When the CPU/GPU of my early 2015 13" Retina MBP running El Capitan 10.11.6 is under strain, the wifi drops.
I first noticed this whilst playing the web browser game diep.io in Chrome. When the game is running fairly CPU-intensively the wifi menu bar symbol turns to 'off' for a few seconds and then reconnects, hence booting me from the game. This happens intermittently - perhaps every 15 minutes. I thought it was related to the fan activating but I've observed it without fan too.
I've tested on 2 different wifi routers, both 2.4ghz, and with/without power cable - same results.
This is the only situation I've noticed the wifi dropping in - it doesn't drop randomly or suffer any other connectivity issues AFAIK.
Are there further tests I can run or solutions to try?
Update: some more tests
- Chrome with hardware acceleration off: no wifi drops, but game doesn't run hot enough to activate the fan
- Safari: Game doesn't work
- Firefox with hardware acceleration: same as Chrome (no drops but no fan)
I'm thinking this may be simply a Chrome bug with hardware acceleration, but I'm worried the MBP hardware could be defective. Would testing with a non-browser-based CPU-intensive networked game or app be a good way to prove this?