2020 i7 MBPro 1068NG7 benchmarks

[gl3lan]

Appleinsider reviewed the i7-1068NG7/16Gb/1Tb version. Geekbench 5 benchmark scored ~1300 SC/1850 MC, while Cinebench R20 scored 2071.

Review: The 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 10th generation processor is the one to buy | AppleInsider

The 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro with new tenth-generation Intel processors is a powerful machine for the pro on the go, and is an ideal mix of power and portability.

appleinsider.com

 

[Spectrum]

Appleinsider reviewed the i7-1068NG7/16Gb/1Tb version. Geekbench 5 benchmark scored ~1300 SC/1850 MC, while Cinebench R20 scored 2071.

Review: The 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 10th generation processor is the one to buy | AppleInsider

The 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro with new tenth-generation Intel processors is a powerful machine for the pro on the go, and is an ideal mix of power and portability.

appleinsider.com

1300/4850 are good scores. As is 2070 in Cinebench. What is odd is the read and write disk speeds. They are only ~1300-1600 MB/sec. Whilst fast, that is still much slower than expected. I wonder why...?

For comparison here are the RW speeds of the 1TB disk in my 2018 mac mini:

Actually, Apple advertise speeds of up to 3.0 GB/second on the 13 inch MBPro...but only on the 32Gb/ 4TB option:

MacBook Pro

MacBook Pro laptop with M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. Built for Apple Intelligence. Up to 24 hours of battery life. Liquid Retina XDR display.

www.apple.com

"10. Testing conducted by Apple in April 2020 using pre-production 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with 32GB of RAM and 4TB SSD. Tested with FIO 3.19, 1024KB request size, 150GB test file and IO depth=8. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro."

 

[JTToft]

1300/4850 are good scores. As is 2070 in Cinebench. What is odd is the read and write disk speeds. They are only ~1300-1600 MB/sec. Whilst fast, that is still much slower than expected. I wonder why...?

- They don't mention specifically which SSD size they tested as far as I can see. Maybe it was the 256 GB.

All the tests I've seen of the 512 and 1 TB in reviews and user tests have come in around 2,000 GB/s and 2,400 GB/s in read and write.

 

[Spectrum]

- They don't mention specifically which SSD size they tested as far as I can see. Maybe it was the 256 GB.

All the tests I've seen of the 512 and 1 TB in reviews and user tests have come in around 2,000 GB/s and 2,400 GB/s in read and write.

They state that the test machine was a 2.3/16/1TB. Hence me comparing to the 1TB drive in my 2018 mini.

I hope they are wrong.

 

[KPOM]

They state that the test machine was a 2.3/16/1TB. Hence me comparing to the 1TB drive in my 2018 mini.

I hope they are wrong.

I get about 2,000 MB/s speeds for both read and right on my Ice Lake 512GB model. AppleInsider’s speeds are very low.

 

[Mattie12345]

What’s the updated result comparing the i5 and i7 ?

anyone has the percentage gains for one over the other ? Worth the upgrade ?

 

[katmeef]

This thing is such a beast! I7/32/1TB just received yesterday.

 

[Mike Boreham]

For my personal benchmarking I always record the highest I can achieve because as has been said there are lots of reasons why any one test could be low (indexing, background processes by iCloud apps and installed software etc).

There are no similar factors which could make a result too high.

Athletes performance is judged by their best time, not their average.

As a lockdown diversion I added a clean install volume to the internal of my Macbook and only installed Geekbench and did not sign in to iCloud. Geekbench scores were around 10% higher than my main installation.

 

[JTToft]

They state that the test machine was a 2.3/16/1TB. Hence me comparing to the 1TB drive in my 2018 mini.

I hope they are wrong.

- Cheers. Missed that. That is very low compared to other results. Something must have gone wrong for them.

For my personal benchmarking I always record the highest I can achieve because as has been said there are lots of reasons why any one test could be low (indexing, background processes by iCloud apps and installed software etc).

There are no similar factors which could make a result too high.

Athletes performance is judged by their best time, not their average.

- I get what you mean. But that highest score will only be accurate for that one machine.
There are reasons why individual machines of the same model can differ in performance - application of thermal paste, ambient temperature, etc. - hence why we take averages and medians from across multiple results to understand what we can expect from a certain CPU or model.

 

[elmacci]

Here's mine (i7/32/2TB). Oddly enough: I seem to get higher scores when running Geekbench on battery...on ac I get SC around 1200-ish and MC around 4500-ish in Geekbench. Same with Cinebench (close to 2000 on ac, nearly 2100 on battery)

 

[Mike Boreham]

- I get what you mean. But that highest score will only be accurate for that one machine.
There are reasons why individual machines of the same model can differ in performance - application of thermal paste, ambient temperature, etc. - hence why we take averages and medians from across multiple results to understand what we can expect from a certain CPU or model.

Yes fair comment, but my belief (can't prove it) is that the variability due to inconsistent testing method is greater than the genuine hardware variability between machines.

I am not a statistician but maybe there is a technique for dealing with this, or it might be a simple matter of taking the upper 95% number, or more simply average the top 5 or 10% of results. These are unlikely to have been compromised by testing method.

OTOH maybe one can assume that all models have a similar proportion of low quality results so averages and medians across large samples can be compared.

 

[Spectrum]

Here's mine (i7/32/2TB). Oddly enough: I seem to get higher scores when running Geekbench on battery...on ac I get SC around 1200-ish and MC around 4500-ish in Geekbench. Same with Cinebench (close to 2000 on ac, nearly 2100 on battery)

View attachment 917974View attachment 917975

Interesting - and rather odd! I seem to recall that one of the YouTubers also mentioned something about different performance on battery vs AC for the 8th gen MBPro...Does anyone else observe this?
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This thing is such a beast! I7/32/1TB just received yesterday.

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View attachment 917947

@katmeef. Scores look well into the top 5% of those recorded for both SC and MC.
Would you mind retesting on AC power vs battery please?
[automerge]1590230923[/automerge]
Just a thought: I think the Geekbench scores might be being affected by the choice of 16GB vs 32GB.
I seem to remember this... When I upgraded my mac mini 2018 from 8 GB to 32 GB the scores increased by about +10%.

I suspect that a lot more of the i7s sold are 32GB compared to the i5s.

 

[JTToft]

Yes fair comment, but my belief (can't prove it) is that the variability due to inconsistent testing method is greater than the genuine hardware variability between machines.

- Agreed. That's why we look at multiple scores: to smooth out those inconsistencies in testing method.

 

[Spectrum]

Yes fair comment, but my belief (can't prove it) is that the variability due to inconsistent testing method is greater than the genuine hardware variability between machines.

I am not a statistician but maybe there is a technique for dealing with this, or it might be a simple matter of taking the upper 95% number, or more simply average the top 5 or 10% of results. These are unlikely to have been compromised by testing method.

OTOH maybe one can assume that all models have a similar proportion of low quality results so averages and medians across large samples can be compared.

Agreed. I made the same comments earlier in the thread. It seems unlikely to me that the manufacturing variation between CPUs/MBPros is greater than the human error arising from running Geekbench.

In principle, the two sources of variation could be elucidated if one had a good estimate of the relative variation (or distribution shape) caused by *one* of the sources of variation.
[automerge]1590231561[/automerge]

- Agreed. That's why we look at multiple scores: to smooth out those inconsistencies in testing method.

Partially...the problem is that the variation caused by poor testing is always negative. So it generates a disproportionate skew towards lower numbers. If the variation caused by testing (sampling) was normally distributed (sometimes positive sometimes negative) this wouldn't be a problem.

 

[katmeef]

@katmeef. Scores look well into the top 5% of those recorded for both SC and MC.
Would you mind retesting on AC power vs battery please?

Sure thing, once it finishes doing the CCC backup I'll re-run the tests, this time on battery.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Here's mine (i7/32/2TB). Oddly enough: I seem to get higher scores when running Geekbench on battery.

Don't have an MBP but see the same on my MacBook.

 

[JohnDoe12]

I binned the most recent 250 results for the i5 and i7 Ice Lake processors. It just confirms what we already knew—i5 around 4500 and i7 around 4900.

Note that (from what I understand from the discussion here), Geekbench only measured peak, not sustained performance.

The hardest part was getting these Geekbench results (why do they only show 25 results per page??), but I thank @supernaut42 for his super useful code.

 

[Spectrum]

I binned the most recent 250 results for the i5 and i7 Ice Lake processors. It just confirms what we already knew—i5 around 4500 and i7 around 4900.

Note that (from what I understand from the discussion here), Geekbench only measured peak, not sustained performance.

View attachment 918132

View attachment 918133

The hardest part was getting these Geekbench results (why do they only show 25 results per page??), but I thank @supernaut42 for his super useful code.

For SC scores, it is interesting that both i5 and i7 show a bimodal distribution...with peaks about 150 points apart.

I wonder if that could be the AC power versus battery difference? Or maybe 16 vs 32 GB RAM?

 

[JohnDoe12]

For SC scores, it is interesting that both i5 and i7 show a bimodal distribution...with peaks about 150 points apart.

I wonder if that could be the AC power versus battery difference? Or maybe 16 vs 32 GB RAM?

That's a pretty good point. You interested me enough to redo it with all the data on Geekbench as of this moment.

The multi-core scores don't look bimodal. From what I know from statistics, that could be due to multiple underlying normal distributions. So for multi-core scores, I'm assuming that means it could be that AC power, RAM, and maybe some other factors come into play.

 

[katmeef]

Interesting - and rather odd! I seem to recall that one of the YouTubers also mentioned something about different performance on battery vs AC for the 8th gen MBPro...Does anyone else observe this?
[automerge]1590230634[/automerge]

@katmeef. Scores look well into the top 5% of those recorded for both SC and MC.
Would you mind retesting on AC power vs battery please?
[automerge]1590230923[/automerge]
Just a thought: I think the Geekbench scores might be being affected by the choice of 16GB vs 32GB.
I seem to remember this... When I upgraded my mac mini 2018 from 8 GB to 32 GB the scores increased by about +10%.

I suspect that a lot more of the i7s sold are 32GB compared to the i5s.

No appreciable difference testing on battery. The results above the 2013 MBP are taken on battery, the results below it AC power.

If I didn't mention previously my model is the I7 / 32 / 1TB ordered on May 4th shortly after the launch.

 

[ikkysleepy]

Waiting for the shipping date on my i7/32gb/1TB MBP. I feel that I really need to justify the upgrade because it’s a lot of money and I want to make sure it will be worth it . I got the 32 Gb version because I use VMs and I am planning on using the laptop for 5-6 years. I went with with the i7 because I see it as a minor update that will give me 5-10% more performance. Also, maybe this minor update might allow me to keep the machine another year. My experience is that I won’t really notice the difference between an i5 / i7 for 95% of the time, but the 5% of the time I do need an extra boost it would be worth it. I do VMs and Remote Desktop and have at times a couple of apps/windows open and a few dozen or two chrome tabs per window and if I want to do a video chat or open just one more app, while rendering / streaming, I don’t want the machine to struggle like my current machine. My current machine is a 2015 13” i5/8GB/512GB and honestly I would have kept it another year if not for the ram and constant hardware struggle . I want to start doing some video editing and I use my laptop with a dock about 90% of the time so the screen and Touch Bar is not that important to me. I don’t think waiting for the 14” laptop will be worth it for me . The one question or concern to me with the i7 is the battery life. Has anyone done battery life test for the i7?

 

[glintoz]

Waiting for the shipping date on my i7/32gb/1TB MBP. I feel that I really need to justify the upgrade because it’s a lot of money and I want to make sure it will be worth it . I got the 32 Gb version because I use VMs and I am planning on using the laptop for 5-6 years. I went with with the i7 because I see it as a minor update that will give me 5-10% more performance. Also, maybe this minor update might allow me to keep the machine another year. My experience is that I won’t really notice the difference between an i5 / i7 for 95% of the time, but the 5% of the time I do need an extra boost it would be worth it. I do VMs and Remote Desktop and have at times a couple of apps/windows open and a few dozen or two chrome tabs per window and if I want to do a video chat or open just one more app, while rendering / streaming, I don’t want the machine to struggle like my current machine. My current machine is a 2015 13” i5/8GB/512GB and honestly I would have kept it another year if not for the ram and constant hardware struggle . I want to start doing some video editing and I use my laptop with a dock about 90% of the time so the screen and Touch Bar is not that important to me. I don’t think waiting for the 14” laptop will be worth it for me . The one question or concern to me with the i7 is the battery life. Has anyone done battery life test for the i7?

I have just ordered the exact config as you. I am also coming from a 2015 13” but have 16GB of ram and like you it is really struggling. Your thoughts are the exact same ones I struggled with and wish I had just ordered it a few weeks ago as I am now looking at a delivery in late June/earlyJuly.

 

[JTToft]

Partially...the problem is that the variation caused by poor testing is always negative. So it generates a disproportionate skew towards lower numbers. If the variation caused by testing (sampling) was normally distributed (sometimes positive sometimes negative) this wouldn't be a problem.

- Yes. That's why we're primarily looking at the top portion of the scores. But you still need a decent amount to get a good indication. One result doesn't tell you anything, which was my point.

 

[Spectrum]

No appreciable difference testing on battery. The results above the 2013 MBP are taken on battery, the results below it AC power.

If I didn't mention previously my model is the I7 / 32 / 1TB ordered on May 4th shortly after the launch.

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Thanks! Your scores are really stable. And consistently high. The potential battery/ac thing is weird...Maybe it depends on whether the AC is charging the battery (vs it being full)? I.e. If the battery is half full and charging, maybe that somehow limits power delivery available to the CPU?

 

[JohnDoe12]

Waiting for the shipping date on my i7/32gb/1TB MBP. I feel that I really need to justify the upgrade because it’s a lot of money and I want to make sure it will be worth it . I got the 32 Gb version because I use VMs and I am planning on using the laptop for 5-6 years. I went with with the i7 because I see it as a minor update that will give me 5-10% more performance. Also, maybe this minor update might allow me to keep the machine another year. My experience is that I won’t really notice the difference between an i5 / i7 for 95% of the time, but the 5% of the time I do need an extra boost it would be worth it. I do VMs and Remote Desktop and have at times a couple of apps/windows open and a few dozen or two chrome tabs per window and if I want to do a video chat or open just one more app, while rendering / streaming, I don’t want the machine to struggle like my current machine. My current machine is a 2015 13” i5/8GB/512GB and honestly I would have kept it another year if not for the ram and constant hardware struggle . I want to start doing some video editing and I use my laptop with a dock about 90% of the time so the screen and Touch Bar is not that important to me. I don’t think waiting for the 14” laptop will be worth it for me . The one question or concern to me with the i7 is the battery life. Has anyone done battery life test for the i7?

If it's any consolation to you, if you're planning on using it for the next 5-6 years I think you made a pretty good decision to get those upgrades, especially as you say that you run VMs on it. I think you probably would have gotten frustrated with it in a couple of years if you hadn't gone down the i7/32 route.