problems on LOW in Bootcamp

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On July 20 2012 03:30 D_K_night wrote:
At this point we're pretty certain that it's not a software issue. Your Boot Camp'ed Windows 7 is clean as a whistle, and we definitely don't want to run SC2 off of your native MacOS partition.

Here's a tip which will probably pay the biggest dividends. Don't display the game at such a high resolution. I understand your LCD's native res is at 1920 X 1080(or 1200 as you stated). But for the sake of experimentation, try displaying the game at a lower resolution, for example 1600 x 1200 if that's possible.

Also try backing down to 1280 x 1024 and check over the results.

I do strongly suspect that you have a drastic cooling issue. This precisely explains the frame rate drop after a short period of time. And because it's a laptop, there's no easy answer or fix. I assume that you use the laptop on top of a desk, which is standard stuff. If there was some kind of cool pad or something you could place underneath the laptop just to see if that would help the issue, I would try that as well.

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On July 20 2012 03:30 D_K_night wrote:
At this point we're pretty certain that it's not a software issue. Your Boot Camp'ed Windows 7 is clean as a whistle, and we definitely don't want to run SC2 off of your native MacOS partition.

Here's a tip which will probably pay the biggest dividends. Don't display the game at such a high resolution. I understand your LCD's native res is at 1920 X 1080(or 1200 as you stated). But for the sake of experimentation, try displaying the game at a lower resolution, for example 1600 x 1200 if that's possible.

Also try backing down to 1280 x 1024 and check over the results.

I do strongly suspect that you have a drastic cooling issue. This precisely explains the frame rate drop after a short period of time. And because it's a laptop, there's no easy answer or fix. I assume that you use the laptop on top of a desk, which is standard stuff. If there was some kind of cool pad or something you could place underneath the laptop just to see if that would help the issue, I would try that as well.

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Sounds like it could be a heat issue... though that doesn't explain the explorer.exe thing or the 3D Marks thing. Are the fans spinning up loudly?

Try using Lubbo's Fan Control to force your fans to go to higher RPMs.

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Well I don't know what it is, but it's interesting so keep with the updates. I'd especially like to know if your FPS similarly grinds to a halt in any other hardware-demanding games. And within SC2, how about the single player campaign or some silly custom maps like tower defense?

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On July 20 2012 22:06 Jaso wrote:
Regardless of if it's a heat issue or not, I still recommend Lubbo's It's really nice; without it my MBP lets itself go up to 80C without the fans spinning over 3000RPM resulting in throttling and 20FPS in games I should be getting 60FPS in.

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Have you updated your Boot Camp driver to 4.0?

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On July 20 2012 23:12 Chaggi wrote:


I will try it!

What setting are you using? I just set it to a 2 fans, 1 gpu, seems not to make a difference vs 2 fans, 2 gpu



I just installed Mountain Lion and got the Boot Camp drivers, so I'm assuming that's the most recent aka 4.0?

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On July 20 2012 23:21 Jaso wrote:


My MBP is the base model from 2009, so I only have integrated graphics with the 9400M and therefore 1 fan.

You have the 6750M as a dedicated card so you'd want 2 fans/2gpu. Hope it helps!

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On July 20 2012 23:41 Chaggi wrote:


ok, I moved them around and it didn't seem to matter since only 1 GPU is active in boot camp.

I'm not sure if this sparks anyone's thoughts but whenever I do a fresh open of SC2 (both NA and KR), I start off with decent FPS (200-300) and go down to 170, then 140, and then 70 and then 60... and go all the way down to 20-30

However, when I play again, my FPS starts only at 60-70s, and goes down even lower than normal. Possible something with cache?

Also the program shows that I have 2 GPU and I think(?) the temps are wrong.

It says that 1 GPU is at a normal 53C~ while my other one is at a 90C, and that's not even moving. I think sensors are messed up.

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On July 21 2012 00:26 Jaso wrote:


Yeah something weird happens with the sensors. Some of them don't work correctly. Just pay attention to the one that works

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On July 22 2012 18:06 Air2gear wrote:
Make an appointment with Apple Genius and show them your issue with MBP. They should replace/fix your MBP if your warranty is still within one year since the purchase for free. Unless you bought AppleCare which is 3 years.

Does the issue still appear in Mac OS X with SC2 or is it only limited to Bootcamp Windows?

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On July 22 2012 19:23 Tanukki wrote:
All things considered I'd say it's overheating and the temperatures aren't being reported properly. To confirm it I'd try to cool down the laptop by increasing airflow around it, cleaning dust from the air vents, and forcing your fans to 100% using that Lubbo's software, then see if that changes anything. You should also probably enable vsync or force an FPS limit of 60 using the ati control panel, because going beyond that is just stressing the hardware for no reason. Actually, if you just lower the graphics without vsync, your computer is just going to render more frames to use up all its resources anyway, so limiting the FPS is important.

Either way you ought to look into getting real life tech support if it's available for free. Otherwise and if it turns out to be overheating, look into additional ways of cooling the system such as further cleaning, changing the thermal paste, pads, maybe even undervolting.

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