16-Inch MacBook Pro Hands-On: Benchmark and Performance Tests

[chucker23n1]

Well, 10-cores versus 8-cores and Wi-Fi 6, which is quaint and all, but the real wild card will be the GPU. SSD speeds aren't going to improve as we are at the limit of PCIe 3. and Comet Lake-H is not PCIe 4.0-based.

What do you mean with the GPU? The new low-end option is faster than what used to be a high-end BTO option. I really don't see a need for the Comet Lake MBP revision to have another bump like that.

And, yeah, it'll probably be quaint.

Possibly better RAM, though. Comet Lake-U inherits Ice Lake's new memory controller. That means a Comet Lake-U-based 13-inch (14-inch?) MacBook Pro, which we don't have yet, will get LPDDR4. They might offer 32 GB on the smaller MBP for the first time. And for the 16-inch, we might get 2933 MHz DDR4 this time.

I'm shocked (shocked!) that PrimateLabs would disagree with that article.

Maybe it's just not a great article.

 

[NacFanzy]

What about the results of "real world usage" for the 2019 15" MacBook Pro with the same processor?

I would know how the 2019 compares.

I'll let you know, as that's what my current model was (my battery is just about to die, as my normal 10-hour battery is now only two hours a day).

 

[Zdigital2015]

What do you mean with the GPU? The new low-end option is faster than what used to be a high-end BTO option. I really don't see a need for the Comet Lake MBP revision to have another bump like that.

And, yeah, it'll probably be quaint.

Sorry, I was probably being too vague.

The NAVI rollout has been arduous to say the least, and AMD has been vague about filling out the rest of the lineup. The wild card will be how many more mobile GPUs are released between now and the next rev of the 16” MacBook Pro. Will there be a RADEON PRO 5600M by June of 2020? A 5400M? A 5550M? Something higher than that? Will there be a new Vega Pro part as well?

The 5300M and 5500M are excellent GPUs, and didn’t come out of absolutely nowhere, but leaks were few and far between and vague.

After the 400/500/500X train, it’s not a slam dunk that Apple will or can upgrade GPUs in the next revision of the 16” MBP.

I don’t expect a new GPU every single rev, but the 400/500/500X were pretty weak and I’m hoping for more robust base GPUs as FCP X is a key market for the MacBook Pro and vice versa. I hope this provides some clarification, as I’m not really expressing myself well.

 

[anthonymoody]

These results are interesting. My iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014 with a 4Ghz i7 and 32GB RAM and the AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4 GB) exceeds the single core test by about 10%, about matches the multi-core test, and trails the OpenCL/Metal tests by about 10%. So in roughly 5 years they've released a laptop that matches or exceeds a fairly loaded desktop. I wonder too whether more loaded MBP configs would've opened up more of a gap.

I'd love to switch from desktop to laptop to be mobile, but since the performance would be about the same in practice I'm going to wait for things like FaceID and a better camera to hit the MBP. Perhaps in a year or two. Still, if I were in need I'd get one of these bad boys.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

Yep. I've long held the belief that much of Apple's downturn was due to Ive's decisions. Like I said, good riddance.

Ahhh, gotcha. Yes, I agree! I look forward to how Apple's designs evolve with him gone.

 

[thunng8]

Did you read developer response in comments? Even if that assessment was true, it still doesn't detract from its usefulness x-platform. What is more useful is finding tasks that arm falls down on like spec tests used to show (not kept up).

I agree - that article is rubbish.

No problems with spec benchmarks with the latest a12 and a13 CPU's. It was tested here:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro-and-max-review/4

The A13 in a phone matches the Intel i9-9900k Desktop CPU in integer tests (marginally behind in floating point)

 

[Boobsandbacon]

Who cares about Face ID when your watch can unlock the MacBook Pro without even looking at it.

People who don’t have an Apple Watch?

 

[QuarterSwede]

What laptops have a better than 720p webcam? Genuine question, as the webcam is not something I’ve ever cared about. Usually put a sticker over it.

That’s inconsequential. Apple usually has higher standards. They simply don’t here.
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The iPhone is several times thicker than a MacBook LCD lid. There is no space to put a beefy camera in a MBP lid enclosure.

Last time I checked iFixits teardown the front facing FaceTime camera was tiny. We aren’t expecting the back camera or even 4K. But 1080p at the minimum wouldn’t be an embarrassment.

 

[IG88]

Maybe it's just not a great article.

Perhaps.

Perhaps Geekbench isn't a great cross platform comparison tool as well. It certainly isn't a stand-alone be-all-end-all test.

Anyone that bases their opinion solely on Geekbench scores, and thinks that's all they need to look at to compare an Apple A-series to an Intel i9, really doesn't know what they're talking about.

Anandtech does typically include it at the end of their ginormous slew of tests, but essentially as a footnote. They even say that the main reason they include is purely because readers expect to see it.

 

[Val-kyrie]

I struggle to understand the logic behind: 99C and thermal throttling is dreadful to everyone, but 99C without thermal throttling is amazing! To solve the thermal issue, is actually rather simple, just copy every other laptop in the market nowadays, and put vents at the bottom! Some people did it and it almost dropped the temps by 20C with much slower fans speed. The only reason this is not done is because the current cooling solution tries to cool the flash storage at the same time. Then just extend the vents to cover the SSD section, it really doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. Slower fans mean quieter computer, there is no need to over-design the cooling and noise level.

Do you really want that heat blowing on your lap?

Worse, to properly vent heat from the underside of the computer, the bottom of the computer would need to be elevated from the surface on which it rests in order to provide a place for the air to go.

Isn't this more to do with the cooling set up of the device the chip is in than the actual chip itself, though? The A10X in the Apple TV has active cooling - I guess the idea there is it needs to be able to keep pushing 4K frames out without missing a beat, so any temperature regulating throttling isn't an option. Saying a passively cooled A12X isn't as good at sustained performance as an i9 in a large laptop with 2 big fans blowing cool air over it and a massive heat sink is pretty much a given

Some of the performance difference between ARM and x86 is the thermal envelope but some is also processor design. Far smarter people than me who are engineers have already explored this issue and concluded that an equivalent ARM CPU would hit the same thermal constraints as x86.

Keep in mind that node shrinks cut both ways—they increase IO but they generate more heat; hence the reality that new nodes may initially reduce the frequency of the newer CPU compared to the more refined version of the previous node. Intel has tried to offset such losses through greater efficiency in its CPU instructions. In the end, the desire for increased IO (node shrinks) and the subsequent increase in heat has led to the need for new methods to build silicon.

Is it really needed? Catalina allows you to control which apps have access to the camera and the led in-use is hardwired, so you always know when the camera is on. I thought this whole issue was a windows problem some years back that has since been corrected iin the OS. (I'm not sure if it ever was an Apple problem, may have been)

Yes, a physical shutter is really needed. Software can be bypassed and a consumer may never know the camera has been activated without his/her permission—see the recent Android debacle—but software can’t bypass a physical shutter.

 

[tekmoe]

I decided on the 2.3 base model. I got 9 years out of my mid-2010 MBP 17". Wonderful machine it was.

 

[chucker23n1]

That’s inconsequential. Apple usually has higher standards. They simply don’t here.
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Standards don't help against physics.

Last time I checked iFixits teardown the front facing FaceTime camera was tiny. We aren’t expecting the back camera or even 4K. But 1080p at the minimum wouldn’t be an embarrassment.

Tiny, sure. As tiny as the MacBook Pro camera? I'm guessing no. Here's an iFixit image from the iPhone 11:

That iPhone 11 is about 8.3mm thick.

I haven't been able to get a figure, but the portion of the lid where the MacBook Pro is probably less than 3mm thick. iFixit says that on the Retina generation(!), it was 3mm, and the Touch Bar generation is generally slightly thinner yet.

Let's assume both the iPhone and the MacBook both need their camera modules to be largely encased by around 1mm on each side. That leaves 6.3mm for the iPhone camera, and less than 1mm on the MacBook pro camera.

Does the above photo look like the camera could be made to fit in less than 1mm?

Perhaps.

Perhaps Geekbench isn't a great cross platform comparison tool as well. It certainly isn't a stand-alone be-all-end-all test.

Maybe.

Anandtech has some tests for the Apple A13 that use SPEC2016 instead of Geekbench. They show Apple's ~5W CPU roughly on par with Intel's 95W Core i9 9900K and AMD's 105W Ryzen 9 3900X in int, and ~13% worse in floating point.

Anandtech does typically include it at the end of their ginormous slew of tests, but essentially as a footnote. They even say that the main reason they include is purely because readers expect to see it.

But Anandtech doesn't exactly paint the picture that Apple's chips do poorly, so I'm not sure what you're arguing.

Should Geekbench be exclusively relied upon? No. Is it a decent indicator? Yeah, it seems that way.

 

[slam2019]

Do you really want that heat blowing on your lap?

Worse, to properly vent heat from the underside of the computer, the bottom of the computer would need to be elevated from the surface on which it rests in order to provide a place for the air to go.

Bottom vents are for intake (unlike the original MacBook Air, if that is what you are thinking about), as the fans natural orientation is to intake air from the bottom (and not from the side like the current Apple design, there aren't even side cut out in the current fans to intake from the side), so your laps are as cool as they can be!

The mac is already elevated, so you don't need to elevated it any further, and the original side vents are still there, for those people that take their laptop to bed/sofa. For people that are interested, they can read this (although I'm really talking about bottom vents like in the Razer Blade):
https://hackaday.com/2017/12/14/cncd-macbook-breathes-easy/

 

[lowkey]

Picked up an i9 16GB/1TB model today. Sidecar with my 12” iPad Pro was pretty impressive. Call me crazy, but I prefer the precise ‘clickiness’ and short travel of my (soon to go) 2015 MacBook keyboard while nowhere near as spongey as my late 2013 MacBook Pro, it still feels to loose and squishy to me.

the sound in the speakers wasn’t super impressive in the bass region, but super clear otherwise. I actually listened to music on it for an hour without realising I hadn’t turned it off. I’m a musician and tinny sounding speakers really annoy my ears. But these sounded really nice b

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

I'll wait the obligatory 4-6 months before purchasing. Call me crazy, but I'm very confident Ive left Apple because he disagreed with this move.

For someone to leave a multi-decade tenure over one small change to one single product would not make any sense. I don't think you are giving Ive and Apple enough credit here.

 

[0388631]

For someone to leave a multi-decade tenure over one small change to one single product would not make any sense. I don't think you are giving Ive and Apple enough credit here.

You're presuming it's cut and dry. It's ego. It's always ego. People have destroyed entire business relationships for far less and trivial reasons.

 

[QuarterSwede]

Standards don't help against physics.



Tiny, sure. As tiny as the MacBook Pro camera? I'm guessing no. Here's an iFixit image from the iPhone 11:

View attachment 878349

That iPhone 11 is about 8.3mm thick.

I haven't been able to get a figure, but the portion of the lid where the MacBook Pro is probably less than 3mm thick. iFixit says that on the Retina generation(!), it was 3mm, and the Touch Bar generation is generally slightly thinner yet.

Let's assume both the iPhone and the MacBook both need their camera modules to be largely encased by around 1mm on each side. That leaves 6.3mm for the iPhone camera, and less than 1mm on the MacBook pro camera.

Does the above photo look like the camera could be made to fit in less than 1mm?



Maybe.

Anandtech has some tests for the Apple A13 that use SPEC2016 instead of Geekbench. They show Apple's ~5W CPU roughly on par with Intel's 95W Core i9 9900K and AMD's 105W Ryzen 9 3900X in int, and ~13% worse in floating point.



But Anandtech doesn't exactly paint the picture that Apple's chips do poorly, so I'm not sure what you're arguing.

Should Geekbench be exclusively relied upon? No. Is it a decent indicator? Yeah, it seems that way.

That’s a good rebuttal.

However, I don’t know that they can’t make it higher quality in the same thinness. Is it really physics or current sensor technology?

 

[SoulBlighter]

Who cares about Face ID when your watch can unlock the MacBook Pro without even looking at it.

Touch Bar was never about Unlocking the Mac, Developer Applications, or Innovation. It was always about Payment.

 

[chucker23n1]

That’s a good rebuttal.

However, I don’t know that they can’t make it higher quality in the same thinness. Is it really physics or current sensor technology?

I don't know. I'm sure sensors will get better yet over time. It looks like the MacBook Pro camera was last improved in 2011, and that is quite an amount of time.

But I do think the answer to "iPhones have a much nicer front-facing camera; why doesn't Apple use that?" is simple physics: there's nowhere near as much space.

Could they have a better camera? Maybe! As nice as the iPhone's? I'm guessing no.

 

[IG88]

You're presuming it's cut and dry. It's ego. It's always ego. People have destroyed entire business relationships for far less and trivial reasons.

Agreed.

 

[QuarterSwede]

You're presuming it's cut and dry. It's ego. It's always ego. People have destroyed entire business relationships for far less and trivial reasons.

You’re assuming he didn’t just get bored or into a creative rut with only designing for electronics. He branched out with architecture in designing the Apple spaceship Campus. I’m guessing he really enjoyed that and realized he wanted to move on to doing any project that he found interesting, not just the ones Apple had in the pipeline.

 

[chucker23n1]

You’re assuming he didn’t just get bored or into a creative rut with only designing for electronics. He branched out with architecture in designing the Apple spaceship Campus. I’m guessing he really enjoyed that and realized he wanted to move on to doing any project that he found interesting, not just the ones Apple had in the pipeline.

Yup.

The "got bored" narrative does bug me, though. Here's this guy gettin accolades and millions of dollars, but the entire Mac line-up (as well as other Apple products, not to mention briefly even the software side! Remember iOS 7?) no longer gets designed with the same drive and thought he used to put into it. It's still his frigging job, but I guess we're supposed to make excuses because he… got bored, and hey, he used to be really good at what he does? If I were Tim Cook, I'd be furious.

 

[extrachrispy]

I see all these complaints about the 720p camera. Just curious what do you all use the laptop mounted camera for? I do Skype and Zoom and FaceTime and it's been totally fine. Nobody has complained about the image quality. Do you guys use something special that needs a higher rez cam? Or is it just the idea that a $2400 plus computer "only" has a 720p cam. Just not sure what the complaints about it are. I would like it to have Face ID eventually just for convenience but otherwise, quality seems fine.

720p is good enough for that stuff, yes, but a 1080p 16:9 camera would work better if you want more than one person comfortably in the frame, AND the camera could do with MUCH better performance in less-than-perfect lighting. I have an external 1080p camera for my cMP, and it's no contest.

 

[LordVic]

Do you really want that heat blowing on your lap?

Most laptops with vents on the bottom don't blow the air out of these vents. They're the intake for cold air.

having the vents allows for much larger amount of air to be brought in. the more cool air in, the better the cooling solution

Apple's problem is without the vents, the cooling solution struggles to bring in cooler fresh air. if you look at Apples previous cooling solutions, Air is sucked in through the gaps in the keys and between the panels of the aluminium body design, and pumped out the back where the hing is. its a nice looking solution due to no vents, but it's a poor cooling solution that has regularly led to numerous Apple laptops suffering from cooling problems and throttling tht hurts performance.

the 2016 MBpro throttled so bad that it's 100% load performance put the CPU speed lower than it's own base clocks.

good to see that this new 16" laptop doen't seem to have nearly as bad a throttling problem, even if it still throttles a little. A better designed cooling solution might result in even less thermal throttling. Even if it requires putting a single intake vent on the bottom like everyone else has done

 

[gnasher729]

That's nothing - on the 2025 model, the tests finish before they begin.

And the 2030 model will finish the tests in 2026.