Filed under: Hardware, Software, Troubleshooting
Did the SMC Firmware Update cripple some Intel Mac clock speeds?
A thread in Apple's support forums discusses complaints of crippled clock speeds after installing yesterday's SMC firmware update on Intel Macs. Upon an apparently successful update, some users checked their min and max clock speeds with CoreDuoTemp to find that their max has been limited to 1000 Mhz, even after using utilities to force their machine to work as hard as it can.I just used CoreDuoTemp to check my own MacBook Pro's clock speeds to find that it's max is set right where it should be, at 2000 Mhz. However, if your Intel Mac's speed is suspect after successfully installing yesterday's SMC firmware update, check out this forum thread to see if something is really afoot in the land of Intel Mac clock speeds.
[Thanks Aaron]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Greg said 12:41PM on 5-17-2006
Nevermind the core temperatures and maximum processor speeds, I received my 17" MB Pro on Monday, and have been plagued by system crashes and freezes. I'm incredibly disappointed with my purchase. Most of the problems seem to be Rosetta based. IMHO, Rosetta is a f***ing joke. If Apple doesn't ride Adobe and other developers to push out stable UBs of their flagship products, I'm going to be running nothing but XP on this thing.
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Bob Bloeme said 12:41PM on 5-17-2006
I think the firmware broke speedit.kext. On my machine, the temperature no longer updates. Doubt there's anything broken with speedstep.
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harrisjamieh said 12:56PM on 5-17-2006
My iMac 1.83 Ghz has remained unchanged
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solefald said 1:02PM on 5-17-2006
my 2.0 is fine. it may be idling at lesser speeds, but it does hit 2.0 under load.
after firmware update it runs much cooler though
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Ben H said 1:13PM on 5-17-2006
My i.83 17" iMac seems fine.
Min: 1000Mhz , Max: 1833Mhz, Current : 1833Mhz, Temp: 32*c , Usage: 1.5%
and thats with safari, mail, adium, and quicktime open.
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HobbesDoo said 1:16PM on 5-17-2006
My Mac mini core duo is fine. I'm having troubles with software update though. It reports there are no updates available, but there are several iLife updates I'm not getting. Also if I try to install the updates manually the application says it can't find a valid app to update. Has anyone experienced this with the latest updates?
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dombi said 1:40PM on 5-17-2006
I don't seem to have these issues. If I run "yes > /dev/null" in two Terminals and use up 100% of my CPU cycles, I can get the processor up to 2000MHz (2GHz). My computer does idle around 1333 or 1500, but that is totally fine, since it is not doing much anyway.
As soon as I launch an application or try to do something more CPU intensive, the CPU seems to increase its frequency, which makes perfect sense.
During the my 100% CPU utilization test, the temperature shot up to 85 degrees C. Then it stoped right there and stayed constant. As soon as I killed the test, the temperature dropped back to 60 degrees in a matter of 10-15 seconds.
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ChillyWilly said 1:52PM on 5-17-2006
no problems reported here either after the SMC firmware update last night. Haven't noticed my MBP running cooler, but it wasn't hotter than 65 C before. If it runs cooler, I would welcome that.
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Mike said 2:12PM on 5-17-2006
I'd be more likely to blame the utility. When I run it, it won't operate until I close my MBP, have it go to sleep, then reopen the lid.
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Ultim8Fury said 2:12PM on 5-17-2006
Only trouble I had on my Mini was it broke the pairing with my remote. But it went smoothly enough.
No speed issues to report.
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bryan ribas said 3:02PM on 5-17-2006
#1 stop crying. Adobe is not going to rease a UB untill CS3. They are not stupid. They have Macromedia now so i am sure that is going to take some time to figure out what projects need to be updated.
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Greg said 3:56PM on 5-17-2006
#11 I'm aware of the Macrodobia situation, however Rosetta does not run as smoothly as showcased; with more than one Adobe app open at a time the system becomes unstable, and stability is one of the main reasons I purchased a Mac. I have no choice but to wait for CS3 to run Adobe apps natively in OSX (sans Rosetta), but I'll take XP over Rosetta until then.
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Mark D. said 7:51PM on 5-17-2006
Though #11 (Greg) is fairly right, I thought I remember hearing that they said some bigger aps wouldn't run as smoothly at first (well, at first meaning until the we Universal.) I had no expectations of supreme preformance through Rosetta due to the fact that the CPU archs are so different that a drop in preformance is expected. As far as Adobe apps are concerned, I only have a problem with Photoshop and Illustrator killing each other when I work on large files, funny thing is Photoshop and InDesign run just dandy at the same time. I actually haven't touched XP for a good time now, despite having the tools there. Maybe it's the fact that my fonts are mostly mac only, but unless the image is 600+dpi, I normally kick it Rosetta style for PS work recently.
As far as the firmware update, I've seen it spike to 2Ghz when I run heavy load, but idle 1500 normally, with a rare 1000 at boot. What I really want to do is easily force it up manually, as I'm still rather new to the mac portable world I've not yet found much in the way of MBP clock utils (any suggestions?) I mean sometimes I just like to know everything is at top pace, or in the case of battery mongering (something my old dieing PC laptop battery required) I'd like to drop it down low.
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Mark D. said 7:53PM on 5-17-2006
Whoops, I meant #12, that wasn't even a new post change, I just misread big time.
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Andrew said 8:47PM on 5-17-2006
Did anyone else notice the temperature, 145 degrees farenheit.
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GmanMac said 9:12PM on 5-17-2006
My iMac 2.0 is running at full 2GHZ, at "idle" CPU usage-- 2.9% and 27 degrees C.
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john Faitakes said 10:58PM on 5-17-2006
my cpu caps out at 1500, never higher now and never sleeps when I close the lid, so my screen and MBP cooks
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