We ran our own test with Apple’s own Final Cut Pro X software, and were able to replicate the results: extremely aggressive throttling with 6 cores, making it actually slower than 4 cores, and a significant speed boost with the machine in the freezer.Īs ExtremeTech notes, Intel decided as long ago as 2015 that it was ok for manufacturers to apply their own thermal throttling approaches, even if that resulted in wildly different performance from the same CPU.
Re-running the test with the MacBook Pro in a freezer demonstrated that the problem was extremely aggressive thermal throttling. YouTuber Dave Lee found in Adobe Premiere tests that the MacBook Pro not only failed to apply Turbo Boost to achieve a high clock speed for a demanding task, it actually dropped the speed down as far as 2.2GHz – below the base level for the chip. The furore began when a YouTube video showed that the maxed-out 2018 MacBook Pro didn’t seem capable of delivering the claimed performance of its 2.9GHz 6-core Core i9 processor. The controversy over the 2018 MacBook Pro delivering less than its claimed base speed continues as ExtremeTech notes that Intel has long held the view that it’s ok for laptop manufacturers to deviate from stated CPU specs …