macbook battery removed 10fps lower in WoW?

I removed my battery so it's not always charging and my fps drop from 25 to 15 fps in World of Warcraft.

I have put it in and taken it out several times while the game is running. With it in I get 25 with it out I get 10-15.

What gives and why is the macbook performing less with it out?

 

I believe it clocks down the processor and other settings, just leave it in.

 

Yes, when the battery is taken out, the MacBook (and MBP) automatically underclocks (by either half or to 1 GHz, I forget). They do this so that the Mac will never need more power than the power cord can supply; if this happened the Mac would suddenly shut down from not enough power.

In most basic tasks, the underclocking is not going to have a huge impact on your computing. However, when you are doing more intensive tasks such as gaming or Photoshop or video editing, don't take out the battery.

 

That doesn't make sense. Windows laptops routinely run without batteries. How could it ever need more power then being plugged into a wall? That has more power then the battery can deliver.

Is there a way to disable this feature? Or does the macbook work weird compared to other computers?

 

Yeah, I don't really understand it either...I mean, wouldn't having the battery in and connecting the power cord be even more power consuming, considering it could be charging up the battery as well as powering the MacBook...anyways, yeah, its just like that. At least Apple's being cautious and making sure there's no way the Mac will suddenly shut down from a lack of power running through the power cord.

As far as I know there isn't a way (or at least, not an easy way) to change this.

 

1. The battery acts as an extra current source if the notebook needs it.
2. The power brick can only deliver so much current, for example, my ibooks power adapter is 45Watts and has a current output limit of 1.875 Amps (at 24V, P=VA). Don't even try to go "its plugged into the wall, it has "limitless" power."

Windows laptops do this to as far as i know. Its a simple fact of having a notebook computer with a limited PSU. Remeber, a desktop PSU is typically 300-400W.

If under heavy load, the notebook stops charging the battery (windows does this too). A lack of supply current shouldn't cause it to shut down, but you need to prevent an overdraw of current through the powerbrick so that you don't blow it or melt the wires from drawing too much current

 

Many notebooks in a corporate world run without batteries as it slowly degrades the battery life. So some places I work at it's not uncommon to have to ask for the battery when I need to work on there computer. They nicely get it out of there desk drawer for me.

Never been an issue with Dells, Toshibas, Acers, or IBMs.

I did some google searching and this is indeed an issue with the macbook and macbook pros. Not sure why they would engineer it this way but that's alright.

 

Heres another reason, Apple trys to keep the size of the powerbrick down by trying to make it as power efficient as possible. Many windows laptops have much bigger powerbricks that will have a larger overhead for power requirements

 

I dunno... my 17" hp power supply is not any bigger. It's thinner and longer. It's just shaped different.

 

okay, i looked at some other specs, and i guess they are closer then i thought they were. but the same principles as i said in my first post should still apply, if the power supply can't give it what it needs, the performance will get stunted. the battery can help make up the gap.

 

There is no reason for it's size why they can't do this. It is simply Apple's chosen design and it has a draw back. I'm not knocking it though. The battery will just have to be replaced a little sooner.

 

It doesn't bother me, i like being able to pick it up and unplug it.

I also would rather have the battery in incase i trip over the cord or what not.

I don't see a practical reason for this though. A power supply simply shouldn't exist if it can't run the computer

 

yah windows laptop power bricks are generally a lot bigger. My old laptop had a powerbrick almost the size of the xbox 360 one, im sure those with a 360 know what im talking about when I say i could randomly chuck the powerbrick somewhere and end up killing 2 people.

 

Hang on, when you run it with out the battery and you trip the magsafe, does the computer just shut down? I don't think I'd trust myself enough to run that risk.

 

It would be run at a desk that has a power cord coming from behind it. There is no way to trip the power cord unless you unplug it from the laptop.

 

Yes, the computer will just shut down, but your files aren't immediately lost. What you were last doing is saved onto the RAM., similar to what happens when you put your Mac to Sleep, and if you plug the cord back in, press the Power button and wait, you will go to the "Return from Sleep" screen. At least, not right away are all your files lost.

 

How does that work? A battery backup for the battery...?

Without a battery surely nothing can be saved to ram?

Explain yourself!

 

That's not really possible. With no power, the RAM can't function. This is why your battery loses power even when it's just in standby. The only suspend feature that doesn't use power is hibernate since it saves everything to disk as an image; but if you cut power suddenly, there's none left for the computer use to write that image to the hard disk.

Plain and simple, unless the Macbook has a backup battery somewhere onboard (similar to a graphing calculator), you will lose any unsaved data you have running. This is why most programs now have auto-saving features.

 

I've had that happen to me three times (battery out, cord unplugged), and I've never had my files lost. I just resumed to what I last was doing. Granted, none of the unplug times were over a minute, but yeah, it worked for me.

So my assumption is that there is some "reserve" power, or remaining power from the cord going through that powered the MB for a bit longer. Once again, I do not know the logic behind it, but its happened to me several times and I didn't lose my data.

 

that is not electrically possible. trust me, i am training to be an electrical engineer. once the supply is cut off, the minimal potential left in the capacitors and inductors disapeers near instantly.

i do however remember that the powerbooks used to have a small battery backup that would maintain the stock ram for up to 5 minuets so that you could swap the batteries without having to shut everything down. i don't know if apple continued this with the current macbook pros or the macbooks.

 

That's probably it, then. Thanks for the clarification, RadcomTxx .

 

Hrm... good post there Radcom. I think that pretty much hits it on the nail. I believe that the MBP stops charging (or at least slows charging) under heavy usage. I notice when I'm doing a ton of work, it takes several hours to charge my battery from 10% to 100%. Yet, under no load, it's very,very fast.
I don't believe that the MBP is the only laptop that did this. I know Sagers do as well. And I remember our Thinkpads at my previous jobs do the same thing as well.