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Apple Launches MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt, Quad Core CPUs, AMD GPUs

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macguy360

macrumors 6502a
Feb 23, 2011
829
468
Hey guys. I just wanted to provide you with some information on the 13" inch performance.

I went into Best buy this morning and purchased a base model $1199 with the core I5.

I got home and went ahead and replaced the hard drive with an intel 80gb SSD. After getting everything up and running this machine is a beast. I can notice a huge difference in speed verses my 2010 mbp. Especially in terms of rendering high definition video.

I highly suggest anyone who is on a budget to go with the base model 13 and go ahead and install a SSD. I'm sure the performance without an SSD is nice too but I like things instantly fast.
 
DrJohnnyN

DrJohnnyN

Suspended
Jan 27, 2010
1,443
2,027
intelgrande said:
I bought the high end 15" with anti-glare. Let me just say: it's awesome. I'm going to put an SSD in when some of the newer SandForce drives come out, but even at 5400rpm this thing is "blazing fast."
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+1
I picked up the high-end 15" with all factory configurations.

macguy360 said:
Hey guys. I just wanted to provide you with some information on the 13" inch performance.

I went into Best buy this morning and purchased a base model $1199 with the core I5.
Click to expand...

Enjoy!
 
Terminal.app

Terminal.app

macrumors 6502
Sep 29, 2009
266
0
Holy hell I am mad. :mad: Happy that there's finally a quad-core option in an Apple notebook, but then they had to go and shove in AMD GRAPHICS. I'm sorry but no, that's a deal breaker. Anyone who's spent any length of time in Windows and Linux on Radeon can tell you that the Catalyst software is the s!@%$tiest, glitchiest in existence, bar none. AMD's drivers are practically non-existent. I absolutely must be able to run Windows and Linux smoothly on whichever laptop I get, and my past experiences with driverless Radeon GPUs have left a bad taste in my mouth.

*sigh* Looks like my new laptop will be an Asus with a GeForce 460M.
 
ThomasJL

ThomasJL

macrumors 68000
Oct 16, 2008
1,597
3,505
Good job, Apple, for FINALLY making quad-core laptops!

For over a year, ever since the first Intel mobile quad-core processors came out, I have been harshly criticizing Apple's decision to not include quad-cores in the MacBook Pro line. Well, today, I happily complement Apple for finally releasing a quad-core laptop. Finally, a MacBook Pro with actual professional level components. :)
 
Hackint0sh

Hackint0sh

macrumors member
Apr 12, 2010
96
0
DrAmy said:
I was disappointed to see the "OS on a separate SSD to boot faster" rumor didn't turn out to be true, and am not sure now whether I should be spending more to get a smaller SSD instead of the hard drive?

I'm not a techie but do need some reasonably serious computing power. I'm an academic so I need to be able to run stats programs and switch from them between multiple Office products-- e.g. take output to make a graph in Excel and then put that in a Powerpoint presentation-- and run Parallels to use some obscure stats programs that don't have mac versions. I don't carry a laptop every day but it does come with me for conferences, so if there's a weight-power tradeoff I'm ok with something a little heavier (I have no idea if this is even a factor with the SSD vs hard drive decision? As noted... not a techie!)

I would appreciate suggestions on how to configure a 15"-- in particular, whether I should be considering an SSD upgrade??
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In short:

It doesn't sound like you do a lot of graphics work, so the low end 15" MBP with the 256 Meg ATI chip should be fine (unless you play a lot of games on your free time). I'd go with that, and the 256MB SSD. The SSD will give you one hell of a speed boost. I've got one in my 13" MBP and it's crazy fast.

Edit: If you are running parallels ALL of the time, you might consider and extra 4 gig of ram as well. Having 4 gig of memory for OSX, and 4 gig for windows is really nice, especially if you are running memory intensive stuff in both OS's simultaneously. If you are only booting parallels every once in a while it's probably not worth it.
 
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M

macguy360

macrumors 6502a
Feb 23, 2011
829
468
Quick Question for you guys.

I gave my 2010 mbp to my girlfriend and decided id sell her 2009 MBP on craigslist.

I can either sell it with a 250gb hard drive or I could remove the cd drive and install a 40gb intel ssd as the boot drive with the 250gb drive as a secondary drive for storage. What do you guys think I should do? I have the 40gb and 250gb drives as extras and I'm just looking to sell it for the most money as well as to have people interested in buying it.
 
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xxjudgmentxx

macrumors member
Feb 22, 2011
77
0
WI
Terminal.app said:
Holy hell I am mad. :mad: Happy that there's finally a quad-core option in an Apple notebook, but then they had to go and shove in AMD GRAPHICS. I'm sorry but no, that's a deal breaker. Anyone who's spent any length of time in Windows and Linux on Radeon can tell you that the Catalyst software is the s!@%$tiest, glitchiest in existence, bar none. AMD's drivers are practically non-existent. I absolutely must be able to run Windows and Linux smoothly on whichever laptop I get, and my past experiences with driverless Radeon GPUs have left a bad taste in my mouth.

*sigh* Looks like my new laptop will be an Asus with a GeForce 460M.
Click to expand...

Have you even used CCC in the past, oh I don't know, 3 years? Ever since halfway through the 4xxx series GPUs it's actually been not a huge pile of crap. The newest iteration is even better after they revamped it.

Not to mention the drivers are pretty damn good now. Yes, when nVidia was busy slaying ATI/AMD back in the day the drivers sucked. 5xxx and 6xxx series AMD really stepped up their game driver-wise.
 
DrJohnnyN

DrJohnnyN

Suspended
Jan 27, 2010
1,443
2,027
macguy360 said:
Quick Question for you guys.

I gave my 2010 mbp to my girlfriend and decided id sell her 2009 MBP on craigslist.

I can either sell it with a 250gb hard drive or I could remove the cd drive and install a 40gb intel ssd as the boot drive with the 250gb drive as a secondary drive for storage. What do you guys think I should do? I have the 40gb and 250gb drives as extras and I'm just looking to sell it for the most money as well as to have people interested in buying it.
Click to expand...

I think you should donate it to ldellx3.
 
B

Buck987

macrumors 65816
Jan 16, 2010
1,268
2,106
leman said:
Sorry to dissapoint you, but your 13' now officially has 7 hours battery as well ;)

I guess the old tests (with 10 hours as result) were very restrictive, with w-lan, bluetooth and other things turned off. The new 7 hours are a more realistic estimate on a laptop under constant usage.

Anyway, it is still better than most other notebooks. If they advertise 7 hours, the real value is more like 3-4.
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your probable correct..but not according to refurb site
 
Erasmus

Erasmus

macrumors 68030
Jun 22, 2006
2,756
298
Australia
ThomasJL said:
For over a year, ever since the first Intel mobile quad-core processors came out, I have been harshly criticizing Apple's decision to not include quad-cores in the MacBook Pro line. Well, today, I happily complement Apple for finally releasing a quad-core laptop. Finally, a MacBook Pro with actual professional level components. :)
Click to expand...

QFT.

Although I understand why Apple didn't include quads earlier. The old Clarksfield gen were 45nm, when the Arrandales were 32nm. Hence they were less efficient, clocked very low (ie 1.6 - 1.8 GHz) and very expensive. The dual core Arrandales were clocked much higher, negating a large proportion of the benefits of the quads in the first place. Example, a 1.6 GHz quad isn't much faster than a 2.8GHz dual.
 
J

jherbs4

macrumors newbie
Feb 24, 2011
2
0
MBA 11", MBA 13", or MBP 13"

i'm going to primarily use it for word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, etc (MS Office stuff) but i want the reliability of a macbook over a pc. i'm currently a college student (finance and accounting) so i won't be using it at all for gaming or other hardcore graphic intensive processes but i do want to be able to run windows without taking too big of a hit with speed. i'm not interested at all in a 15" or 17" MBP because i think they're too big and i don't need anything bigger than a 13." any advice or input is greatly appreciated
 
Terminal.app

Terminal.app

macrumors 6502
Sep 29, 2009
266
0
xxjudgmentxx said:
Have you even used CCC in the past, oh I don't know, 3 years? Ever since halfway through the 4xxx series GPUs it's actually been not a huge pile of crap. The newest iteration is even better after they revamped it.
Click to expand...

Yes I have, in fact the most recent was up until the middle of 2010 when I got rid of my Radeon 5770. I got pulled in back in 2009 by the tempting bang-for-buck and the better specs (at the time) compared to NVIDIA's GPUs, but in the end, CCC was total ****, no question about it. At least twice a day, Windows 7 would freeze and then display the message "Display driver AMD driver stopped responding and has successfully recovered." On Linux it was a joke.

Since then I've stuck with NVIDIA and haven't looked back.
 
DrJohnnyN

DrJohnnyN

Suspended
Jan 27, 2010
1,443
2,027
jherbs4 said:
i'm going to primarily use it for word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, etc (MS Office stuff) but i want the reliability of a macbook over a pc. i'm currently a college student (finance and accounting) so i won't be using it at all for gaming or other hardcore graphic intensive processes but i do want to be able to run windows without taking too big of a hit with speed. i'm not interested at all in a 15" or 17" MBP because i think they're too big and i don't need anything bigger than a 13." any advice or input is greatly appreciated
Click to expand...

13" base MBA. I love mine but just updated to the 15" Pro today.
 
Mattsasa

Mattsasa

macrumors 68020
Apr 12, 2010
2,339
744
Minnesota
jherbs4 said:
i'm going to primarily use it for word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, etc (MS Office stuff) but i want the reliability of a macbook over a pc. i'm currently a college student (finance and accounting) so i won't be using it at all for gaming or other hardcore graphic intensive processes but i do want to be able to run windows without taking too big of a hit with speed. i'm not interested at all in a 15" or 17" MBP because i think they're too big and i don't need anything bigger than a 13." any advice or input is greatly appreciated
Click to expand...

running windows won't make your computer run any slower,

for the stuff you described, the 11inch MBA should be plenty powerful! unless you want bigger screen
 
S

spinny

macrumors newbie
Feb 24, 2011
1
0
17" MBP box

Anyone else got a 17" MBP today? The sticker on the box that lists the specs is wrong.... Mine says SDXC slot when it is actually an expresscard slot....
 
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X

xxjudgmentxx

macrumors member
Feb 22, 2011
77
0
WI
Terminal.app said:
Yes I have, in fact the most recent was up until the middle of 2010 when I got rid of my Radeon 5770. I got pulled in back in 2009 by the tempting bang-for-buck and the better specs (at the time) compared to NVIDIA's GPUs, but in the end, CCC was total ****, no question about it. At least twice a day, Windows 7 would freeze and then display the message "Display driver AMD driver stopped responding and has successfully recovered." On Linux it was a joke.

Since then I've stuck with NVIDIA and haven't looked back.
Click to expand...

That error you were getting, is a Windows issue. I used to have that problem all the time on Vista x64 with my 4870X2 and when Win7 came out I had the problem for a few weeks until MS released some updates and AMD released driver updates specifically geared at that issue. Since then I haven't had any driver crashes at all.

No crashes on my friend's 4870 CF setup or my brother's 5850 setup either.

And what are you even running Catalyst Control Center for. You shouldn't need to mess with anything in there unless you're color calibrating your graphics card instead of your display.
 
DrJohnnyN

DrJohnnyN

Suspended
Jan 27, 2010
1,443
2,027
xxjudgmentxx said:
+1 for crazy people
Click to expand...

This came to mind:
object000.png
 
S

Smoother

macrumors member
Mar 18, 2010
62
0
Atl
clibinarius said:
My complaint is we know its fast. Seriously, we do. But with Apple's large cash reserves combined with great purchasing power, we think this could have come down in price-significantly.

For instance, I just bought a maxed out Macbook Air. I do not believe that the chip in the i7 is THAT much more expensive to justify that a 15 incher with the same monitor resolution, a faster processor and graphics card to be sure, should cost that much more. It seems that given the price of components, this is ridiculously high. And that we can get similarly specked machines for $1000 less. That's the complaint. And the fact Apple's sitting on so much cash and we like OS X so much only makes it more frustrating.

People tend to forget that technology hasn't maxed out in terms of production and is therefore a deflationary force. The fact that Apple is charging the same prices that they'd charge ten years ago if the technology was around is why there's so much negativity.

I mean, I complain about Nehalem, but you have to at some point ask yourself the question-how fast can you snap your fingers? For games the C2D is good enough still. So I don't see how you can get away with charging $1800 for this. Sorry. Some people will pay it, but I honestly think that unless the iMac is considerably cheaper, this should end Apple's Mac growth as-aside from just liking apple-I can't see why anyone would buy a Macbook Pro at that price in this economy.
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Just wondering can you show me a 15", quad core, acceptable trackpad, 5.6 pound computer, 7h battery life for 1000 bucks (let's say Lightspeak equals blueray). I can only think of the $1600 ENVY and it's 1.6ghz dual core but better graphics. And also add that it needs to be a branded computer like Sony, HP, Dell etc.

The only complaint I really have is the resolution of the screen and not being 7200rpm, and both can be changed but they should be standard.
 
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G

GuitarDTO

macrumors 6502a
Feb 16, 2011
687
110
New MBP, or wait for iMac?

Hi all,
Now that they are here, I could use some advice.

My main reasons for wanting new MBP or iMac 27": Heavy photography editing, and music creation in Apple Logic. Obviously, the display on the iMac is a huge plus for the photography, and if I go MBP I will need an external display. If I go MBP though I can replace my current laptop as well, and just have 1 computer and an external monitor to hookup to when I want to photo edit.

However, with MBP, much smaller harddrives...however I'm wondering if there are any users out there who store all of their pictures on an external harddrive and just use the MBP drive for everything else? I'm tempted by the speed of a solid state drive but obviously the lack of storage means I will need to use an external drive for all photography stuff. Does that setup work well with a Mac? Or should I say to heck with the MBP, and wait for the new iMac refresh? My current laptop is a 4 year old Dell Inspiron 17, its battery is toast and the display is pretty dark compared to what it used to be, but it works for internet browsing and basic stuff when I am not sitting on the computer for hours.

What would you do?
 
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