Macbook running with low temps at last!

General Discussion
1

After being able to fry an egg on my 13 macbook pro from running zwift for 10min and it overheating my logic board, i have some nice little lines at the bottom of my screen now thanks to that! Anyway, i found out Zwift isnt really built for a mac, its not a gaming machine so it kind of understandable but with no in game (plugged in) methods of reducing its load i have come up with some solutions.

A) Run off the battery. CPU is limited to 50% and 15FPS in max saving profile. Great! But may macbook only last 1h off power at best running zwift.

B) Next option requires some third party apps. Turbo Boost Switcher (not Pro) and AppPolice.
Turbo.
If you disable the turbo boost function and set the zwift app to 90% CPU usage in AppPolice you can get you macbook to run some low temps and still see 20-40fps, while its plugged into the power.

There is not noticeable stutter in the game play and it doesnā€™t crash.

Hopefully this helps someone running a macbook before Zwifts bad coding app kills another logic board.

2

If you get an eGPU its a gaming machine. My 13ā€™ MBP stays nice and cool with 4k output with an eGPU.

The problem is the integrated GPU sucks.

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3

Thats a good solution too, but a bit on the expensive side if all you are interested in is taking some of the boredom away from riding a trainer.
I agree the Internal onboard GPU is pretty awful, i hear the M1 is better. Hopefully the 16" M1 chipped macbooks will be worth waiting for.

4

Myself and hundreds if not thousands of Zwift users are running on MacBooks. Iā€™ve run it on two without issue, almost always plugged in. My current MacBook is a 2015 MacBook Pro w/integrated GPU (Intel Iris 6100). Typically, I avg at least 30fps in basic profile at 720p. Sounds more like you had a defective MacBook than anything else. If out of warranty, then extremely unfortunate. But to say it doesnā€™t run, that Zwift isnā€™t built for a Mac, or that a ā€œgaming machineā€ is needed is an exaggeration.

As for the graphics w/the integrated GPU vs discrete, of course the latter is going to be better.

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5

The title of the post does actually say ā€˜running low tempsā€™.
No one said you need a gaming machine to run Zwift.
No one said it doesnt run on a macbook.

I think you may have missed the point of this post, it was to help those who actually donā€™t want their macbook running overclocked and sitting at 90+ cpu temp for 5hourā€™s a week, and would like a way to run a sensible 75deg with the fan not running at 100% while still seeing 30fps avg.

Fact is zwift does a great job of trying to get every last frame out of any GPU, which is the problem, as the overlocking features in a macbook allows it to go past normal operating parameters.

Thanks for your input, it was very helpful.

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