Apple’s latest £2,700 MacBook Pro is reportedly throttling performance due to thermal issues

Apple launched its brand new MacBook Pro last week, sporting high-end Intel Core i9 processors and an equally premium £2,700 price tag. Unfortunately, one gadget expert is calling the company out for drastically throttling the device’s performance thanks to thermal issues.

YouTuber Dave Lee got his hands on the latest 15-inch MacBook Pro, touting base clock speeds of 2.9GHz. While Geekbench results show the laptop to excel in multi-core processing, Lee’s own run-of-the-mill tests show the device falling well below its default clock, limiting itself to just 2.2GHz when using Adobe’s Premiere Pro video editing software.

This is less to do with Intel’s efforts with its high-end chip and more to do with Apple’s inability to sufficiently cool the processor, diminishing the performance considerably. Even more “absurd” according to Lee is that Apple has unlocked the chip, marketing it as overclockable for enthusiasts. “All of that CPU potential is wasted inside this chassis,” all thanks to its thermal solutions.

“If you have any kind of extended computational work that uses the CPU, and that's probably why you're looking at these devices in the first place, it's going to throttle. And that's unacceptable to me,” Lee noted on his YouTube channel, Dave 2D. It is worth noting, however, that Lee only presented tests with the one application, which may not be representative of the device’s overall performance.

Portable PC systems often sacrifice some processing performance in order to preserve the silicon and therefore the longevity of the device, however these results take reduced performance to a new level, particularly for such an expensive device. While we’ve yet to see more people come forward about the problem, it’s certainly worth keeping a note given just how much of an investment the 2018 MacBook Pro i9 configuration is.

KitGuru Says: It’s not all doom and gloom, considering Geekbench tests are singing the praises of the new MacBook Pro. Hopefully we will see more tests conducted in the coming weeks to clarify how regular this occurrence is.

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