MacBook Pro CPU getting slow. Looking to upgrade, please help

jdon · 20 Jan 2017 at 03:30

Hi, i have a Retina MacBook Pro Mid 2015 Edition. It has been sitting on my desk; shut and connected to my Samsung UltraWide 4k monitor. I haven't really had many issues with it up until recently. Basically, the CPU is almost always above 80%, sometimes 98% or even 100%. It's making my charting software slow down and i'm experiencing lag. I'm aware that charting software such as MetaTrader or NinjaTrader can me quite heavy on the CPU, but come on... i mean, a machine for this price? I think that i should have no problems running multiple charts and still be able to do stuff in the background. I think that the issue is my external monitor. Its native resolution is 3440x1440 which is higher than the retina's res.

I was looking around and i found a laptop i could buy, here it is:

Would this new laptop be significantly faster or would we be looking at around the same speeds? I know that the GPU on that Asus will absolutely kill the mac but i'm not sure about the CPU, which is of course what i need the most. Any help guys? Thanks a lot in advance!

Here are the specs of my MacBook:

lude1962 · 20 Jan 2017 at 20:34

edit your post
no competitor quoting,

mattyfez · 20 Jan 2017 at 20:38

Is there not some way you can clean it up or do a fresh install, there must be a reason it's slowed down..?

jdon · 20 Jan 2017 at 21:24

I really think that my CPU is bottlenecking. I mean, god damn. It's always at 90%+ it's crazy.

mattyfez said:
Is there not some way you can clean it up or do a fresh install, there must be a reason it's slowed down..?

jdon · 20 Jan 2017 at 21:35

lude1962 said:
edit your post
no competitor quoting,

What does that mean? I simply wanted to show people the specs of the new laptop i am considering purchasing.

mattyfez · 20 Jan 2017 at 21:54

jdon said:
I really think that my CPU is bottlenecking. I mean, god damn. It's always at 90%+ it's crazy.

Cpu's don't slow down over time, so if it used to be quick, there's probably some software or some process causing the issue.

dlite · 20 Jan 2017 at 21:54

It means that you shouldn't put stuff from other retailers as ocuk doesn't like that.

Why don't you check what application is actually using so much CPU? Do you run some custom code on top of your charting apps? If you have some bad functions that loop constantly and are badly written, they will destroy performance easily.

(unrelated)
15" rMBP has screen resolution of 2880x1800 = 5.18Mpix
3440x1440 = 4.95Mpix
So actually the integrated screen has more pixels / resolution than your desktop monitor...

mattyfez · 20 Jan 2017 at 21:56

jdon said:
What does that mean? I simply wanted to show people the specs of the new laptop i am considering purchasing.

This forum whilst very good is part of an online shop that sells laptops, so they don't really like competitors being discussed, which is fair enough really.

jdon · 20 Jan 2017 at 22:06

I see. I apologise. I've updated the link and now it just shows the specs of the machine. And as to your question, yes, i do have a few indicators on my chart however even when i trade naked charts, the cpu usage is still crazy. Do you think that the new machine is faster than my current macbook or not at all?

dlite said:
It means that you shouldn't put stuff from other retailers as ocuk doesn't like that.

Why don't you check what application is actually using so much CPU? Do you run some custom code on top of your charting apps? If you have some bad functions that loop constantly and are badly written, they will destroy performance easily.

(unrelated)
15" rMBP has screen resolution of 2880x1800 = 5.18Mpix
3440x1440 = 4.95Mpix
So actually the integrated screen has more pixels / resolution than your desktop monitor...

mattyfez said:
Cpu's don't slow down over time, so if it used to be quick, there's probably some software or some process causing the issue.

MT4 does take quite a bit of cpu. The problem isn't really that much of a problem until i want to host a webinar and screenshare. I can barely operate the charts. It gets crazy. Same thing when i try to run a program from parallels desktop win10 vm. Do you think that the new machine is faster than my current macbook or not at all?

lude1962 · 20 Jan 2017 at 23:01

The problem isn't really that much of a problem until i want to host a webinar and screenshare. I can barely operate the charts. It gets crazy. Same thing when i try to run a program from parallels desktop win10 vm.

Powerful laptops are great and run single cpu power hungry apps well, multiple apps that need cpu grunt, disk IO, network IO gpu rendering etc soon show up laptop limitations.
Keep the Mac for basic and mobile stuff, get a proper I7 desktop for the business end.

jdon · 20 Jan 2017 at 23:32

That's very disappointing. I thought that the machine i thought about would be enough since it can pretty much run Battlefield 1 on Ultra at 60fps. Damn it!

lude1962 said:
The problem isn't really that much of a problem until i want to host a webinar and screenshare. I can barely operate the charts. It gets crazy. Same thing when i try to run a program from parallels desktop win10 vm.

Powerful laptops are great and run single cpu power hungry apps well, multiple apps that need cpu grunt, disk IO, network IO gpu rendering etc soon show up laptop limitations.
Keep the Mac for basic and mobile stuff, get a proper I7 desktop for the business end.

mattyfez · 21 Jan 2017 at 07:57

Yeh, For serious heavy multitasking, laptops arn't really ideal, just the nature of the beast really.

A newer one might be a bit better but as you already have an i7 laptop, it would probably just improve slightly rather than fix the issue. Maybe ask in the mac section of This forum, but jdon is probably right, invest in a powerful desktop rather than a new macbook.

Sasahara · 21 Jan 2017 at 13:27

As already stated keep the laptop and get an additional desktop for heavy use.

Or you could look into getting a laptop with a desktop CPU. These seem to be hard to find. I have linked to a USA site below as an example.

https://www.originpc.com/gaming/laptops/eon17-x/ (Mods; US based so I assume not a competitor and OC don't sell equivalent or I'd link to that instead)