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anyone else surprised by how little extra battery on Broadwel Retina 13 inch MacBook

smileman

smileman

macrumors Maltese
Original poster
Oct 23, 2011
151
20
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I heard reports that Broadwell should be able to provide a 30% battery boost. However, the new Broadwell 13" MBPr only has an hour more battery than the previous generation?

Is there any reason to believe that the 15" MBPr update coming later this year will achieve the 30% extra battery life, or are people also expecting it to only get an extra hour or so?

Thanks.
 
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smileman said:
someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I heard reports that Broadwell should be able to provide a 30% boost battery. However, the new Broadwell Pro only has an hour more battery than the previous generation?

is there any reason to believe that the 15 inch MacBook Pro update coming later this year will achieve the 30% extra battery life, or are people also expecting it to only get an extra hour or so?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I think it's a combination of the bump up in clock speed, the more powerful graphics and an overestimate from Intel. I do notice a battery improvement over the last gen, but not much.
 
I think you misunderstood

smileman said:
someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I heard reports that Broadwell should be able to provide a 30% boost battery. However, the new Broadwell Pro only has an hour more battery than the previous generation?

is there any reason to believe that the 15 inch MacBook Pro update coming later this year will achieve the 30% extra battery life, or are people also expecting it to only get an extra hour or so?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

The specs say that the chip is 30% more efficient however the battery in your mac is used to power a lot more than just a chip. The retina screen is the big power draw here, plus ram, bluetooth, wifi, sound etc etc.

Most of these things are no different in the new computer and so they still use the same amount of power...

An hour more was exactly what I was expecting.
 
smileman said:
someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I heard reports that Broadwell should be able to provide a 30% boost battery. However, the new Broadwell Pro only has an hour more battery than the previous generation?
Click to expand...
If Intel says 30 % then they mean probably a certain workflow on a Windows machine. OS X was already optimized for the longest possible battery life. So that leaves less room for improvements. I think the problem at the moment is that the drivers and code libraries are not really optimized for the new hardware. Give Apple 6+ months time to improve the OpenGL code and the iGPU driver.
 
30% - this the efficiency gain only on the CPU part of the notebook. Everything else is pretty much the same. CPU does not need that much power these days anyaway. So in the end Apple said the new Macs gain 1h (from 9h to 10h) -> around 10% extra.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
If Intel says 30 % then they mean probably a certain workflow on a Windows machine. OS X was already optimized for the longest possible battery life. So that leaves less room for improvements. I think the problem at the moment is that the drivers and code libraries are not really optimized for the new hardware. Give Apple 6+ months time to improve the OpenGL code and the iGPU driver.
Click to expand...

I'd be surprised if 'driver fixes' gave more battery life as Ivy Bridge/Haswell's battery life didn't significantly improve with driver releases. A new version of OS X potentially could, but the low hanging fruit has already been picked. One of the biggest reasons why Haswell got a significant battery life boost over Ivy Bridge despite being made on the same silicon process node is the active screen refresh built into the cpu/chipset. Ivy Bridge and previous cpu's had to stay awake to constantly refresh the screen even if displaying something static. Haswell and Broadwell both can sleep if the screen is static...

You might find a bigger battery life difference if you're stressing both the Haswell and Broadwell cpu's at 100% usage. In this case the difference between 14nm and 22nm should be more apparent. And since Apple only advertises 'light loads' for their battery life it doesn't show...
 
I'm coming from a cMBP, so to me the battery life is amazing.

My battery meter is obviously not calibrated yet as it tells me I have 17 hours remaining after a full charge. Don't I wish!
 
it's amdahl's law: if the cpu is only 1/3 of the total power, then improving the cpu by 30% improves the overall system by only about 10 percent. Then the 1 hour improvement makes sense.
 
Thank you everyone for clarifying.

Recognizing that a lot could change between now and SilverLake's release in terms of the new MBP design, OS, battery size, etc, but ceteris paribus what kind of battery life gains should we expect from SkyLake on the 13" and 15" MBPr, respectively?
 
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Samuelsan2001 said:
The specs say that the chip is 30% more efficient however the battery in your mac is used to power a lot more than just a chip. The retina screen is the big power draw here, plus ram, bluetooth, wifi, sound etc etc.

Most of these things are no different in the new computer and so they still use the same amount of power...

An hour more was exactly what I was expecting.
Click to expand...

This is it. The CPU may be 30% more battery efficient, but it doesn't change the constants, primarily the display. I'd bet if you turned off the internal display and plugged both machines into an external display the battery life gain would be closer to Intel's stated boost.
 
Well whatever happened to the ARM based MBP's? Those were all the rage in the rumor pages 6 months ago.
 
People make a huge deal out of the next best thing then when the next best thing is here they make a huge deal out of the next next best thing.

Such is life.
 
yjchua95 said:
ARM based MBPs went down the drain, because Core M came out.
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Pretty sure that went down the drain cause that's a bloody stupid decision.

All the programs that have been designed for OS X up until now would not run on an ARM processor ... We live in an x86 world, it'll stay that way for the forseeable future.

Compatibility > battery life.
 
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