I didn't realize anyone would consider this a feature.

May 19, 2006 9:15 AM

Why is that new MacBook firmware update making my computer suck?

Before I installed the new SMC firmware update for my MacBook Pro, I could use it to run Windows XP and merrily rip DVDs (disclaimer: this was only done with home movies, completely legally) using DVD Shrink. The process took no more than 20 minutes.

After installing the update, it's now taking nearly an hour. The rate that the DVDs are extracted at once climbed up to 4,500kb per second or more, and now they only get to 1,400 or so. This is terrible. For comparison, my two year old Toshiba is actually faster than the MacBook. It has only 1/3 as much RAM. Something is dreadfully wrong here. Is it possible to roll the firmware update back?

posted by mullingitover to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Some reports suggest the firmware ramps down the processor speed, which is consistent with your symptoms.

There is no way, presently, to roll back to a previous firmware revision. The link above suggests a PMU reset as one possible fix you might try.
posted by Mr. Six at 9:41 AM on May 19, 2006

I did actually read that thread, and I've run the CoreDuo Temp app to see what's going on with the processor speed. Running "yes > /dev/null" in two terminal windows promptly ramps it up to full processor speed in OS X, but I'm suspecting that it's not getting up to full speed in Win XP. Unfortunately I don't know of an equivalent to CoreDuo Temp for Windows to test this hypothesis. Even if I did, and my suspicions were confirmed, I'm afraid I'd get little in the way of support from Apple or Microsoft for this problem.
posted by mullingitover at 10:01 AM on May 19, 2006

One possibility is that the firmware update put a 'riplock' on the DVD drive. This is commonly enabled to keep the drive from spinning up too fast and getting noisy while watching a movie. One can usually reflash the firmware to remove it, but I searched the CD Freaks forum for 'MacBook' and got no results.
posted by zsazsa at 10:15 AM on May 19, 2006

Unfortunately I don't know of an equivalent to CoreDuo Temp for Windows to test this

You should get an idea of the clock speed Windows is running at by going to looking at "system properties" [right click on My Computer]. It isn't in real time, but you can open it when the computer is idle and then compare it to when the thing is doing something CPU intensive.

I've found on the Mac partition the system is still running at full speed and it is cooler. I'm on my office HP notebook now so I can't check to see if what it says on my MacBook Pro when running Windows -- I did see it would vary depending on the load after I first installed it pre-firmware update.

Back in the day, Intel's SpeedStep had a utility in the control panel to make sure the PC is working at the max performance, now it is built-in to XP. I have no idea if there's a user setting for that.
posted by birdherder at 10:17 AM on May 19, 2006

CPU-Z is a small Windows app that will tell you your clock speed in real time, among other cool things about your CPU, memory, and motherboard.
posted by zsazsa at 10:19 AM on May 19, 2006

Running "yes > /dev/null" in two terminal windows promptly ramps it up to full processor speed in OS X

It ramps to 100% CPU, but it won't use all available CPU on a dual-core machine. Try it.
posted by Mikey-San at 4:29 PM on May 19, 2006

Using CPU-Z I find I can get my MacBook Pro with the firmware upgrade to maximum CPU speed 2GHz when I'm running the Divx converter. Converting a 129MB WMV file to DIVX seems to be taking a while [as in it is as 0% done after about 10 minutes]

With no apps running it goes to 1Ghz.

I don't have temp guage program for Windows but it seems to be running really hot.
posted by birdherder at 4:31 PM on May 19, 2006

Hot running seems to be a problem with the MacBook and MacBook Pro. The cause seems to be the use of way too much thermal compound during manufacturing. Several enterprising people have taken their MacBooks apart to apply a sane amount of compound.
posted by zsazsa at 7:18 PM on May 19, 2006

I don't really care about the heat, I want it to be able to rip DVDs at the same speed it did when I bought it.

I did a PMU reset, then got CPU-Z and checked it out.

CPU-Z rocks, thanks for the tip zsazsa. Unfortunately it's telling me that the CPUs are only running at 998.7 mhz while I'm ripping a DVD. This is post-PMU reset. Not good. I'd really like my other .83 Ghz back.

I do also notice that the drive doesn't wind up to full speed in WinXP after the firmware update. However, it does in OS X.

Call me paranoid, but I have to wonder if Apple is intentionally making Windows run like crap on their machines, or if they're simply not testing their updates with it and this is a bug.
posted by mullingitover at 4:27 AM on May 20, 2006

Hot running seems to be a problem with the MacBook and MacBook Pro. The cause seems to be the use of way too much thermal compound during manufacturing. Several enterprising people have taken their MacBooks apart to apply a sane amount of compound.

It's actually a mistake in the service manual coupled with moronic field techs who don't understand thermal compound. (OR, from a different perspective, it's a within-spec response to people complaining about fan noise. You decide for yourself on that one, I guess.)

This doesn't seem to be an issue with non-repaired machines. My MBP doesn't get any hotter than my PowerBook G4 did. (Still gets really hot in areas with shitty air circulation, like my desk at home, but it remains tolerable in better environments.)
posted by Mikey-San at 2:53 AM on May 27, 2006

Call me paranoid, but I have to wonder if Apple is intentionally making Windows run like crap on their machines, or if they're simply not testing their updates with it and this is a bug.

Since Apple's official Windows booting solution is still in beta, I think I'd actually call you a victim of the "Beta is release, right?" flu going around lately. Expect tons of bugs until 1.0. (They may need to adjust machines' firmware when Boot Camp goes final, for example, assuming there's some kind of bug somewhere.)

Fake edit: (Insert "expect bugs until 1.1" joke here.)
posted by Mikey-San at 2:56 AM on May 27, 2006

AHA! Problem solved.

Windows had somehow switched to 'PIO mode'. Apparently installing certain software, or hardware issues can cause this type of b0rkage to happen. I went into the Device Manager > IDE settings and uninstalled the IDE device. Rebooted, back to full speed on the drive, and how sweet it is.

The moral of the story is that PIO mode = suck.
posted by mullingitover at 5:28 PM on May 29, 2006