CINEBENCH! AMD Radeon R9 M370X

[rence92]

has anyone on this thread every gamed or done intensive tasks day in and day out on any MacBook Pro? I just want to make sure that this computer can handle this type of use case.

I've used my 2010 Macbook Pro quite a lot for LoL, Borderlands 2, and Tera in the past. During these times, it would get really hot (north of 65C) and have the fan on high. Although it lasted, I needed to get the logic board replaced, but you could also argue that it was due to a manufacturing defect (they had a recall on maxed out many 2010 Macbook pros).

I'm kind of worried for the exact same reason - I want to make sure that this thing lasts because it sounds like its bound to explode considering how loud the fans are. I've yet to install Bootcamp, but am hoping that the fans won't be as loud whilst having an increase in performance. The heat + fan issue has actually made me consider other laptops with the mentioned GTX 900 GPUs. Not sure if it's worth it since you said that Windows machines break down easily.

 

[AR444]

Hey guys, I recently got my hands on the 15-inch retina with the dGPU. Haven't had bootcamp installed so I can't really test the performance, but I tried playing Borderlands 2 and noticed that the fans ran louder than my old 2010 MBP. Tried to measure the sound levels and it read 60-65 DB. Is this normal?

My fans get loud also. This card eats up more power and seems to get hotter than my previous 2012 pro.

 

[sebseb]

has anyone on this thread every gamed or done intensive tasks day in and day out on any MacBook Pro? I just want to make sure that this computer can handle this type of use case.

I used to play lots of games on my 2010MBP (Specs in my sig.) When I started gaming with it, I had two 120mm fans blowing air and cooling it down.
But last year I decided to play without them and I played COD MW3 probably 6-8 hours a day on high settings and eventually it died.

If you are going to game, make a nice cooling rig for it. I even did this for my PS4! I placed 3 fans around it. It's loud but I bought some nice headphones and this way I don't have a dead PS4 in 2 years.

By the way, when I had the similar setup for the MBP, the fans still hit 6000rpm but once I shut my game, the fans would rev down after 30-60seconds. Without that setup, the fans stayed at 6000 rpm for at least 5-6min!

 

[beerglass007]

Hello,

i bought mine in the apple store yesterday. (MacBook 15" with 2,5GHz (i7 4870HQ) and R9 M370X).

I installed Bootcamp last night and did some Benchmarks under Windows 8.1 Professional 64Bit. Here the results (with the Standard driver):

SSD:
Screenshot AS SSD

3DMark 2011: Screenshot

3DMark (Fire Strike etc):
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2


I will do some more Benches next week - Till now everything works fine (Borderlands 2 maxed out on 1920x1200 works like a charm).

PS: Catalyst recognizes it as 8800M series... Screenshot Catalyst

Was these tests done with the free version of 3Dmark11 ?

I'm trying to compare against my iMac and using the free version its limited to 720p. I'm trying to work out what video setting these were taken at

Thanks

 

[MacDevMike]

Was these tests done with the free version of 3Dmark11 ?

I'm trying to compare against my iMac and using the free version its limited to 720p. I'm trying to work out what video setting these were taken at

Thanks

Not sure what iMac you have, but I'm about to order the 27" iMac 5k with a m295x, and I can provide the following:

m370x in a 2015 MBP (3DMark11): p4040
m295x in a 2015 iMac 5k i7 (3DMark11): p9467

m370x in a 2015 MBP (FireStrike): 2337
m295x in a 2015 iMac 5k i7 (3DMark11): 6367

iMac is about 2.5 times faster. It does have more pixels to push, but at 2560x1600 gaming, it will put down 60 fps in most games.

 

[AR444]

I used to play lots of games on my 2010MBP (Specs in my sig.) When I started gaming with it, I had two 120mm fans blowing air and cooling it down.
But last year I decided to play without them and I played COD MW3 probably 6-8 hours a day on high settings and eventually it died.

If you are going to game, make a nice cooling rig for it. I even did this for my PS4! I placed 3 fans around it. It's loud but I bought some nice headphones and this way I don't have a dead PS4 in 2 years.

By the way, when I had the similar setup for the MBP, the fans still hit 6000rpm but once I shut my game, the fans would rev down after 30-60seconds. Without that setup, the fans stayed at 6000 rpm for at least 5-6min!

I plan on maybe 5 hours a week max. How long did it last you ? Overall this new graphics card is better than the 750M. I play mostly blizzard games and 60+ frames per second is fine for me. My 2012 could not do that.

 

[Cuniac]

I used to play lots of games on my 2010MBP (Specs in my sig.) When I started gaming with it, I had two 120mm fans blowing air and cooling it down.
But last year I decided to play without them and I played COD MW3 probably 6-8 hours a day on high settings and eventually it died.

If you are going to game, make a nice cooling rig for it. I even did this for my PS4! I placed 3 fans around it. It's loud but I bought some nice headphones and this way I don't have a dead PS4 in 2 years.

By the way, when I had the similar setup for the MBP, the fans still hit 6000rpm but once I shut my game, the fans would rev down after 30-60seconds. Without that setup, the fans stayed at 6000 rpm for at least 5-6min!

You should not have to worry about cooling your PS4 that much. Putting all those fans around it will cause it to pull more dust, and that's worse. As far as cooling the MBP, if your using it stationary then a laptop cooler stand can help, but its not a must do. Its more important to stay on top of fan health. download a tool that will show you what speed your fans are currently running at and check them once or twice a week. If you notice one stops responding, its time to take it in. I did this a caught a dead fan on my MBP last year. Sadly the MacBook will not let you know when a fan has died and if you let it go what's ever under that fan will go with it.

 

[sebseb]

I plan on maybe 5 hours a week max. How long did it last you ? Overall this new graphics card is better than the 750M. I play mostly blizzard games and 60+ frames per second is fine for me. My 2012 could not do that.

Mine died about a week ago, so that's about 4.8 years which isn't bad but I think It could have lasted another year easily and given me the chance to wait for skylake if I hadn't gamed too much. I should mention that I also dropped it multiple times...

Now I'm deciding if I should get the rMBP with AMD or not. I don't like extra fan noise. Does your fans kick in even when searching the web, keynotes or only games? And you said you get about 6 hours. Is that with gaming or daily stuff?

And Cuniac, my fan setup doesn't actually push air into the ps4 but instead they take the hot air from the back and push it out.

 

[Roderwald]

Was these tests done with the free version of 3Dmark11 ?

I'm trying to compare against my iMac and using the free version its limited to 720p. I'm trying to work out what video setting these were taken at

Thanks

Yep - Free Version. No customasation.

 

[rence92]

Mine died about a week ago, so that's about 4.8 years which isn't bad but I think It could have lasted another year easily and given me the chance to wait for skylake if I hadn't gamed too much. I should mention that I also dropped it multiple times...

Now I'm deciding if I should get the rMBP with AMD or not. I don't like extra fan noise. Does your fans kick in even when searching the web, keynotes or only games? And you said you get about 6 hours. Is that with gaming or daily stuff?

And Cuniac, my fan setup doesn't actually push air into the ps4 but instead they take the hot air from the back and push it out.

I think I have the same Macbook and fortunately mine is still running (perhaps due to the logic board replacement after I kept experiencing kernel crashes). Not sure if I gamed as much as you though.

I've only been using it on OSX so far - when surfing and watching Netflix, it is basically silent. When playing games, the fan can get really loud. I noticed that the noise became a bit more bearable once I limited the FPS - maybe it was throttling out of control when I left it on unlimited.

 

[ApoorvPrem]

I use headphones when playing games but overall I can hear them if I take them off. It's definetly working hard. I was using it in clamshell mode while playing but that might make it even hotter so sometimes I open it up. I feel like the fans would kick up even if you were doing serious video editing for a few hours at a time. What is the proper way to "game" in clamshell or have the lid open?

This graphics card is not bad at all but like I said battery
Life is worse than even the base 15 inch pro. I tried them all out for one day starting from the 13" and returned all the way up to this guy.

Pretty much we have no choice! I refuse to use PC even if their graphics cards are better. They break down, windows sill crashes and I'll take an apple product over the gaming laptop any day!!! Maybe in future I'll build a strict gaming machine but the MacBook Pro is not designed for it.

"Life is worse than even the base 15 inch pro" Care to explain this? How did you find the Iris Pro Model?

 

[AR444]

Mine died about a week ago, so that's about 4.8 years which isn't bad but I think It could have lasted another year easily and given me the chance to wait for skylake if I hadn't gamed too much. I should mention that I also dropped it multiple times...

Now I'm deciding if I should get the rMBP with AMD or not. I don't like extra fan noise. Does your fans kick in even when searching the web, keynotes or only games? And you said you get about 6 hours. Is that with gaming or daily stuff?

And Cuniac, my fan setup doesn't actually push air into the ps4 but instead they take the hot air from the back and push it out.

No the fans never go on unless I'm gaming. For development work and YouTube it's perfectly fine.

----------

"Life is worse than even the base 15 inch pro" Care to explain this? How did you find the Iris Pro Model?

So going from the 13" to base 15" and now the 15" with the AMD I find the battery about 1.5 hours worse on the AMD model.
The Regular iris pro was fine but you can't really run games on it unless you turn down the graphics to low settings. It's just not sustainable. The iris pro only pro was fine for movies and web browsing as far as battery life is concerned.

This whole thread deals
With numbers and these benchmarks! I personally care about real life experience and this new machine is not bad at all!

----------

I have abused all of my MacBook Pros, this includes long gamin sessions and also some statistical simulations run on all 8 virtual cores for 20-40 hours on my 2012 retina. They all did fine so far.

So then I think I will just use this one for what I bought it for.. Development work and some gaming mainly blizzard stuff.

 

[sebseb]

So then I think I will just use this one for what I bought it for.. Development work and some gaming mainly blizzard stuff.

Try to just keep it cool and help it ventilate a little more, I don't think the two fans inside are powerful enough for gaming.

 

[chelch]

A big thanks to MacDevMike for the benchmarks! Cheers!

 

[crossi81]

Hello,

i bought mine in the apple store yesterday. (MacBook 15" with 2,5GHz (i7 4870HQ) and R9 M370X).

I installed Bootcamp last night and did some Benchmarks under Windows 8.1 Professional 64Bit. Here the results (with the Standard driver):

SSD:
Screenshot AS SSD

3DMark 2011 (free version): Screenshot

3DMark (free version with Fire Strike etc):
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2


I will do some more Benches next week - Till now everything works fine (Borderlands 2 maxed out on 1920x1200 works like a charm).

PS: Catalyst recognizes it as 8800M series... Screenshot Catalyst

I don't know if you are one of them, but there are a couple of videos on youtube which confirm your results.

Basically, R9 m370x stands almost exactly between 750m and 950m.

Firestrike and Cloud Gate (graphics results, in order)

750m: 1574 - 10822
m370x: 2300ish - 16000ish
950m: 3284 - 22000

So in the end we should really expect "UP TO" 80% faster than 750m. Still, 950m is just another level (and it is the weakest maxwell gpu).

I think we should expect (based on above benchmarks) performance similar to those posted on notebookcheck:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R9-M370X.142763.0.html

 

[Roderwald]

Thanks for the benchmarks. Any chance you tried running Borderlands in OSX?

Here we go - I made a video with some other games too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPjncQzCCYY&feature=youtu.be

 

[magbarn]

Since the M370x is a little bit slower than the M275, here's some M275 vs 950M benchmarks to show how much Apple has shafted us on their cost-saving move...

Hint: the slower benchmarks are the M275

 

[leman]

Since the M370x is a little bit slower than the M275

Look up the benchmarks again. At least based on notebookchek, the M370x is around 15-25% faster than the M275*. Of course, still slower than Maxwell. But modern games should be playable at 1680x1050 medium/high, which is I think quite reasonable for a jack-of-all trades laptop that is designed with mobility in mind.

*I know, the M370X description on the site says that it should be slower than the M275. But this is directly contradicted by their own benchmark results.

 

[crossi81]

Here we go - I made a video with some other games too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPjncQzCCYY&feature=youtu.be

I saw your video before your post, but I guessed it was you Thanks for the video.

Look up the benchmarks again. At least based on notebookchek, the M370x is around 15-25% faster than the M275*. Of course, still slower than Maxwell. But modern games should be playable at 1680x1050 medium/high, which is I think quite reasonable for a jack-of-all trades laptop that is designed with mobility in mind.

*I know, the M370X description on the site says that it should be slower than the M275. But this is directly contradicted by their own benchmark results.

Yeah, definitely it IS faster than 750m, and not only by few points, but I'm still disappointed they went with the power (or money? ) saving route in their PRO line... Some watts more and they could have easily packed in a 950m which doubles 750m.

Now I'm really worried about Skylake, at this point I really fear they could drop dGPU seeing where they are going.

 

[AR444]

Try to just keep it cool and help it ventilate a little more, I don't think the two fans inside are powerful enough for gaming.

I have it on a stand and bought a small fan to blow more air at it. Right now the temperatures don't get hotter than about 65 degrees when playing. Overall though if the stock fans are not powerful enough then why are we even debating graphics on this forum if the computer will fry itself? Just a question because I don't do video editing but I know that is also graphics intesive.

 

[HarryT]

Here we go - I made a video with some other games too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPjncQzCCYY&feature=youtu.be

Thanks for the video. I would watch it again just for the music! haha

 

[magbarn]

I saw your video before your post, but I guessed it was you Thanks for the video.



Yeah, definitely it IS faster than 750m, and not only by few points, but I'm still disappointed they went with the power (or money? ) saving route in their PRO line... Some watts more and they could have easily packed in a 950m which doubles 750m.

Now I'm really worried about Skylake, at this point I really fear they could drop dGPU seeing where they are going.

It's faster than the 750M, but not to the point where I'm going to dump $1500 more over what I can get for selling my 2012 to upgrade to it. I guess there's tons of 2013 owners here who are more than happy to pay Apple >$2499 for the privilege of getting same cpu with a gpu that just 'a bit' faster than the 750M.

I know the 2012 to 2013 was a 're-badged 650M', but at least they got a much better cpu, significantly better battery life, and a double the SSD speed at the same time.

 

[crossi81]

It's faster than the 750M, but not to the point where I'm going to dump $1500 more over what I can get for selling my 2012 to upgrade to it. I guess there's tons of 2013 owners here who are more than happy to pay Apple >$2499 for the privilege of getting same cpu with a gpu that just 'a bit' faster than the 750M.

I know the 2012 to 2013 was a 're-badged 650M', but at least they got a much better cpu, significantly better battery life, and a double the SSD speed at the same time.

I'm pissed off because I'm in Europe and if I knew the update would look like this I would have bought a 2014 refurbished one before prices went up in March... At the time I could have easily saved 600 euros for a refurbished 2014 model (they were sold at 2200 euros, now new ones are 2850)... Now I'm almost for sure going to wait Skylake and, again, I hope they won't drop dGPU entirely...

 

[827538]

has anyone on this thread every gamed or done intensive tasks day in and day out on any MacBook Pro? I just want to make sure that this computer can handle this type of use case.

Gamed 4-8 hours a day since this Haswell laptop was launched, not a single issue aside from a charger that needed replaced.

 

[827538]

I saw your video before your post, but I guessed it was you Thanks for the video.



Yeah, definitely it IS faster than 750m, and not only by few points, but I'm still disappointed they went with the power (or money? ) saving route in their PRO line... Some watts more and they could have easily packed in a 950m which doubles 750m.

Now I'm really worried about Skylake, at this point I really fear they could drop dGPU seeing where they are going.

If that happens then it's the end of Mac's for me sadly.