the quad is a hot chip and draws a lot of power
there is not a quad for heat and battery life reasons
the fan would run pretty high a lot of the time and the battery life would be cut in half
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Beware: the Core i7 is probably not worth it this time
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the quad is a hot chip and draws a lot of power
there is not a quad for heat and battery life reasons
the fan would run pretty high a lot of the time and the battery life would be cut in half
the same reason apple didnt use the Geforce GT330M 1GB ... to save power and have better battery life.
because battery life sells , when he said 9 hours people was like 😱
Pretty much and I think unless batteries make a major advancement soon its gonna end up cornering Apple into a corner. They will have to restrict specs every refresh in order to keep their super life.
Next Tuesday
macrumors 6502a
I was pretty set on going to my local apple store tomorrow morning to pick up my first Mac. I was set on the 17" core i7/4gig ram/500HD/512vram with 4/l3 cache but after reading this thread im confused.....Is the 17" core i5/4gig ram/500hd/512vram with 3/l3 cache a better deal? I thought the 2.66 i7 was the fastest of all the macbook pros? How much difference is the extra 1mb of l3 cache on the i7?
I really want the 512MB video card option, but I'm now debating whether I want i7 or i5. Because of the video card situation, this basically makes it a decision of 15" versus 17" (17" will require upgrade price of $180 to get the i7), since you can't get 512MB on the 15" without i7.
Yes. Apple has totally abandoned professionals and caters to college student crowd with these underpowered laptops with decent battery life.
i7 CPUs offer roughly a 5% performance boost over i5. That 5% makes the i7 obviously the fastest but the actual difference is very minimal. It really comes down to does a 5% boost equal $200 in your eyes.
Eidorian
macrumors Penryn
You'd be limited to GDDR3 to get that 1 GB of RAM.
Also you're not going going to consume more power going to 1 GB of VRAM.
Next Tuesday
macrumors 6502a
Well what does the L3 cache do? i always thought the higher the cache the faster the computer..Im most likely wrong....the core 2 duos has like 6mb cache and the new ones only have 3/4mb cache.
The extra cache is a big part of why the i7 has the extra performance. Generally around most review sites its deemed the extra cost to get the
i7-620M is not worth it for the minimal performance increase. That 200 dollars it costs can be used for other things or even upgrades in Ram,HDD etc
The biggest advantage the i7-620M has over the i5-540M is probably the 3.33 GHz turboboost vs 3.06
With those charts showing that power consumption is considerably greater on the i7 even though the i5 and i7 have the same TDP, what does that ultimately say about which MBP will run warmer? Does the wattage data completely trump the TDP data, meaning that an i7 will feel noticeable warmer and render the fans more audible?
L3 cache stands for Level 3 Cache, it's the third of the three memory caches present inside the CPU, and also the biggest and the slowest one of the three. It's usually shared between the two cores and its mission its just to serve as the last cache to look for CPU instructions that are read from RAM.
The truth is that from a consumer point of view there little difference between 3 and 4MB of L3 Cache.
Am I right in assuming that on a dual core it's going to turbo a lot under load?
If, so, that's pretty important to go to 3.33...
Same Thermal Design + More Consumption = More Heat
If the charts are correct, it means that the i7 warmer than the i5, even when idle.
Jason Beck
macrumors 68000
Good thread - it is important to highlight the fact that the MBPs are NOT running a proper i7 (i.e. the i7-720,820 etc) with quad cores. The absence of a quad core option completely rules these machines out as a purchase for me, and it is especially annoying when you see i7-720 in several of the Sony F series, and options up to the i7-920 from the custom manufacturers. Lack of Blu-ray is also bad news, and only having the 330M when you can go up to a 128-core 285 is also a downer.
Apple seem to have given up on the mobile power user altogether now.
Apple seem to have given up on the mobile power user altogether now.
Yep, I had a quad core Sony Vaio F. Pretty nice computer and it was exactly 1/2 as fast (based on render times) as my overclocked i7 920 desktop, which I thought was pretty impressive.
Hey very interesting post,
I was wondering, all benchmarks were made with the processor PLUS their integrated Intel HD Graphics.
Would it change if they test it with the Geforce 330M?
I was wondering, all benchmarks were made with the processor PLUS their integrated Intel HD Graphics.
Would it change if they test it with the Geforce 330M?
using 15" i7 / high-res for Final Cut Pro and Lightroom
hi,
this wil be my first MBP or portable Mac of any kind. i currently use a Mac Pro for serious work and a Dell mini 10v hackintosh for browsing, skyping, checking mail and sometimes dumping images to when on location via Lightroom.
lately i have realised that i would like to actually edit stuff when mobile - and 10v just won't cut it 🙂. the relatively recent increase in color gamut of MBP screens has finally made me consider MBP's and i like the idea of editing films too however the 17" is just not mobile enough and the new matte, high-res 15" option is very appealing.
My queries:
- Technically speaking, given i will be editing very large 21mp RAW images and editing massive 1080p files in Final Cut, does it make sense for me to go the i7 route with my MBP given the extra VRAM - will this give me a crucial performance bump compared to the i5 option?
- Final Cut Studio 4 will probably be fully 64bit and will very likely allow intensive tasks like editing h.256 footage in real-time. Again, will the i7 route with more VRAM help me here? However perhaps this is a moot point given that only certain video-cards will allow editing h.264 in real time...
- I plan on visiting a store soon to eye what a 15" screen looks like in the flesh with those 33% extra pixels the high-res option will give. However, anyone seen one already? Did you have to squint and did it really give a decent real-estate bump? Could be quite crucial for me given all those panels on Lightroom and Final Cut Pro...and i really don't want to lug-around a 17"
Thanks.
hi,
this wil be my first MBP or portable Mac of any kind. i currently use a Mac Pro for serious work and a Dell mini 10v hackintosh for browsing, skyping, checking mail and sometimes dumping images to when on location via Lightroom.
lately i have realised that i would like to actually edit stuff when mobile - and 10v just won't cut it 🙂. the relatively recent increase in color gamut of MBP screens has finally made me consider MBP's and i like the idea of editing films too however the 17" is just not mobile enough and the new matte, high-res 15" option is very appealing.
My queries:
- Technically speaking, given i will be editing very large 21mp RAW images and editing massive 1080p files in Final Cut, does it make sense for me to go the i7 route with my MBP given the extra VRAM - will this give me a crucial performance bump compared to the i5 option?
- Final Cut Studio 4 will probably be fully 64bit and will very likely allow intensive tasks like editing h.256 footage in real-time. Again, will the i7 route with more VRAM help me here? However perhaps this is a moot point given that only certain video-cards will allow editing h.264 in real time...
- I plan on visiting a store soon to eye what a 15" screen looks like in the flesh with those 33% extra pixels the high-res option will give. However, anyone seen one already? Did you have to squint and did it really give a decent real-estate bump? Could be quite crucial for me given all those panels on Lightroom and Final Cut Pro...and i really don't want to lug-around a 17"
Thanks.
Interesting, but I wouldn't bury the i7 because of a single benchmark... The graphic benchmark is not relevant since we use a 330M for heavy duty graphics.
I still went for the i7. Extra power consumption is a drag but I hardly ever use mine without mains power.
If my MBP is going to last me several years, I may as well get the best chip I can afford now. Less pressure to upgrade further (2/3 yrs) down the line.
If my MBP is going to last me several years, I may as well get the best chip I can afford now. Less pressure to upgrade further (2/3 yrs) down the line.