Mac performance tips

[InterCity]

Hello, fellow Kerbonauts,

I've sold my old gaming laptop and bought a MacBook Air instead (could get one for cheap and needed that battery). Problem is, KSP now runs nowhere near as smooth as it used to.

It's the 2016 MBA (Skylake I5 @1.8GHz, 2.4GHz turbo boost, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD). Meaning that it's pretty much the bare minimum of what can run KSP.

Do you people have any idea how to improve my framerates?

[MaxZhao]

I put a bottle of water on the left corner close to my laptop screen to help with overheating and it seems the games runs more smoothly afterwards. (I know) Try reduce the resolution of your graphic setting too and DO NOT install graphics enhancing mods such as stock visual enhancements. Smaller mods such as real plume and reentry particle effect works fine for me. After all you're gaming with a potato and there is really nothing much you can do apart from reducing its workload.

My Macbook Air is only 1.4 GHz btw, so good for you to have a better hardware!

Zooming out a bit during launch also helps increase frame rates

[Riven]

Because of how thin MBA's are, and because they only have 1 small fan, thermal management is quite poor. In my experience with a friend's 2012 MBA, a game/program that utilizes even 50% CPU load and all of the GPU will send the die temperature to above 100°C very quickly. After that the CPU will throttle back to attempt to keep the temps under control, and even then the temperature may still continue to climb. I did a simple test with Minecraft running max FPS on that computer and after 10 minutes the CPU die temp was 105°C, so I stopped.

As MaxZhao said, you're probably gonna need to take your graphic settings all the way down. You could probably invest in one of those laptop coolers that you put under a laptop like this one for example https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6SY2Z13018&cm_re=usb_laptop_cooler-_-9SIA6SY2Z13018-_-Product