Anandtech Review Up - Answers some of your questions

[AshStorm]

Now that we're a few days into the refresh, here's a review given that may help a few people

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3659/apples-15inch-core-i5-macbook-pro-the-one-to-get/1

It touches on some questions that have been asked often this week.

1. Benchmarks - Comparison vs. prior MBP's
2. Battery life comparisons
3. GPU Comparisons using L4D2 and WOW
4. Commentary on how hot it gets, especially on your lap

Read it, apply it to your own situation, and make up your own mind

 

[alphaod]

It fails at the fact that it doesn't compare to the older 9600M GT.

 

[guitarfreak846]

This review made me even more happy that I got a 15" i7 with 7200rpm HDD! I'm so excited!!! First mac baby!

 

[qwerty2k]

can anyone else with a new MBP comment on the head issue? my SR Whitebook (late 2007) gets stupidly hot so am looking to get a cooler laptop.

 

[Hazel]

It fails at the fact that it doesn't compare to the older 9600M GT.

Agreed, the missing comparison is quite blaring.
Anybody know any reviews with direct comparisons?

 

[paintballswimgu]

can anyone else with a new MBP comment on the head issue? my SR Whitebook (late 2007) gets stupidly hot so am looking to get a cooler laptop.

i haven't recieved mine yet. but from reading other peoples responses. It looks like these run stupidly hot as well.

 

[Scott6666]

Thanks for the post. I've canceled my order due to heat concerns. My 2008 MBP is hot enough. Thankful that my iPad is nice and cool.

 

[silversx]

with out the option to turn the 330m graphics completely off.. it's going to be hot.. and to add to the problem you have no way of knowing when the 330m is on.. you might have a flash video in the background and triggers it and next thing you know your lap is on fire...

early adopters always pay the price..

 

[tputs001]

with out the option to turn the 330m graphics completely off.. it's going to be hot.. and to add to the problem you have no way of knowing when the 330m is on.. you might have a flash video in the background and triggers it and next thing you know your lap is on fire...

early adopters always pay the price..

isn't it possible that in future updates, Apple may give us the ability to turn if off manually?

 

[Patrick J]

isn't it possible that in future updates, Apple may give us the ability to turn if off manually?

Probably not. Apple is all about simplicity.

 

[Seraphx17]

with out the option to turn the 330m graphics completely off.. it's going to be hot.. and to add to the problem you have no way of knowing when the 330m is on.. you might have a flash video in the background and triggers it and next thing you know your lap is on fire...

early adopters always pay the price..

You can turn it off manually. I don't know why I reviewer didn't know that.

 

[vant]

You can turn it off manually. I don't know why I reviewer didn't know that.

Anand is a good guy. You might want to email him how to turn it off. He'll adjust his review.

 

[qwerty2k]

You can turn it off manually. I don't know why I reviewer didn't know that.

he mentions in his review iirc that if you 'turn it off' it turns off the intel chip and leaves only the nvidia chip running.

 

[xaquaticx]

So how do we turn off the 330M?

How do we turn off the Intel HD?

If we can't do either of these, that would suck and Apple should have given these options, how friggin hard would it be. Now they're going to have a bunch of returns and bad reviews because the MBPs run so hot. Stupid. I hope they fix this in an update as I imagine it'd be trivial.

 

[Spandexman]

So how do we turn off the 330M?

How do we turn off the Intel HD?

If we can't do either of these, that would suck and Apple should have given these options, how friggin hard would it be. Now they're going to have a bunch of returns and bad reviews because the MBPs run so hot. Stupid. I hope they fix this in an update as I imagine it'd be trivial.

You can turn the GMA HD off and just run the discrete, but it seems that apple don't trust the intel graphics, so this isn't an option to use this alone. They probably reckon that if someone turned the discrete off by accident and didn't know why the machine was lagging so in the graphics department that they'd get extra returns that way too.

 

[tputs001]

You can turn the GMA HD off and just run the discrete, but it seems that apple don't trust the intel graphics, so this isn't an option to use this alone. They probably reckon that if someone turned the discrete off by accident and didn't know why the machine was lagging so in the graphics department that they'd get extra returns that way too.

I hope a future update gives you the option to turn it off or atleast have some form of control on which application uses which gpu. Hopefully....even a third party hack will be suffice....damn apple!

 

[jedivulcan]

The review fails to compare the 330m to the 9600m and instead decides to pit 330m discreet solution to the integrated 9400m.

Anandtech will probably argue that they're comparing the BASE mid-2009 to the base mid-2010 MBP system. If they called in some common sense, they'd review the 13" MBP models separate from the discreet graphics driven 15" MBP... (pit the 9400m with the 320m and the 9600m with the 330m).

I think the review is flawed and confusing to even the average reader.