[Guide] Dell XPS 13 9360 on MacOS Sierra 10.12.x - LTS (Long-Term Support) Guide

[Coletz]

The original author PMheart said (in a GitHub issue) that the CPU frequency does not immediately affect the battery consumption, so having a lower frequency would not alter the battery consumption. Personally I wouldn't even bother.

well if my pc is idle and the cpu freq is high, probably something is wrong. And I can clearly see that battery life is not comparable to any macbook with this setup (I can get max 4h using only a browser, while on my macbook I can get even 10h). With archlinux I used to get about 8h with this xps (2 months ago) so something is wrong (and I think is cpu since even in idle I can't get low freq). Maybe I'm totally wrong, that's just my experience

 

[didii]

well if my pc is idle and the cpu freq is high, probably something is wrong. And I can clearly see that battery life is not comparable to any macbook with this setup (I can get max 4h using only a browser, while on my macbook I can get even 10h). With archlinux I used to get about 8h with this xps (2 months ago) so something is wrong (and I think is cpu since even in idle I can't get low freq). Maybe I'm totally wrong, that's just my experience

How high is ur freq on idle, Coletz? Yeah pretty much the same. I have about 3-4 hours too on this XPS on general use. But then again maybe it's due to the health of my battery (Coconut Battery reported that my battery health is at 65%). Will try to see how it behaves under Antergos.

 

[Coletz]

How high is ur freq on idle, Coletz? Yeah pretty much the same. I have about 3-4 hours too on this XPS on general use. But then again maybe it's due to the health of my battery (Coconut Battery reported that my battery health is at 65%). Will try to see how it behaves under Antergos.

It's around 1.3ghz (i5 7200u)

 

[jkbuha]

@the-darkvoid I need your help with optimising the i7-8550U vectors.

I upgraded my motherboard into a i7-8550U w/ 16GB @ 2133Mhz. Surprisingly I can boot without CPUFriend, and it appears that I have most of the P-states as well, which means that XNU power management is working to some extent on 10.14.2.

I'm trying to optimise the CPU power profile now to maximise the performance under the 15W TDP. Not sure if I should use CPUFriend or not, or even Speed-Shift. Have you ever benchmarked the performance using Geekbench or any other tool? Any advice here would be appreciated.

 

[Coletz]

@the-darkvoid I need your help with optimising the i7-8550U vectors.

I upgraded my motherboard into a i7-8550U w/ 16GB @ 2133Mhz. Surprisingly I can boot without CPUFriend, and it appears that I have most of the P-states as well, which means that XNU power management is working to some extent on 10.14.2.

I'm trying to optimise the CPU power profile now to maximise the performance under the 15W TDP. Not sure if I should use CPUFriend or not, or even Speed-Shift. Have you ever benchmarked the performance using Geekbench or any other tool? Any advice here would be appreciated.

Hi jkbuha, I have a question. You said that you "have most of the p-states", how can you check this?

 

[jkbuha]

Two easy methods. Intel's Power Gadget tool, or PikerAlpha's AppleIntelInfo kext.

 

[zanzy]

Two easy methods. Intel's Power Gadget tool, or PikerAlpha's AppleIntelInfo kext.

Hi, jkbuha!
On sierra i have 0.7 GHz on the idle, but now on mojave it's around 1.2-1.3 GHz, could you please find out, whats wrong with cpu states? (i'm using your mojave config with some small modifications)

 

[kylec]

I also have no way to right click, with the trackpad. There was another report 10 or so pages back. Anybody have any ideas?

I'll post problem reporting files tomorrow, after I've finished my final post-install task (USB UIAC).

 

[jkbuha]

Hi, jkbuha!
On sierra i have 0.7 GHz on the idle, but now on mojave it's around 1.2-1.3 GHz, could you please find out, whats wrong with cpu states? (i'm using your mojave config with some small modifications)

Yes that's because I didn't optimise it for speed-shift config yet (Min 0.4GHz).
I'd suggest using CPUFriend; I'm going to be doing that shortly but for the i7-8550U so once that's done you can use and amend as required.

 

[pspracers]

Yes that's because I didn't optimise it for speed-shift config yet (Min 0.4GHz).
I'd suggest using CPUFriend; I'm going to be doing that shortly but for the i7-8550U so once that's done you can use and amend as required.

Do you have a link for a tutorial on how to do a proper CPUFriend configuration? I would like to do that for my i7-7500U model.