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MrBond posted:I have a friend with a 2011 MBA with a swollen battery. If they take it into a genius bar what can they expect? Is the $129 battery pricing the only option? Generally once it hits 3-4 years old they'll replace the battery and repair any bulging damage for the normal battery price. Just don't pop it to let the magic juice out.
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Aug 23, 2016 03:27
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A Kickstarter project for a high-performance desktop GPU that can plug into a MacBook via Thunderbolt and is compatible with the Oculus Rift VR headset has raised its backing target of $50,000 in less than 24 hours.quote:The Wolfe is a portable box that contains an Nvidia desktop-class graphics card and connects to a MacBook or other laptop via Thunderbolt 2 (or potentially Thunderbolt 3), and promises vastly improved performance for gaming, virtual reality, graphic design, and video editing. I know people in that department, and based on how crazy/crazy smart they are, I have every reason to believe that this is real. Here's the Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thewolfe/the-wolfe-supercharge-your-laptop Selected Excerpts (really, just go read the campaign if you're interested) quote:-The Wolfe contains an NVIDIA GTX 950 GPU - 768 cores operating at 1024MHz, for a peak compute power of 1.57 TeraFLOPS. quote:Desktop-level performance - On the laptop you already own quote:The Wolfe works with any computer that has Thunderbolt. That means practically every Mac is compatible! This includes: quote:Can I swap in my own GPU?  I want to believe
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Aug 24, 2016 13:44
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"But I can't play the latest games" Get a PC ya doofus
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Aug 24, 2016 13:48
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Quantum of Phallus posted:"But I can't play the latest games" If a $400 box can greatly boost the useable lifespan of my 2013 15" rMBP with Thunderbolt 2 and even allow me to use it as a desktop PC with a monitor into the future, then that's great. If it lets me turn a 5K iMac into a desktop with a legit graphics card that can power the internal display, then even better. Especially if it means spending potential BTO upgrade money there instead of on a nicer mobile GPU from Apple. If you have a computer from the last, like, 4 years then the CPU probably won't be a hugely limiting factor for at least another 4, so something like this makes sense as a simple and relatively affordable upgrade.
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Aug 24, 2016 14:10
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quote:Multiple Wolves - More wolves, even more power That's some good ad copy
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Aug 24, 2016 14:37
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So still troubling shooting my 2009 mac pro: Symptoms: Refuses to boot most times. No startup chime, but I can hear the hard drives spinning/CPU Daughter board lights up, SMC lights are normal (I have trickle power, which makes me think it's not PSU related issues). If I leave the system off for an extended period of time, the system will boot up for a while and operate normally. I've changed ram to the original of the system (no LED ram check lights on either the original or the OWC 16 gig set I have), disconnected all the USB/Firewire devices/removed hard drives/tried a new video card (this made it worse), still can barely ever get startup chimes/full boot unless I wait overnight, and that's with all components connected even (usb/firewire/video etc) I've attempted to boot without the video card in, and got nothing (as far as I could tell). I've never had a system die on me like this. What the dilly-o. 
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Aug 24, 2016 15:41
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The problem with these TB2/TB3 enclosures is the protocol overhead and latency from translating between TB <-> PCIe. Benchmarks have shown that you'll only get about half the performance compared to running natively via PCIe and slightly more than that when using an external monitor. The performance hit seems to scale with higher end graphics card and higher resolutions. In a nutshell these are great solutions for someone wanting to play games at acceptable frame-rates with a 13" Macbook Air but don't expect to plug a GTX1080 into your 15" rMBP and suddenly run games at 60 fps in native resolution. 
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Aug 24, 2016 16:19
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It's super useful for people who need to give numerical calculations more oomph, also if the cards are OpenCL compliant itll help a lot of video rendering apps.
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Aug 24, 2016 16:35
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Binary Badger posted:It's super useful for people who need to give numerical calculations more oomph, also if the cards are OpenCL compliant itll help a lot of video rendering apps. How many of these people are using Macs, though? There's good CPU and GPU solutions to number crunching on a workstation machine, but if you're going for either a dual-socket Xeon workstation or a many-GPU CUDA or OpenCL solution Apple doesn't have a compelling option for either right now because they decided to never update the 2013 Mac Pro.
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Aug 24, 2016 16:42
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Something tells me that Apple will find a way to take a poo poo on people that wanna use that external GPU. Aren't OS X's internal graphics processing stuff and support for things like Open GL completely wank? Guess bootcamping is a possibility.
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Aug 24, 2016 16:58
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Entropy238 posted:Aren't OS X's internal graphics processing stuff and support for things like Open GL completely wank? Eh. Metal might help? But it needs you know, recent hardware and actual not-garbage drivers that are updated regularly. Neither of those things appear to be a priority for Apple. (NEW WATCHBANDS!!!) The whole PC GAMING ON A MAC thing just needs to die already. I know it's been a dream of mine since like... the old G4 tower days. After the intel switch we thought OH MAN NOW IT'S TIME. It' ain't happening, and all the hardware kludges in the world ain't gonna get it there and are just pissing money away. Take your $600 or whatever and build yourself a decent gaming rig, stick it under the desk, and use Steam Streaming to play it on your Mac. That's as close as we're ever gonna get :[
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Aug 24, 2016 17:11
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I was offered an early 2014 Macbook Air 11" (128GB, 4GB) in like-new condition with 14 battery cycles for $375 from some dude at a retirement home. Worth it for a general around the house machine?
Auron fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 17:50
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Entropy238 posted:Something tells me that Apple will find a way to take a poo poo on people that wanna use that external GPU. Apple is rumored to be added an eGPU to their next cinema display. So, they'll need a way to make them work.
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Aug 24, 2016 17:53
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Auron posted:I was offered an early 2014 Macbook Air 11" (128GB, 4GB) in like-new condition with 14 battery cycles for $375 from some dude a retirement home. Worth it for a general around the house machine? Yes, good deal. There's a world of difference between a Haswell MBA with 4G/128GB and the earlier ones we were telling people to beware.
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Aug 24, 2016 17:55
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So I have not had my book for about 2 weeks and haven't missed it at all. I'm thinking about converting to an iPad Pro. All I do is word/final draft and use Dropbox.
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Aug 24, 2016 18:25
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Arsten posted:Apple is rumored to be added an eGPU to their next cinema display. So, they'll need a way to make them work. You know that a year after someone starts selling third party eGPUs that work under boot camp they will have a big reveal at an event where they show off the apple branded one complete with some frosted tips esports douche to talk about how it's a revolutionary game changer. Edit: AlternateAccount posted:. Take your $600 or whatever and build yourself a decent gaming rig, stick it under the desk, This is what I did a year ago and I couldn't be happier. Still use the Mac for work (basically just lots of typing) but they lost me for entertainment that doesn't involve me balancing an iPad on my belly to watch Netflix while my wife snores. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 18:33
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AlternateAccount posted:Eh. Metal might help? But it needs you know, recent hardware and actual not-garbage drivers that are updated regularly. Neither of those things appear to be a priority for Apple. (NEW WATCHBANDS!!!) To be fair cMPs make great gaming towers - a bit long in the tooth, but put one or two X5690s in them, throw in whatever the best nVidia GPU you can afford is that's supported by nVidia Web Drivers, and use Boot Camp for those games that don't run too well/at all under OS X (read: most). Of course this is mostly for those who already have a 2009 - 2012 Mac Pro, but still, I've been enjoying it.
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Aug 24, 2016 20:51
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AlternateAccount posted:Eh. Metal might help? But it needs you know, recent hardware and actual not-garbage drivers that are updated regularly. Neither of those things appear to be a priority for Apple. (NEW WATCHBANDS!!!) I just want to have one computer for all the things. 
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Aug 24, 2016 21:43
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I've got a week old Apple refurbed rMBP 13. The battery is showing 41% and 2 hrs 10 min. Is there a bedding in process, or do I have a crappy battery? I'm only running safari and Scrivener at the moment, with screen brightness about 2/3rds of the way up.
HorseHeadBed fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 21:47
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HorseHeadBed posted:I've got a week old Apple refurbed rMBP 13. The battery is showing 41% and 2 hrs 10 min. Is there a bedding in process, or do I have a crappy battery? I'm only running safari and Scrivener at the moment, with screen brightness about 2/3rds of the way up. referred? Do you mean refurbished? If you bought it refurbished through Apple, definitely contact Apple (or go into the store). You have the same warranty as "new out of box", and 41% is well below the threshold where Apple will replace a battery on an In warranty device. EDIT: I think I misread your question. If you're asking if 2 hours 10 mins is normal for a battery with 41% charge left, that's going to be highly dependent on what you have loaded. Do what the post below me says. Proteus Jones fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 21:54
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HorseHeadBed posted:I've got a week old Apple refurbed rMBP 13. The battery is showing 41% and 2 hrs 10 min. Is there a bedding in process, or do I have a crappy battery? I'm only running safari and Scrivener at the moment, with screen brightness about 2/3rds of the way up. Open up Activity Monitor, sort by energy impact and screenshot/post it here. 
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Aug 24, 2016 21:56
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OK, thanks. I've been on charge for a while now.
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Aug 24, 2016 23:19
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Whatever sites you are on are trashing your battery (misbehaving plugin or extension, whatever Safari calls them) And so is what we Sonos is, draining a ton of power
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Aug 25, 2016 00:43
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Gonna guess one of those sites is Facebook. Even with cleansers installed that site is such an evil, resource eating piece of crap.
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Aug 25, 2016 01:28
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eames posted:The problem with these TB2/TB3 enclosures is the protocol overhead and latency from translating between TB <-> PCIe. I don't think this is true. It might've been for thunderbolt 1, but AnandTech is suggesting an average performance hit of ~10% on high-end cards (in tb3 docks) and even then it's not a universal fact. In fairness I think that's on an exterior monitor, but it's a far cry from slightly more than about half.
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Aug 25, 2016 03:25
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mediaphage posted:I don't think this is true. It might've been for thunderbolt 1, but AnandTech is suggesting an average performance hit of ~10% on high-end cards (in tb3 docks) and even then it's not a universal fact. In fairness I think that's on an exterior monitor, but it's a far cry from slightly more than about half. You don't have to take my word for it.  https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3552651&pagenumber=498&perpage=40#post463302016 This is in a TB3 enclosure before the additional 10-15% performance hit for running on an internal display: (picture by linustechtips) 
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Aug 25, 2016 07:19
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eames posted:You don't have to take my word for it. Ahhahhhahha linustechtips. Sorry, you should get some numbers from an actual reputable source. I mean, it's quite believable that there is a performance hit, but you can't quantify it from that clown's review. He did his usual thing and totally screwed up his test. He didn't even attempt to control other variables! He used a Broadwell-E desktop as the baseline, and a Razer laptop as the TB3 system. The razer laptop ships with a quad-core mobile CPU in the same 45W TDP bin that Apple puts in the 15" rMBP. That's a fast mobile CPU, but its base clock rate is somewhere around 2.5 GHz iirc. That's not gonna do well compared to a 140W desktop behemoth with 6 or more cores and a base clock of 3.4 GHz (in the low end 6-core). And, whaddya know, from very brief searching, it sounds like Rise of the Tomb Raider may be a very CPU limited game...
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Aug 25, 2016 10:59
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eames posted:You don't have to take my word for it. Unlabeled x-axis... a good chart. Anyone familiar with running 4k monitors off of macbook pros? At work I have a thunderbolt display and another monitor (1900x1080) hooked to my macbook and it's wonderful. I started to look at dell monitors since the thunderbolt displays are no longer sold, and then realized the 4k monitors that dell has are affordable but was worried I wouldn't be able to run 2 of them off my late 2013 mbp. Internet is telling me mixed things but it looks like apple's official page says I can run just 1 4k monitor. poemdexter fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 15:51
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BobHoward posted:Ahhahhhahha linustechtips. Sorry, you should get some numbers from an actual reputable source. That may very well be but why would an Asus engineer say that they found TB3 performance lacking if it's not the case? Please feel free to post some scientifically sound numbers from more reputable sources, until then I'll believe the 30-50% performance hit compared to native PCIe. All I see is underwhelming performance or vaporware.
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Aug 25, 2016 16:25
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poemdexter posted:Unlabeled x-axis... a good chart. I've used one 4k display with my 13" 2015 rMBP, it works flawlessly. 2 might be a bit of an ask. I'd go with whatever the official site says or maybe check Reddit's Apple section as well.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:54
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eames posted:That may very well be but why would an Asus engineer say that they found TB3 performance lacking if it's not the case? I watched that Asus video. It is very, very vague. There are no specifics whatsoever. All I'm taking issue with is the specific claim of it being well proven that there's a massive 30-50% hit. No, that's not proven, the test you're citing was done by a notoriously incompetent buffoon and unsurprisingly there are obvious flaws. Wait until someone who actually knows how to test poo poo gives it a try before you go around being stone cold certain that it's a number as bad as 30% let alone 50%. (the sad thing is that we probably won't get a really good test. Asus and other OEMs aren't really great because obviously anything they say to the public is at least partly for marketing reasons. The one PC journalist I'd trust (Anand) to really pull out all the stops to make sure the numbers would be influenced only by the presence or absence of thunderbolt silicon between system and graphics card is no longer available to do it, because he decided to actually use his engineering degree and works for apple now  . Some of the people he let take over his site are okay-ish but IDK if there's any of them who could really do a proper deep dive on this specific topic.)
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Aug 25, 2016 18:38
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Anandtech is still great but they seem to be resource constrained even though they got bought out. Content is still relatively few and far between. They'll probably keep getting iOS review samples though.
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Aug 26, 2016 02:55
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MrBond posted:Anandtech is still great but they seem to be resource constrained even though they got bought out. Content is still relatively few and far between. Yeah, I wish they could raise their throughput and maintain quality, but it's hard when you don't hold the major purse strings. BobHoward posted:I watched that Asus video. It is very, very vague. There are no specifics whatsoever. I feel like the content on the site is largely identical save for his own (admittedly specialized / valuable posts). Still miles better than linustechtips. He's fine for basic things, but his advanced topics stuff really shows his limitations, I mean just look at the nonsense about raid. We'll get plenty of tests, though, don't worry. There's nothing nerds like more than posting numbers, and not everyone will run an incompetent benchmark in the forums.
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Aug 26, 2016 03:10
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I have a 2009 iMac. Have any of you replaced the hard drive with a SSD? It looks like a pain in the rear end, but I'm curious about how improved the performance will be. I'm also worried about having an 8 year old hard drive that might fail soon. I don't use it for too many strenuous tasks, but I think adding an SSD would bring it up to date without having to buy a whole new computer.
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Aug 26, 2016 18:01
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Armacham posted:I have a 2009 iMac. Have any of you replaced the hard drive with a SSD? It looks like a pain in the rear end, but I'm curious about how improved the performance will be. I'm also worried about having an 8 year old hard drive that might fail soon. It'll be like night and day, trust me. Best upgrade you can make.
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Aug 26, 2016 18:10
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Armacham posted:I have a 2009 iMac. Have any of you replaced the hard drive with a SSD? It looks like a pain in the rear end, but I'm curious about how improved the performance will be. I'm also worried about having an 8 year old hard drive that might fail soon. Do you have the 24" or 21.5"? I have upgraded the 21.5" with SSD's. Very easy, just pop the glass off, use a torx screwdriver to remove the LCD panel, disconnect a few cables on the back of the screen, then replace the HD with an SSD. The only trick is the temp sensor on the HD - you have a few options. You can leave it unplugged but your iMac will turn the fans up to full blast because it thinks the drive is hot - you can control the fans with software (smcfancontrol was one) or you can buy a sensor like this to plug in (https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIDIMACHDD09/ cheaper options exist) or I haven't tried it but I have heard you can just jumper the sensor with a small wire
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Aug 26, 2016 18:12
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Bob Morales posted:Do you have the 24" or 21.5"? I have the 24" but I don't think the process is too different. I don't have any torx drivers or anything tho, so I will probably end up buying one of the kits from OWC, if not the drive from them. I think my main concern with popping the glass off is getting everything put back together and finding a cat hair or a piece of dust right in the middle of the screen lol
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Aug 26, 2016 18:31
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Armacham posted:I think my main concern with popping the glass off is getting everything put back together and finding a cat hair or a piece of dust right in the middle of the screen lol Really. Don't own pets if you're going to do this. I've basically given up on applying a screen glare film for my iPad because no matter how clean everything is, there's that one pet hair that manages to infiltrate wherever I'm applying it and landing exactly where I don't want it.
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Aug 26, 2016 18:43
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Armacham posted:I have the 24" but I don't think the process is too different. I don't have any torx drivers or anything tho, so I will probably end up buying one of the kits from OWC, if not the drive from them. I'd buy a Samsung EVO 850 from Amazon/NewEgg. Lay the glass down on something like a clean towel and then use some canned air to blow off any dust before you put it back on. Just try not to get fingerprints on the back of it. If you don't have torx drivers go to Harbor Frieght or even Sears and get a little set of torx bits for like $4
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Aug 26, 2016 18:52
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Yeah good call. I think I can get the suction cups at harbor freight for about $2 as well.
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Aug 26, 2016 18:59
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