When playing games on my laptop (MacBook Air 2011 with Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics), the temperature of the processor / GPU quickly reaches to 95°C causing it to throttle down every couple of seconds.
In this situation, the FPS drop from about 40-60 to 10 for a moment causing big stuttering.
In CSS, I was able to work around this problem by limiting the FPS using the built-in console command fps_max 30 to 30.
This not only solves the stuttering but also reduces the noise and temperature of the CPU / its fan while gaming.
However, most games don't offer a comparable functionality (not that there are too many running on OSX 🙂 )
Especially when playing Left4Dead 2, I really miss fps_max (which is not available there).
It seems that Valve has removed fps_max from servers while stating
The fps_max convar will not have any effect on servers. (It remains as
a client option since limiting your FPS can reduce GPU heat and
overall power consumption.)
Does someone know whether they have included other measures to prevent GPU overheating similar to fps_max? At least, they seem to know the downside of simply removing it.
Even better than a solution only applying to L4D2 would be a system wide option to limit the FPS in games.
Is there any?
Many thanks in advance for your responses!
Best Answer
A lot of games will have something called "VSync" (or vertical sync or something similiar). Enabling this will limit the FPS to the refresh rate of your monitor which is usually 60Hz on the MacBook Pro that you specified.