Another myth about MBP - the CPU

[aevan]

So Apple may have selected it for the far superior iGPU that it ships with. Personally I would take 50% better Graphics over 10% Better Processing power.

Not only GPU, but CPU power too. There are no 25W Kaby Lakes yet, and a 25W Skylake used in MBP13" is faster than a 15W Kaby Lake.

 

[hj576]

Not only GPU, but CPU power too. There are no 25W Kaby Lakes yet, and a 25W Skylake used in MBP13" is faster than a 15W Kaby Lake.

If you read my post I was talking about the w/o touchbar model that uses 15W CPU
Even for that, I believe Skylake with Iris Graphics is better than the Kabylake with HD Graphics

 

[aevan]

If you read my post I was talking about the w/o touchbar model that uses 15W CPU
Even for that, I believe Skylake with Iris Graphics is better than the Kabylake with HD Graphics

Hah, sorry! True, you're correct.

 

[koyoot]

Where do you think you'll actually need the Iris Pro 580? For anything that requires even a little more performance, the Radeons will kick in. You'll only be using the integrated GPU to browse websites (in fact, some of the websites with 3D content activate the dGPU too!) and email and Finder. And for that, you won't really see a difference between the 530 and Iris Pro.

Do you disagree? (honest question)

I think you misquoted me? I am talking about the choice of skylake processor they used, not that they shouldn't go to skylake. I would have liked them to use the Iris Pro 580 cpu.

Iris Pro 580 in proper thermal envelope is as fast as GTX 950M. The problem with it is that it consumes quite a lot of power. There is nothing magical here. If you add more cores, higher frequency, you always end up in a situation that it starts to consume a lot more power. 530 has 24 cores. HD 580 has 72, and eDRAM, which also consumes power, and has higher frequency.

I think it would be possible to use HD580 CPU in a model without the Radeon Pro GPUs. The question is: how the battery life would look like?

 

[Ma2k5]

Hm. Finally some real discussion

Of course, you could be right. In a more moderate environment, my post wouldn't be so dramatic

I think the 530 was the better choice. I don't know about your experiences, but on my MacBook Pro 2013, the dGPU is used practically all the time. Even when I start Photos app (it turns on the dGPU when connected to power). Really - almost anything I do other than browsing activates the dGPU.

And the Radeons are faster than the Iris Pro 580.

You're right, the 0.1% is not the point (although I did enjoy mentioning that it is faster - the reason is, in my opinion, the lower power draw when not using the dGPU. Sure, maybe yields too. But we don't really know.

But whatever their reason was, I think it was the better choice for users too.

I am not sure how much power the Iris Pro spends, but the CPU is 45W while, for the first time, the dGPUs are lower than the CPU - 35W. It would be funny if the dGPUs actually used less power than the integrated one It is quite possible that putting the Iris Pro 580 inside would actually be pointless, because you'd just turn on the Radeons permanently and have both better performance and battery life.

I think they were forced to use Iris Pros in previous MacBooks because they offered versions without dGPUs. But now that every MBP 15" has a dGPU, and that those dGPUs are highly efficient (really, Polaris kicks ass in this regard) - why not offer a solution that offers a lower power requirement for trivial tasks?

Where do you think you'll actually need the Iris Pro 580? For anything that requires even a little more performance, the Radeons will kick in. You'll only be using the integrated GPU to browse websites (in fact, some of the websites with 3D content activate the dGPU too!) and email and Finder. And for that, you won't really see a difference between the 530 and Iris Pro.

Do you disagree? (honest question)

The Iris Pro 580 actually would use much less energy than a dGPu - the 45w envelope is for both CPU and GPU. Just think for a moment if we had a iGPU version of the 580 model and one with the dGPU, at load, the dGPU would die so much faster.

Also it's worrying if the dGPU is always on - this would be an enormous hit on battery, heat emissions and noise. In fact I know this has already been a problem for many and they have had to force themselves to manually disable the dGPU.

The 530 is actually slower than previous generation rMBP 15" iGPU's, and they didn't suffer from poor battery due to a powerful iGPU, so I don't really feel there is any noticeable significant differences in battery between the 530/580 - there will be some, but would be welcomed to not see UI lag.

Sometimes we have to remember, macOS isn't perfect and suffers many times with UI and has for many different models - and the culprit has always been graphical issue. The idea the dGPU will needing to turn on when running multiple monitors and resizing/browsing the internet - to not have UI lag, is scary.

I would want the dGPU to only turn on when it's actually needed and if we had an Iris Pro 580, it wouldn't be often - saving battery life, heat and noise emissions.

 

[koyoot]

The Iris Pro 580 actually would use much less energy than a dGPu - the 45w envelope is for both CPU and GPU. Just think for a moment if we had a iGPU version of the 580 model and one with the dGPU, at load, the dGPU would die so much faster.

Skull Canyon NUC with 6770HQ and Iris Pro 580. And it was version with ONLY PCIe M.2 SSD. http://www.pcworld.com/article/3074...n-nuc-smashes-all-mini-pc-preconceptions.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10343/the-intel-skull-canyon-nuc6i7kyk-minipc-review/7
75W consumed, on average by whole system.

Use this picture to visualize how it would work in Laptop, where you have Display to power, from 85W power supply.

And one last bit. Answer yourself, how come Intel i7 6700K with 4 GHz base clock is rated at 91W, but consumes under load 110W of power.

TDP is how much heat the package generates. Not how much power it consumes, these days.

 

[Ma2k5]

Skull Canyon NUC with 6770HQ and Iris Pro 580. And it was version with ONLY PCIe M.2 SSD. http://www.pcworld.com/article/3074...n-nuc-smashes-all-mini-pc-preconceptions.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10343/the-intel-skull-canyon-nuc6i7kyk-minipc-review/7
75W consumed, on average by whole system.

Use this picture to visualize how it would work in Laptop, where you have Display to power, from 85W power supply.

And one last bit. Answer yourself, how come Intel i7 6700K with 4 GHz base clock is rated at 91W, but consumes under load 110W of power.

TDP is how much heat the package generates. Not how much power it consumes, these days.

Not to be stubborn but these graphs don't seem to mean much to me. Is there a comparison to previous generation quad core Iris pros under load - and a comparison to today's 530?
The graphs are comparing non comparative CPU and also total load is different and could vary depending on system setup and many other factors.

 

[ixxx69]

Sometimes we have to remember, macOS isn't perfect and suffers many times with UI and has for many different models - and the culprit has always been graphical issue. The idea the dGPU will needing to turn on when running multiple monitors and resizing/browsing the internet - to not have UI lag, is scary.

I would want the dGPU to only turn on when it's actually needed and if we had an Iris Pro 580, it wouldn't be often - saving battery life, heat and noise emissions.

There are good points from both sides, and while I understand Apple's thinking on this, I'd probably take the 580 as well all else being equal. However, I think you have it just a tiny bit backwards...

It's not just raw speed, and it's not just raw wattage/battery life, it's also cooling. It would take additional cooling capacity to keep the 580 version humming along. Keep in mind that those listed "wattages" we throw around are actually the TDP (essentially the CPU's thermal envelope). Even though there all 45w parts, a faster part is going to generate more heat and use more power than a slower part (something about the laws of thermodynamics or something ).

Apple needs to design the cooling for the laptop to accommodate the hottest CPU and dGPU they're going to put in their system. By bumping up to the 580, they'd have to design the entire laptop around the CPU cooling requirements of that part. By relying on the dGPU for GPU intensive tasks, they can keep the cooling capacity to that of the 530 part. As we can guess, Apple wants to go with the absolute minimum necessary to keep the laptop as think and light as possible.

I'm aware the iGPU/dGPU switching has a checkered history, especially on PC laptops, but as with most of this technology, it's greatly improved over the years. The OS and apps switch between the iGPU and dGPU continuously and instantaneously for best balance of performance and power management. There shouldn't be any noticeable lag even when connected to two 5K displays. Of course, as usual, Apple is designing for the 95% of typical usage scenarios, not the 5% where super power users will always find a way to max out the hardware. I mean, anyone can open up two dozen apps and then hit the Mission Control key and see some lag, and then whine everyday on MacRumors about how slow the UI is.

I disagree a lot with Apple on certain stuff, but I don't know why so many people (and this is not at all directed at Ma2k5) think Apple engineers are a bunch of penny-pinching idiots who are just trying to pass off a crummy product to the masses. Again, people can debate whether it would have been more worthwhile to keep the laptop thicker/heavier, but Apple considered and tested dozens of different configurations and arrived at their lineup with what they think is the best balances of performance, portability and price with the technology available.

 

[Ma2k5]

There are good points from both sides, and while I understand Apple's thinking on this, I'd probably take the 580 as well all else being equal. However, I think you have it just a tiny bit backwards...

It's not just raw speed, and it's not just raw wattage/battery life, it's also cooling. It would take additional cooling capacity to keep the 580 version humming along. Keep in mind that those listed "wattages" we throw around are actually the TDP (essentially the CPU's thermal envelope). Even though there all 45w parts, a faster part is going to generate more heat and use more power than a slower part (something about the laws of thermodynamics or something ).

Apple needs to design the cooling for the laptop to accommodate the hottest CPU and dGPU they're going to put in their system. By bumping up to the 580, they'd have to design the entire laptop around the CPU cooling requirements of that part. By relying on the dGPU for GPU intensive tasks, they can keep the cooling capacity to that of the 530 part. As we can guess, Apple wants to go with the absolute minimum necessary to keep the laptop as think and light as possible.

I'm aware the iGPU/dGPU switching has a checkered history, especially on PC laptops, but as with most of this technology, it's greatly improved over the years. The OS and apps switch between the iGPU and dGPU continuously and instantaneously for best balance of performance and power management. There shouldn't be any noticeable lag even when connected to two 5K displays. Of course, as usual, Apple is designing for the 95% of typical usage scenarios, not the 5% where super power users will always find a way to max out the hardware. I mean, anyone can open up two dozen apps and then hit the Mission Control key and see some lag, and then whine everyday on MacRumors about how slow the UI is.

I disagree a lot with Apple on certain stuff, but I don't know why so many people (and this is not at all directed at Ma2k5) think Apple engineers are a bunch of penny-pinching idiots who are just trying to pass off a crummy product to the masses. Again, people can debate whether it would have been more worthwhile to keep the laptop thicker/heavier, but Apple considered and tested dozens of different configurations and arrived at their lineup with what they think is the best balances of performance, portability and price with the technology available.

I do know what you are saying - I guess with Apple historically using Iris Pro graphics, it was a little shocking to see them use something even weaker. I don't think Apple wanted it that way though, just the hand they was dealt by Intel. For example, they could have used the GT2E gpu for the non touch but we can see that used the GT3E, something not other manufacturers tried to do (only a few laptops out there perhaps).

I think Apple wasn't worried about heat or power requirements of the 580 - I think Apple would have been able t engineer around that succsssfully - it was down to Intels supply imo. But I could be wrong, we'd have to wait for Apple to have their say to be sure.

 

[leman]

And again a shameless link to my older post that might be relevant to this discussion

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ons-about-the-mbp-2016.2013340/#post-23879104
[doublepost=1478987615][/doublepost]

I do know what you are saying - I guess with Apple historically using Iris Pro graphics, it was a little shocking to see them use something even weaker. I don't think Apple wanted it that way though, just the hand they was dealt by Intel. For example, they could have used the GT2E gpu for the non touch but we can see that used the GT3E, something not other manufacturers tried to do (only a few laptops out there perhaps).

As I have speculated in a number of threads here, I believe that Intel simply can't ship enough Iris Pro-enabled Skylake CPUs to satisfy Apple's demand. The production might be sufficient for an odd workstation here and there, but Apple's shipments of the 15" MBP dwarfs all those.

 

[SteveJobzniak]

HEY COMPUTER NERDS! STOP TALKING ABOUT KABY LAKE THIS SKY LAKE THAT!

CAN WE GET SOME LOVE FOR THE TIMBER LAKE?

Coming on the MacBook Pro 2018.

 

[killawat]

As I have speculated in a number of threads here, I believe that Intel simply can't ship enough Iris Pro-enabled Skylake CPUs to satisfy Apple's demand.

Exactly. There is no conspiracy theory, Iris Pro parts are harder to make, and there seems to be too few of them.

 

[aevan]

Exactly. There is no conspiracy theory, Iris Pro parts are harder to make, and there seems to be too few of them.

Yeah, that must be it. But even with that in mind, is there any real benefit to Iris Pro 580? I mean, since we'll be using the Radeons anyway? The only way it could be useful is if you'd force the system to use only integrated GPUs. I did it with my MBP, but it's a hack and reliable.

So, my question is - if the HD 530 doesn't lag running Safari and Mail and Finder and whatever - and I think it will not - is there really a benefit of having the Iris in there? We'll be using the dGPU for anything more anyway. As I mentioned several times - the dGPU activates for anything even slightly more demanding and my experiences were very positive with GPU switching - on a laptop from 2013.

 

[leman]

Yeah, that must be it. But even with that in mind, is there any real benefit to Iris Pro 580?

The large L4 cache is a benefit in itself. Also, distributing compute workflows over two GPUs (although the story gets more complicated here, with throttling and whatnot)

 

[aevan]

The large L4 cache is a benefit in itself. Also, distributing compute workflows over two GPUs (although the story gets more complicated here, with throttling and whatnot)

I'm guessing we should wait for reviews and benchmarks. But still, saying this is somehow some underpowered CPU is - in my opinion - wrong. I seriously doubt these will be anything but blazing fast. We'll see.

 

[killawat]

Yeah, that must be it. But even with that in mind, is there any real benefit to Iris Pro 580? I mean, since we'll be using the Radeons anyway? The only way it could be useful is if you'd force the system to use only integrated GPUs. I did it with my MBP, but it's a hack and reliable.

With Apple abandoning dGPU on the base 15 since 2013, I don't think anyone saw the new lineup coming out of Apple with dGPU standard (although I speculate it was the case because Iris Pro kaby parts weren't coming out any time soon). This seems to have driven up the price substantially (along with all the other new things as well).

Iris Pro could have worked out for some people. Some people were hit really hard with dGPU failures, sometime encountering them multiple times across the MBP lineup. I had both the 8600m and the 650m die on me, thats two separate MacBooks, and its a hassle. If there were an iris pro solution and a good eGPU that worked out of the box, i'd probably go for that instead. Not wanting to gamble with dGPU. i've "danced" multiple times, my 330m in the 2010 MBP, has worked phenomenally, as has the Radeon one in my 2006 MBP, but when it fails , it fails hard. I'm 2:2, I don't like them odds.

 

[aevan]

With Apple abandoning dGPU on the base 15 since 2013, I don't think anyone saw the new lineup coming out of Apple with dGPU standard (although I speculate it was the case because Iris Pro kaby parts weren't coming out any time soon). This seems to have driven up the price substantially (along with all the other new things as well).

Iris Pro could have worked out for some people. Some people were hit really hard with dGPU failures, sometime encountering them multiple times across the MBP lineup. I had both the 8600m and the 650m die on me, thats two separate MacBooks, and its a hassle. If there were an iris pro solution and a good eGPU that worked out of the box, i'd probably go for that instead. Not wanting to gamble with dGPU. Again, i've "danced" multiple time, my 330m in the 2010 MBP, has worked phenomenally, as has the Radeon one in my 2006 MBP, but when it fails , it fails hard.

Ok, but that is if they had models with just the integrated GPUs, right? I mean, I understand why a Iris Pro-only MBP could, perhaps, be better for some people. Like, if they don't need the additional GPU performance, but want better battery life (presuming the Iris Pro is better than the Radeons) and lower cost. But I don't think a Radeon-equipped MBP would have any benefits of having the Iris Pro instead of the HD 530. Or am I missing something?

As for failures, you make a point - but I'm always hoping they don't fail. My Apple devices were very realiable so far. And I'm always getting AppleCare for my Macs, so, I'm not that worried, at least for 3 years.

 

[leman]

I'm guessing we should wait for reviews and benchmarks. But still, saying this is somehow some underpowered CPU is - in my opinion - wrong. I seriously doubt these will be anything but blazing fast. We'll see.

Oh, it's certainly not underpowered by any means.

 

[killawat]

But I don't think a Radeon-equipped MBP would have any benefits of having the Iris Pro instead of the HD 530.

correct.

 

[aevan]

Oh, it's certainly not underpowered by any means.

Glad we agree. My post was mostly directed to people (and I've even seen tech journalists) saying that MBP is using underpowered CPUs - because "Kaby Lake exists" And then there were people saying it's underpowered because it's not the "new" Skylake. Either way, thanks for the discussion.

 

[hj576]

So I was watching a youtube Video comparing A Macbook Pro (2015) with FCPX vs a Workstation PC (32GB RAM)for video editing, to see which works faster (Spoiler Alert - Macbook Pro Kicked ass ). And i was reading comment and there was the usual "LOL Macbook uses outdated Parts", Which got me a bit ticked and I ended up writing this, thought would share it here as well

Here we go couple of corrections to those who say Apple is using out dated parts. Its a long great.
TL;DR - They used the best available components.

1) Not DDR, LPDDR3, LPDDR4 isn't out yet, so for power consumption, LPDDR3 is the best available option on market
2) The new Macbook Pro's are using some of the best Chipset available on the market. Lets start with the 15 inch and work our way down
15 inch model use a quadcore Skylake i7 with a TDP of 35W. Yes its 6th Gen, but there are currently no 7th gen Quad Core chips in the market. This is the intel 6700HQ chip. Its one of the best HQ chips available in market, the only better one Intel® Core™ i7-6970HQ which comes with Intel Iris Pro Graphics, but those arent widely available as the yield is not good enough to cater the demand of apple
the 13 inch Touch Bar has a Dual Core 6th Generation Intel i5 Processor. This is the Intel® Core™ i5-6267U Chipset. Its a 28W TDP chip, this is also the best U series processor available in the market, The one above this is Intel® Core™ i5-6287U Processor which you can upgrade to if you BTO. This is a 6th Generation Skylake processor, but there are no equivalent 28W TDP 7th generation processor available in the market yet.
The equivalent 7th Generation Kabylake processors for the ones mentioned above, wont hit the market till next year, so Apple has used the best available chipsets for their laptops and its not out dated.
Now the finally non touch.
This uses an Intel dual core i5 with a TDP of 15W. The exact Processor is Intel® Core™ i5-6360U, and Intel® Core™ i7-6660U if you decided to BTO.
Now this is the only processor that has an equivalent 7th Generation Processor in the market. The Intel i5- 7200U(The One used in XPS 13) and the Intel i7-7500 U(The ones used in Razor Blade Stealth). Both are 15W TDP Processors , and both give around 10% better performance than then their equivalent 6th generation counterpart (which is a small boost). The major difference here is that the 6th Generations CPU's that apple has used come with Intel Irsi 540 integrated Graphics, while the 7th Generation CPU available in Dell XPS 13 and Razor Blade Stealth use Intel® HD Graphics 620.
The Intel Iris Graphics come with an eDRAM of 64MB while the Intel HD Graphics has non. The Iris Graphics has 48 Execution Units vs the 24 of HD Graphics and Iris Graphics give a computation of 806.4 GFLOPS compared to 384 – 403.2 GFLOS of Intel HD. Simply put, Intel Iris Graphics from 6th Generation Processor, Perform twice as good as the Intel HD Graphics from 7th Generation Intel Processors.
So when you compare these two processors, With the 6th Generation Processor (Compared to 7th Generation) you get approx 10% less computational performance, and around 50% better Graphical Performance. Again 7th Generation Processors with Intel Iris Graphics are not available in the market. So apple had to decide, either chose Kaby Lake Processor with slightly better processing power and sacrifice a lot of iGPU, or choose Sky Lake Processor and sacrifice a little on processing power while getting double the graphical performance of the Kaby Lake counterpart.
I think Apple made the right deicision
All the links if you want to cross check the information
Skylake i5 Processor Used in Macbook Pro w/o Touch Bar http://ark.intel.com/products/91156/Intel-Core-i5-6360U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz
Kaby Lake i7 Processor http://ark.intel.com/products/95451/Intel-Core-i7-7500U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz-
Kaby Lake i5 Processor http://ark.intel.com/products/95443/Intel-Core-i5-7200U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz
Information about graphical information of the two iGPU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HD_and_Iris_Graphics

 

[NickPhamUK]

So I was watching a youtube Video comparing A Macbook Pro (2015) with FCPX vs a Workstation PC (32GB RAM)for video editing, to see which works faster (Spoiler Alert - Macbook Pro Kicked ass ). And i was reading comment and there was the usual "LOL Macbook uses outdated Parts", Which got me a bit ticked and I ended up writing this, thought would share it here as well

Here we go couple of corrections to those who say Apple is using out dated parts. Its a long great.
TL;DR - They used the best available components.

1) Not DDR, LPDDR3, LPDDR4 isn't out yet, so for power consumption, LPDDR3 is the best available option on market
2) The new Macbook Pro's are using some of the best Chipset available on the market. Lets start with the 15 inch and work our way down
15 inch model use a quadcore Skylake i7 with a TDP of 35W. Yes its 6th Gen, but there are currently no 7th gen Quad Core chips in the market. This is the intel 6700HQ chip. Its one of the best HQ chips available in market, the only better one Intel® Core™ i7-6970HQ which comes with Intel Iris Pro Graphics, but those arent widely available as the yield is not good enough to cater the demand of apple
the 13 inch Touch Bar has a Dual Core 6th Generation Intel i5 Processor. This is the Intel® Core™ i5-6267U Chipset. Its a 28W TDP chip, this is also the best U series processor available in the market, The one above this is Intel® Core™ i5-6287U Processor which you can upgrade to if you BTO. This is a 6th Generation Skylake processor, but there are no equivalent 28W TDP 7th generation processor available in the market yet.
The equivalent 7th Generation Kabylake processors for the ones mentioned above, wont hit the market till next year, so Apple has used the best available chipsets for their laptops and its not out dated.
Now the finally non touch.
This uses an Intel dual core i5 with a TDP of 15W. The exact Processor is Intel® Core™ i5-6360U, and Intel® Core™ i7-6660U if you decided to BTO.
Now this is the only processor that has an equivalent 7th Generation Processor in the market. The Intel i5- 7200U(The One used in XPS 13) and the Intel i7-7500 U(The ones used in Razor Blade Stealth). Both are 15W TDP Processors , and both give around 10% better performance than then their equivalent 6th generation counterpart (which is a small boost). The major difference here is that the 6th Generations CPU's that apple has used come with Intel Irsi 540 integrated Graphics, while the 7th Generation CPU available in Dell XPS 13 and Razor Blade Stealth use Intel® HD Graphics 620.
The Intel Iris Graphics come with an eDRAM of 64MB while the Intel HD Graphics has non. The Iris Graphics has 48 Execution Units vs the 24 of HD Graphics and Iris Graphics give a computation of 806.4 GFLOPS compared to 384 – 403.2 GFLOS of Intel HD. Simply put, Intel Iris Graphics from 6th Generation Processor, Perform twice as good as the Intel HD Graphics from 7th Generation Intel Processors.
So when you compare these two processors, With the 6th Generation Processor (Compared to 7th Generation) you get approx 10% less computational performance, and around 50% better Graphical Performance. Again 7th Generation Processors with Intel Iris Graphics are not available in the market. So apple had to decide, either chose Kaby Lake Processor with slightly better processing power and sacrifice a lot of iGPU, or choose Sky Lake Processor and sacrifice a little on processing power while getting double the graphical performance of the Kaby Lake counterpart.
I think Apple made the right deicision
All the links if you want to cross check the information
Skylake i5 Processor Used in Macbook Pro w/o Touch Bar http://ark.intel.com/products/91156/Intel-Core-i5-6360U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz
Kaby Lake i7 Processor http://ark.intel.com/products/95451/Intel-Core-i7-7500U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz-
Kaby Lake i5 Processor http://ark.intel.com/products/95443/Intel-Core-i5-7200U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz
Information about graphical information of the two iGPU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HD_and_Iris_Graphics

Most of your analysis is on point, except I think the MacBook Pro 15" (2016) uses a 45W CPU, not 35W.

The MBP non TB is actually quite a good buy, even at $1499. People seem to forget that the model comes with 256GB as default, whereas last year's MBP 13" comes with 128GB. If you upgrade the last year model to 256GB, the price is pretty much similar anyways.

Compared to last year's 256GB MBP 13", you get a brighter screen, similar CPU performance (based on Geekbench. May throttle more, but for the most part I think the performance is similar), faster RAM, much faster SSD, much more GPU power, thinner and lighter, and a choice of Space Gray. The cons are probably the keyboard (depends on the user, for me I don't like the new keyboard, too noisy), and loss of ports (I never use the SD slot, HDMI, and even my mouse is wireless - again, almost no issue here. The only thing is that I can't connect to my iPhone 6S).

Compared to the 256GB MBA 13", it just blows the Air out of the water, I don't need to elaborate on this .

Overall, this machine is a very good purchase, but people like to complain a lot. Lol.

 

[inhalexhale1]

I usually agree with your posts but you are wrong about this one I'm afraid. Having an Iris Pro 580 over a 530 is so much better I don't know where to begin. There will be many times the dGPu won't be used but a performance difference will be noticeable with the Iris Pro 580. I am willing to bet a lot of UI lag present in the new 15", particularly when running more than one monitor.

Also to compare the upgraded CPU which has only 0.1ghz difference to proclaim it as the faster processor is a bit meh. I think you are trying too hard to look for the positives of Apple.

I'm guessing they used the current chip because they couldn't get enough yield on the Iris Graphics. They probably would have also offered an iGPU version if they were not forced into this crappy 530.

I think 99.9% would take the Iris Pro 580 version over the current.

Agree with this. If they were using the CPU with the 580, there would probably be an iGPU version. But I doubt the pricing would be lower.

 

[hj576]

Most of your analysis is on point, except I think the MacBook Pro 15" (2016) uses a 45W CPU, not 35W.

The MBP non TB is actually quite a good buy, even at $1499. People seem to forget that the model comes with 256GB as default, whereas last year's MBP 13" comes with 128GB. If you upgrade the last year model to 256GB, the price is pretty much similar anyways.

Compared to last year's 256GB MBP 13", you get a brighter screen, similar CPU performance (based on Geekbench. May throttle more, but for the most part I think the performance is similar), faster RAM, much faster SSD, much more GPU power, thinner and lighter, and a choice of Space Gray. The cons are probably the keyboard (depends on the user, for me I don't like the new keyboard, too noisy), and loss of ports (I never use the SD slot, HDMI, and even my mouse is wireless - again, almost no issue here. The only thing is that I can't connect to my iPhone 6S).

Compared to the 256GB MBA 13", it just blows the Air out of the water, I don't need to elaborate on this .

Overall, this machine is a very good purchase, but people like to complain a lot. Lol.

I wrote 35W , my bad
I actually ended up doing a video on the this for my youtube channel Its rendering at the moment. Cant wait Till i get the Macbook Pro Tomorrow, so my editing can get better. On my current machine the time is the choppiest thing avaialble and its next to impossible to edit it properly.

 

[NickPhamUK]

I wrote 35W , my bad
I actually ended up doing a video on the this for my youtube channel Its rendering at the moment. Cant wait Till i get the Macbook Pro Tomorrow, so my editing can get better. On my current machine the time is the choppiest thing avaialble and its next to impossible to edit it properly.

Which model are you getting?

More importantly, Space Gray or Silver?