Unless it's a mobility 4870 or mobility 5870, it's not gonna be much better than current gpus offered in the iMacs-- not better than the mobility 4850 at least, but better than mobility 4670. Mobility 4870 is HUUGE jump in performance simple because it uses GDDR5 memory, which is on a whole nother level when compared to GDDR2/3 or 4.
5k series doesn't necessarily mean it's better, just newer technology. Ati usually puts the higher performing gpus of a series with a higher number (*870 for example)
The problem is that Mobility 58xx series is based on desktop 57xx (Juniper) while mobile 48xx is based on desktop 48xx. Desktop 57xx is about as fast as desktop 48xx so that's why there is no much difference between mobile 48xx and mobile 58xx.
Only 5870 (or 4870) would be a jump in performance if Apple uses ATI GPUs.
Good thing about mobile 5850 compared to 4850 is that 4850 has TDP of ~60W while 5850 has only 39W so 5850 would be possible in 21.5" as well because 4670 is 35W.
Yeah but it's 1000 usd! Imagine a laptop with Apple price markup that has a 1000 usd processor.
Well, 17" MBP isn't cheap but I'd like to see that as a BTO at least though it would likely cost near 5000$...
Arrandale 540m would be a likely candidate for high-end macbook pros, and the turbo boost on those would reach 3.33ghz when one core is active (compared to 3.33 ghz dual core on current baseline iMacs) The only question remaining would the newer architecture and hyperthreading make up for lower clockspseed when it comes to video encoding? Definitely shows a difference over the current mobility core2duos in macbookpros (
article on macrumors) the performance gain was around 25%-- but how does that compare with high-end wolfdales?
I think you meant the Core i7 620M, as it's the best one and suitable for MBPs (TDP of 35W). It's 2.66GHz (3.46GHz with Turbo) so it would be a nice jump in performance but only costs 332$.
32nm vs 45nm (manufacturing process)
Nehalem vs Core (micro-architecture)
Hyper-threading vs no HT
Arrandale is definitely faster than any C2D. Video encoding etc depends on app but generally Arrandale will be the winner anyway.
I'm guessing Core i3 for 13" (maybe i5 in high-end), Core i5 for 15" (probably i7 in high-end though) and finally i7 for 17" (Arrandale in low-end, Clarksfield in high-end/BTO)