Bad CPU performance on Fedora 37 Silverblue on Macbook

Hey, I recently installed Fedora 37 Silverblue on an old Macbook.
My intention is to use this device for light game development when I can’t access my tower PC.
But I realized the cpu goes way above 90% when testing my optimized game builds.
Then I tried testing with an existing simple 2D game (Risk of Rain 1) and again my CPU cores go above 90% instantly, so this makes me think it’s not related to my game engine but a problem with the device/install.

Of course this is an old Macbook device but I don’t think it should be that bad?

Here is the device info:
Hardware Model: Apple Inc. MacBookAir7,2
Memory: 4GB
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-5250U × 4
Graphics: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 6000 (BDW GT3)
OS: Fedora Linux 37.1.7 (Silverblue) 64-bit
Gnome version: 43.0
Windowing System: Wayland

I’m running Fedora in ‘Performance’ mode.

Let me know if this is normal and if there is something I can do to improve the CPU use.

Without more detail (probably not available) about the GPU it seems likely that the driver for the GPU is not supporting hardware acceleration of graphics and the CPU is thus tasked with software rendering the graphics.

I have seen lots of posts here about similar issues when appropriate drivers are not available for the GPU and hardware acceleration is not supported.

Hm interesting, is there anything I can do to fix this? Install some drivers?

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Don’t know.
At the very least, before anyone can answer you we would need to know exactly what devices you have installed.
inxi -Fzxx would give us a start, as would lspci -nn

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System:
Kernel: 6.0.14-300.fc37.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
v: 2.38-25.fc37 Desktop: GNOME v: 43.2 tk: GTK v: 3.24.35 wm: gnome-shell
dm: GDM Distro: Fedora release 37 (Thirty Seven)
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Apple product: MacBookAir7,2 v: 1.0
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 48.4 Wh (100.0%) condition: 48.4/54.3 Wh (89.1%)
volts: 8.5 min: 7.6 model: SMP bq20z451 serial: N/A status: full
CPU:
Info: dual core model: Intel Core i5-5250U bits: 64 type: MT MCP
arch: Broadwell rev: 4 cache: L1: 128 KiB L2: 512 KiB L3: 3 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 2206 high: 2665 min/max: 500/2700 cores: 1: 1425 2: 2654
3: 2081 4: 2665 bogomips: 12800
Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 6000 vendor: Apple driver: i915 v: kernel
arch: Gen-8 ports: active: eDP-1 empty: DP-1, DP-2, HDMI-A-1, HDMI-A-2
bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:1626
Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.20.14 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.6
compositor: gnome-shell driver: gpu: i915 display-ID: 0
Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: Apple Color LCD res: 1440x900 dpi: 128
diag: 337mm (13.3")
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.3.1 renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 6000 (BDW
GT3) direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Broadwell-U Audio vendor: Apple driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel bus-ID: 00:03.0 chip-ID: 8086:160c
Device-2: Intel Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:9ca0
Device-3: Broadcom 720p FaceTime HD Camera driver: N/A pcie: speed: 5 GT/s
lanes: 1 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 14e4:1570
Sound API: ALSA v: k6.0.14-300.fc37.x86_64 running: yes
Sound Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: no
Sound Server-2: PipeWire v: 0.3.63 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Broadcom BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Apple
driver: bcma-pci-bridge v: N/A pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1
bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 14e4:43a0
Device-2: Realtek RTL8188EUS 802.11n Wireless Network Adapter type: USB
driver: r8188eu bus-ID: 1-1:2 chip-ID: 0bda:8179
IF: wlp0s20u1 state: up mac:
IF-ID-1: wg-mullvad state: unknown speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: N/A
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Apple Bluetooth USB Host Controller type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
bus-ID: 1-3.3:7 chip-ID: 05ac:828f
Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: down bt-service: enabled,running
rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes address: see --recommends
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 113 GiB used: 15.65 GiB (13.8%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Apple model: SSD SM0128G size: 113 GiB
speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial:
Partition:
ID-1: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 88 MiB (9.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 600 MiB used: 23.9 MiB (4.0%) fs: hfsplus
dev: /dev/sda1
ID-3: /var size: 111.4 GiB used: 15.54 GiB (13.9%) fs: btrfs
dev: /dev/dm-0 mapped: luks-e620bc1b-ef24-4c2a-945c-0057bb4cd801
Swap:
ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 3.73 GiB used: 3 MiB (0.1%) priority: 100
dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 63.0 C pch: 60.5 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
Processes: 286 Uptime: 3m Memory: 3.73 GiB used: 2.17 GiB (58.3%)
Init: systemd v: 251 target: graphical (5) default: graphical Compilers:
gcc: 12.2.1 Packages: pm: rpm pkgs: N/A note: see --rpm pm: flatpak pkgs: 34
Shell: Bash v: 5.2.9 running-in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.3.23

/
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00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Host Bridge -OPI [8086:1604] (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 6000 [8086:1626] (rev 09)
00:03.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Audio Controller [8086:160c] (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP USB xHCI Controller [8086:9cb1] (rev 03)
00:15.0 DMA controller [0801]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Serial IO DMA Controller [8086:9ce0] (rev 03)
00:15.4 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Serial IO GSPI Controller #1 [8086:9ce6] (rev 03)
00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP MEI Controller #1 [8086:9cba] (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller [8086:9ca0] (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #1 [8086:9c90] (rev e3)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #2 [8086:9c92] (rev e3)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #3 [8086:9c94] (rev e3)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 [8086:9c98] (rev e3)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #6 [8086:9c9a] (rev e3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP LPC Controller [8086:9cc3] (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP SMBus Controller [8086:9ca2] (rev 03)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Thermal Management Controller [8086:9ca4] (rev 03)
02:00.0 Multimedia controller [0480]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries 720p FaceTime HD Camera [14e4:1570]
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)
04:00.0 SATA controller [0106]: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:a801] (rev 01)
05:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation DSL5320 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 2C 2013] [8086:156b]
06:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation DSL5320 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 2C 2013] [8086:156b]
06:03.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation DSL5320 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 2C 2013] [8086:156b]
06:04.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation DSL5320 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 2C 2013] [8086:156b]
06:05.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation DSL5320 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 2C 2013] [8086:156b]
06:06.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation DSL5320 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 2C 2013] [8086:156b]
07:00.0 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation DSL5320 Thunderbolt 2 NHI [Falcon Ridge 2C 2013] [8086:156a]

Older Macbook Air systems did not have a GPU.

Since I do not own a macbook air I was not aware of that. It does show that the CPU load would be expected with any task that requires higher graphics output such as games.