Any benchmarks showing 7 vs 8 GPUS in the Air ?

[coorsleftfield]

Has anyone posted some benchmarks showing what difference having the 8th GPU makes in the Air ?

 

[turbineseaplane]

Great question that seems to have been largely unaddressed as yet.

It's a such a weird thing they've done there. It feels like very artificial and somewhat forced spec differentiation to create price tiers.

 

[KPOM]

Great question that seems to have been largely unaddressed as yet.

It's a such a weird thing they've done there. It feels like very artificial and somewhat forced spec differentiation to create price tiers.

It's more likely processor binning to reduce costs. Apple can salvage chips that have 1 defective GPU core by using them in the base MacBook Air.

 

[Herrpod]

Great question that seems to have been largely unaddressed as yet.

It's a such a weird thing they've done there. It feels like very artificial and somewhat forced spec differentiation to create price tiers.

It's a cost cutting measure. The alternative is they throw away the chips that barely weren't good enough for the Pro or higher end Air.

 

[trailmonkey]

Yeah there was an article last week about the 7 core. As above, it is expected that Apple is opting to use those 'defective' chips in a working machine at discount as opposed to binning them.

If I'm gonna hit the buy button then it'll probably be on a 16Gb MBA with the 7 core GPU. Don't want to spend any more for a 1st gen but have some hesitation about long term use in case those chips develop issues.

 

[coorsleftfield]

Yeah, I get why they are doing it,, just curious to see if someone has posted benchmarks showing the actual performance difference for 7 vs 8.. I also ordered the 7 core MBA, figuring that this machine would get trade-up next year when gen2 and a better web cam become available.

 

[KPOM]

Yeah, I get why they are doing it,, just curious to see if someone has posted benchmarks showing the actual performance difference for 7 vs 8.. I also ordered the 7 core MBA, figuring that this machine would get trade-up next year when gen2 and a better web cam become available.

I have an 8-core GPU model that just got delivered. I'll post the GeekBench Metal scores, so you can compare when you get the 7-core model.

 

[coorsleftfield]

It's going to be a while.. it hasn't even shipped.

 

[silentsim]

Yeah...this is my last debate. Looking at the 7 Core with 16GB ram...but wondering if i should just go to the 8core 512/16?

 

[LiE_]

Here's a Geekbench metal score for the 7 core GPU

 

[KPOM]

Here's a Geekbench metal score for the 7 core GPU

I just got 19841 on my 8-core GPU MacBook Air, so it isn't that much of a difference.

 

[KPOM]

Update: I re-ran and got 20,523, so that's about a 6-7% difference compared to the 7-core results.