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2 Replies Last post: Dec 6, 2007 7:16 AM by jmincey  
Click to view jmincey's profile Old Hand 4,202 posts since
Aug 27, 2004
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Dec 5, 2007 11:45 PM

Arabesque and the MacBook Pro Fans

Under Leopard, when the Arabesque screen saver kicks in, my fans fire off BIG TIME -- roaring in a way one should never hear a laptop fan roar.

Leopard has definitely affected the fan use -- for the worse. Whether it's because it's taxing the CPU much more for the equivalent function or the fans are invoked gratuitously, it's for the worse and I hope Apple rectifies it.
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Click to view Typhoon14's profile Old Hand 2,316 posts since
Feb 2, 2001
1. Dec 6, 2007 2:06 AM in response to: jmincey
Re: Arabesque and the MacBook Pro Fans
I get similar behaviour, usually if the screensaver activates while the CPU is otherwise-occupied. Clearly, it's a GPU-intensive screensaver probably a bit too much so.

I think that's why you're hearing more from the fans in Leopard (although for the record, the screensaver is really the only time the fans kick into high-gear on my MacBook Pro (2.33 CD2). Leopard offloads more tasks to the GPU. This is good for overall system performance, as the GPU performs better doing graphical processing than the CPU, and won't make your system seem sluggish. The downside is that when the video card in MacBook Pros gets a workout, so do your fans. I could be wrong, but I honestly don't think Apple has done anything to the fan settings in Leopard. I think it's just that your video card is getting used a lot more than it used to. All this said, my fans are still minimally used. What (aside from the screensaver) tends to trigger them on your system?