Considering moving from 2013 13" MBA to 2014 13" Retina Macbook Pro (Need Some help)

[linjac321]

I am highly considering moving from 2013 13.3" i7 MBA to 2014 13.3" i5 rMBP, but for I make my decision I would like some help from someone who has already a 2013/2014 13.3" rMBP.

I am moving from MBA to MBP because of the extra head room in its thermal capabilities. I have just now realized that they both run the same cpu. So the performance really comes down to which computer cools the chip better. Obviously the rMBP has a better cooling system. Where the MBA can sustain 17 watts TDP at load, the the MBP can sustain 28~30W TDP at load. I really just care about power. Battery life, I barely use like 1~2.5hours a day. Other than that its docked on my table. Im pretty much moving over for performance within the same form factor. Its like a 40% increase in performance over the air. So thats why too.

Anyways, I am asking for someone's help so I can convince myself the decision to switch. I am asking for some to get their 2013/2014 13.3" rMBP download macs fan control and set the fan speed at constant at full speed. then open terminal and then type this in "yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null" <---without quotes. That command puts 100% load on the computer. Leave it running for 10mins and then check macsfancontrol and take a screen shot of macsfancontrol window where it shows all the temps of the computer. then in terminal run "killall yes" <---without quotes to kill the processes. After that, go to macsfancontrol and set the fan speed back to auto.

I appreciate your help whomever helps me with my decision.

macsfancontrol can be downloaded from here http://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control

 

[ChrisDB]

DO NOT BUY the Macbook Pro Retina . It is way slower than the Macbook Air . Like you said , same processor and gpu (intel iris 5100 is just an overlocked version of intel hd 5000 ) but the screen resolution is way too big for the GPU to handle so the UI LAGS . Yosemite is almost unusable .

Overall is even slower than the baseline Macbook Air .

As for the cooling , if i open a game on my mid 2014 Macbook Pro Retina with i5 and 8 GB ram after 10 min starts to get very very hot and the fans go crazy .

I'll be selling mine and get a Macbook Air or wait for Broadwell/Skylake processors .

 

[linjac321]

DO NOT BUY the Macbook Pro Retina . It is way slower than the Macbook Air . Like you said , same processor and gpu (intel iris 5100 is just an overlocked version of intel hd 5000 ) but the screen resolution is way too big for the GPU to handle so the UI LAGS . Yosemite is almost unusable .

Overall is even slower than the baseline Macbook Air .

As for the cooling , if i open game on my mid 2014 Macbook Pro Retina with i5 and 8 GB ram after 10 min starts to get very very hot and the fans go crazy .

I'll be selling mine and get a Macbook Air or wait for Broadwell/Skylake processors .

Do you by any chance have the 5100 iris? because i only know the ui issue for the 2012 4000 series. Also to fix the ui lags, u have to go to system pref -> accesibility -> reduce transparency. I hate transparency. It looks nice in the beginning, but id rather just take the performance and battery life. Broadwell will be a nice upgrade for you. they will put in 6100 iris with the edram which will definitely help with the lag ur experiencing. Cooling is like that for all MacBooks. Apple loves to push the threshold on cooling to make the laptop thinner and lighter. All MacBooks do not have a tdp limit like they should. Thats why MacBooks with the same cpus as their windows counterparts benchmark way higher and run way hotter than they should. Pretty much APPLE CHEATS THE BENCHMARKS and the reason why windows laptops with the same chip always fall short of MacBooks. That is why you see some windows laptops like ASUS doing the same with their laptops and I hate it. Its stupid and thats how come these small and thin laptops have so many problems. Because manufacturers let this happen, and the heat spreads to other components that should probably not reach those temperatures.

Apple lets MacBooks stay in turbo boost mode indefinitely as long as it doesn't reach over the temperature junction of the cpu. I literally checked by going into windows. My tdp limit is 100W and the turbo boost limit is 125W .So if i run my computer lets say antarctica or something, I can probably run my laptop as fast as desktop chips. The TDP rating I measured the Macbook Air could handle is 11.5W because it reaches 70C with 11.5W load. I try to make sure it never runs hotter than 80C. But CPUs in laptops should generally be 70C-75C at load. I have gotten my Macbook air to run 26W TDP <---- Almost the same performance as the 13" rMBP by blowing a 120mm fan on the keyboard and vents. Unfortunately it can only sustain 23~24 watts of power continuously.

BTW, thanks for convincing me not to move over. I will continue to cool my laptop with my 120mm fan blowing down on the keyboard until i could probably afford the 15" rMBP. Probably by the time Skylake arrives.

 

[crawler1975]

DO NOT BUY the Macbook Pro Retina . It is way slower than the Macbook Air . Like you said , same processor and gpu (intel iris 5100 is just an overlocked version of intel hd 5000 ) but the screen resolution is way too big for the GPU to handle so the UI LAGS . Yosemite is almost unusable .

Overall is even slower than the baseline Macbook Air .

As for the cooling , if i open game on my mid 2014 Macbook Pro Retina with i5 and 8 GB ram after 10 min starts to get very very hot and the fans go crazy .

I'll be selling mine and get a Macbook Air or wait for Broadwell/Skylake processors .

Seriously, Yosemite is almost unusable?!? I have the 13 rMBP with 16GB RAM running Yosemite, but it is usable to me? I do play games with it like DIABLO, Starcraft and WOW on occassion - i seldom hear the fan go on - and so far it does not get VERY VERY hot as you mentioned .. it gets warm YES.. but not VERY VERY hot within 10 mins ... just saying

 

[ChrisDB]

Do you by any chance have the 5100 iris? because i only know the ui issue for the 2012 4000 series. Also to fix the ui lags, u have to go to system pref -> accesibility -> reduce transparency. I hate transparency. It looks nice in the beginning, but id rather just take the performance and battery life. Broadwell will be a nice upgrade for you. they will put in 6100 iris with the edram which will definitely help with the lag ur experiencing. Cooling is like that for all MacBooks. Apple loves to push the threshold on cooling to make the laptop thinner and lighter. All MacBooks do not have a tdp limit like they should. Thats why MacBooks with the same cpus as their windows counterparts benchmark way higher and run way hotter than they should. Pretty much APPLE CHEATS THE BENCHMARKS THIS WAY TO CONVINCE CUSTOMERS OF THEIR FASTER AND BETTER COMPUTERS. That is why you see some windows laptops like ASUS doing the same with their laptops and I hate it. Its stupid and thats how come these small and thin laptops have so many problems. Because manufacturers let this happen, and the heat spreads to other components that should probably not reach those temperatures.

Apple lets MacBooks stay in turbo boost mode indefinitely as long as it doesn't reach over the temperature junction of the cpu. I literally checked by going into windows. My tdp limit is 100W and the turbo boost limit is 125W .So if i run my computer lets say antarctica or something, I can probably run my laptop as fast as desktop chips. The TDP rating I measured the Macbook Air could handle is 11.5W because it reaches 70C with 11.5W load. I try to make sure it never runs hotter than 80C. But CPUs in laptops should generally be 70C-75C at load.

Yes i have intel iris graphics . With reduced transparency looks like windows 95 , and performance is not miles better , still lags badly on simple tasks and scrolling .

About cooling , they deliberately did not included SMC drivers when using windows in bootcamp so even on the most simple tasks in windows sistem goes 100 % and gets hot , also affecting battery life .

***** Apple , I cannot believe that I paid over 1000 euros on this **** !

 

[linjac321]

Yes i have intel iris graphics . With reduced transparency looks like windows 95 , and performance is not miles better , still lags badly on simple tasks and scrolling .

About cooling , they deliberately did not included SMC drivers when using windows in bootcamp so even on the most simple tasks in windows sistem goes 100 % and gets hot , also affecting battery life .

***** Apple , I cannot believe that I paid over 1000 euros on this **** !

There is an issue right now with all MacBooks. there is a run away process called system interrupts in windows. Yes its due to apples updates on our efi or smc drivers for 10.10. All you have to do is to fix it is when your mac fully boots to windows, put your mac to sleep, make sure its asleep. I run windows on external drive, so i know when its asleep when the drive turns off. anyways, after its asleep wake it up again. and you won't have that problem. That process causes the frequency on your mac to never go down so your laptop will never stay cool or quiet.

don't bother waiting for apple to fix it until windows 10 release because they only update drivers when a new windows arrive -_-

 

[ChrisDB]

There is an issue right now with all MacBooks. there is a run away process called system interrupts in windows. Yes its due to apples updates on our efi or smc drivers for 10.10. All you have to do is to fix it is when your mac fully boots to windows, put your mac to sleep, make sure its asleep. I run windows on external drive, so i know when its asleep when the drive turns off. anyways, after its asleep wake it up again. and you won't have that problem. That process causes the frequency on your mac to never go down so your laptop will never stay cool or quiet.

don't bother waiting for apple to fix it until windows 10 release because they only update drivers when a new windows arrive -_-

Thanks for the advice but probably I'll be selling mine and get a windows laptop and iPad Air 2 until this issuses get fixed , seems a better investment to me , because I cannot stand the lag and performance issues thinking that I paid so much for nothing .

 

[johngwheeler]

MBA and rMBP 13 do NOT have the same CPU!

I am highly considering moving from 2013 13.3" i7 MBA to 2014 13.3" i5 rMBP, but for I make my decision I would like some help from someone who has already a 2013/2014 13.3" rMBP.

I am moving from MBA to MBP because of the extra head room in its thermal capabilities. I have just now realized that they both run the same cpu. So the performance really comes down to which computer cools the chip better. Obviously the rMBP has a better cooling system. Where the MBA can sustain 17 watts TDP at load, the the MBP can sustain 28~30W TDP at load. I really just care about power. Battery life, I barely use like 1~2.5hours a day. Other than that its docked on my table. Im pretty much moving over for performance within the same form factor. Its like a 40% increase in performance over the air. So thats why too.

Anyways, I am asking for someone's help so I can convince myself the decision to switch. I am asking for some to get their 2013/2014 13.3" rMBP download macs fan control and set the fan speed at constant at full speed. then open terminal and then type this in "yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null" <---without quotes. That command puts 100% load on the computer. Leave it running for 10mins and then check macsfancontrol and take a screen shot of macsfancontrol window where it shows all the temps of the computer. then in terminal run "killall yes" <---without quotes to kill the processes. After that, go to macsfancontrol and set the fan speed back to auto.

I appreciate your help whomever helps me with my decision.

macsfancontrol can be downloaded from here http://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control

FYI, the MBA and rMBP 13 do not have the same CPUs. MBA chips are 17W TDP, rMBP are 28W TDP.

The MBA is offered with the following CPUs:

Intel Core i5-4260U @ 1.40 GHz (turbo 2.7GHz)- Geekbench 64-bit 2771 / 5387
Intel Core i7-4650U @ 1.70 GHz (turbo 3.3GHz- Geekbench 64-bit 3305 / 6459

The rMBP 13 has the following CPUs:

Intel Core i5-4278U @ 2.6 GHz (turbo 3.1GHz) - Geekbench 64-bit 2777 / 6165
Intel Core i5-4308U @ 2.8 GHz (turbo 3.3 GHz) - Geekbench 64-bit 3374 / 7257
Intel Core i7-4578U # 3.0 GHz ( turbo 3.5GHz) Geekbench 64-bit 3533 / 7466

There obviously a cross-over between the faster MBA chip and the slowest rMBP, and they are close in performance, but not the same chips at all. The higher TDP of the rMBP chips may make more of a difference for sustained loads - they should maintain higher turbo speeds for longer before thermal throttling occurs.

HTH,

John

 

[linjac321]

FYI, the MBA and rMBP 13 do not have the same CPUs. MBA chips are 17W TDP, rMBP are 28W TDP.

The MBA is offered with the following CPUs:

Intel Core i5-4260U @ 1.40 GHz (turbo 2.7GHz)- Geekbench 64-bit 2771 / 5387
Intel Core i7-4650U @ 1.70 GHz (turbo 3.3GHz- Geekbench 64-bit 3305 / 6459

The rMBP 13 has the following CPUs:

Intel Core i5-4278U @ 2.6 GHz (turbo 3.1GHz) - Geekbench 64-bit 2777 / 6165
Intel Core i5-4308U @ 2.8 GHz (turbo 3.3 GHz) - Geekbench 64-bit 3374 / 7257
Intel Core i7-4578U # 3.0 GHz ( turbo 3.5GHz) Geekbench 64-bit 3533 / 7466

There obviously a cross-over between the faster MBA chip and the slowest rMBP, and they are close in performance, but not the same chips at all. The higher TDP of the rMBP chips may make more of a difference for sustained loads - they should maintain higher turbo speeds for longer before thermal throttling occurs.

HTH,

John

Sorry, i clearly didn't explain it properly. The i5 chips in the MBA and the i5 chips in rMBP are exactly the same except the thermal limitation of the rMBP is significantly higher. Same goes for the i7 versions. The i7 chips in the MBA and the i7 chips in rMBP are exactly the same except the thermal limitation of the rMBP is significantly higher. the difference between i5 vs i7 is 1mb more of l2 cache.

BTW John, that is what i am looking for. I am looking for sustaining higher frequencies longer. I have tested this out. I am on an i7 4650u, i ran my computer at load and it was running 20W @ 2.9GHz on the CPU package. I ran i5-4258u @2.85GHz at load 20W. The only difference is that MBA started to throttle itself down to 2.4~2.5GHz. Apple literally made the macbook air to only sustain up to 17.5W of TDP Power. Making the i7 option for the MBA utterly useless. On the hand the i5-4258u still had 8 Watts of power to spare on its package and ran at load at around 2.8~2.85GHz until i closed the program. So maybe on benchmarks the i7 mba may be slightly faster, but on real life scenarios, not so much. I compile large programs for a living. And compiling something like chrome takes hours. Maybe loading up safari in an instant is a few milliseconds slower for the i5 rMBP, but compiling programs all day is definitely hours faster than the i7 MBA. BTW, since there is 8W to spare on the rMBP, it would be a lot cooler too where as at the same speeds, the MBA is at nearly 100C constantly and running at 6500RPM. That is why I asked if someone could show me the temps. If the temps are significantly lower like in the 60s or 70s at full rpms, i would consider buying it.

THIS IS WHY I HATE BENCHMARKS. TURBO BOOST BIASES THE RESULTS. THEY SHOULD WARM UP THE LAPTOP THEN BEGIN THE BENCHMARK.

 

[linjac321]

Seriously, Yosemite is almost unusable?!? I have the 13 rMBP with 16GB RAM running Yosemite, but it is usable to me? I do play games with it like DIABLO, Starcraft and WOW on occassion - i seldom hear the fan go on - and so far it does not get VERY VERY hot as you mentioned .. it gets warm YES.. but not VERY VERY hot within 10 mins ... just saying

Actually i believe you, I think Yosemite has too many bells and whistles thats making it slow down. Its the same reason why iOS 8 is not on iphone 4 and the iphone 4s slow down significantly from the upgrade. Windows has always been a little better in sleek animations and performance. OS X on the other hand is based 10 year old subsystem that has been getting yearly incremental updates. When Im on windows everything is just smoother.

 

[crawler1975]

Actually i believe you, I think Yosemite has too many bells and whistles thats making it slow down. Its the same reason why iOS 8 is not on iphone 4 and the iphone 4s slow down significantly from the upgrade. Windows has always been a little better in sleek animations and performance. OS X on the other hand is based 10 year old subsystem that has been getting yearly incremental updates. When Im on windows everything is just smoother.

I've been using Windows since the days of the 3.11 and NT and now i am using windows server 2012, but so far I am not impress with the performance... I have also been using Unixes (that includes OS X) as well... while yes, yosemite have all this bells and whistles (mostly to cater to consumers) but personally I prefer it performance wise (using bash commands, terminal etc). that's just my opinion

 

[blooperz]

DO NOT BUY the Macbook Pro Retina . It is way slower than the Macbook Air . Like you said , same processor and gpu (intel iris 5100 is just an overlocked version of intel hd 5000 ) but the screen resolution is way too big for the GPU to handle so the UI LAGS . Yosemite is almost unusable .

Overall is even slower than the baseline Macbook Air .

As for the cooling , if i open a game on my mid 2014 Macbook Pro Retina with i5 and 8 GB ram after 10 min starts to get very very hot and the fans go crazy .

I'll be selling mine and get a Macbook Air or wait for Broadwell/Skylake processors .

uhhhhh.....are u serious??? definitely not unusable....maybe u just received a bad cookie from the cookie jar.

But in response to the OP, why not hold and and see if they release the retina 12" air this year....I would take that over a 13 inch rmbp any day.

 

[linjac321]

uhhhhh.....are u serious??? definitely not unusable....maybe u just received a bad cookie from the cookie jar.

But in response to the OP, why not hold and and see if they release the retina 12" air this year....I would take that over a 13 inch rmbp any day.

12" rMBA will have core m or similar, which is another underpowered chip. 12" rMBA might be another line of mba cuz its coming in color flavors. It could be the iPhone 5c to the 5s.

 

[JoelTheSuperior]

12" rMBA will have core m or similar, which is another underpowered chip. 12" rMBA might be another line of mba cuz its coming in color flavors. It could be the iPhone 5c to the 5s.

Whilst we have no idea yet what chip it'll have, I imagine it's still a way off and honestly if you're the type of user who cares about performance this much you may be better off with a MacBook Pro anyway.

Also the retina display is gorgeous.

 

[yjchua95]

I am highly considering moving from 2013 13.3" i7 MBA to 2014 13.3" i5 rMBP, but for I make my decision I would like some help from someone who has already a 2013/2014 13.3" rMBP.

I am moving from MBA to MBP because of the extra head room in its thermal capabilities. I have just now realized that they both run the same cpu. So the performance really comes down to which computer cools the chip better. Obviously the rMBP has a better cooling system. Where the MBA can sustain 17 watts TDP at load, the the MBP can sustain 28~30W TDP at load. I really just care about power. Battery life, I barely use like 1~2.5hours a day. Other than that its docked on my table. Im pretty much moving over for performance within the same form factor. Its like a 40% increase in performance over the air. So thats why too.

Anyways, I am asking for someone's help so I can convince myself the decision to switch. I am asking for some to get their 2013/2014 13.3" rMBP download macs fan control and set the fan speed at constant at full speed. then open terminal and then type this in "yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null" <---without quotes. That command puts 100% load on the computer. Leave it running for 10mins and then check macsfancontrol and take a screen shot of macsfancontrol window where it shows all the temps of the computer. then in terminal run "killall yes" <---without quotes to kill the processes. After that, go to macsfancontrol and set the fan speed back to auto.

I appreciate your help whomever helps me with my decision.

macsfancontrol can be downloaded from here http://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control

I think you'll be better off asking people to do the macoh stress test to look for throttling instead.

 

[linjac321]

Yea, im not getting it. the ui lag is very bad. This was at the store on two different computers. I made sure nothing was using the cpu in activity monitor. Then I started playing with it. The animations were slow and a lot of lag going to full screen mode in apps. It got even worse in the "more space" scaled resolution. I was most interested in more space cuz i like everything tiny. I also did my tests at the apple store on the 2.8 ghz model. At 2.8 ghz it runs at 28W of power @ 5000 rpm at 93C. Wasn't as acceptable as i hoped it to be. I thought it would run at 20W @ 60-70C at load which i hoped it would be.

the worst part of the trip of the apple store, i talked to the genius bar and they are being dicks about the lag on the retinas. Like they didn't know. CMON really. Then gave some ****** excuse, oh people play games on it thats why its probably laggy. Gave me a pissed off tone and stuff like I was talking ****** about someone. I simply asked because i was interested in upgrading, he should convince me otherwise than give me a bad tone.

 

[Archer1440]

Went from my high end mid 2013 13" MBA to high end mid 2014 13" rMBP, and frankly I'm raising an eyebrow at some of the comments here.

The rMBP outperforms the MBA in every parameter except battery life, particularly in graphics intensive tasks. I run the rMBP at highest available system resolution and often with a 27" monitor as a dual monitor setup.

Both devices running Yosemite. Seamless performance on both. The MBA has about a 2 hour advantage in heavy use in battery, but that's the only advantage besides mass weight.

It's sad how much bs gets pushed in forums.

As an aside, I find that Genius Bar workers respond a lot better to intelligent and mature discussions than they do to 16 year olds with a chip on their shoulder. Just sayin'.

 

[linjac321]

Went from my high end mid 2013 13" MBA to high end mid 2014 13" rMBP, and frankly I'm raising an eyebrow at some of the comments here.

The rMBP outperforms the MBA in every parameter except battery life, particularly in graphics intensive tasks. I run the rMBP at highest available system resolution and often with a 27" monitor as a dual monitor setup.

Both devices running Yosemite. Seamless performance on both. The MBA has about a 2 hour advantage in heavy use in battery, but that's the only advantage besides mass weight.

It's sad how much bs gets pushed in forums.

As an aside, I find that Genius Bar workers respond a lot better to intelligent and mature discussions than they do to 16 year olds with a chip on their shoulder. Just sayin'.

Not sure if you are insulting my intelligence or not, but I'm pretty knowledgeable with electronics. I have a Masters in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I may not know how to design complicated circuits on a motherboard, but i have a fair knowledge of how things work.

Also, Genius bar employees are not fairly intelligent across all Apple stores. Some Apple stores lets some bad apples in as a genius employee.

As for outperforms on a rMBP, I wouldn't say by much. based on 3d mark scores i have conducted on my friend's i7 rMBP and my i7 MBA the differences are smaller than I thought. He managed to get p1400 on 3dmark11 and I managed to get p1237. Its about a 14% difference.

The fact of the matter is, even though intel's integrated graphics truly has increased over the years, these extremely high res screens needs a dedicated video card. You guys may not see the ui lag, but put a macbook air next to a macbook pro 13.3" and you'll see the stutters. I truly wish Apple went back to dedicated video cards. At least a 840m in these high res screens. And its not like windows pc's aren't getting lag issues too. Stupid manufacturers are pairing uhd screens with 4200/4400 and they are lagging. I have even heard the ux301la from asus is too, that has 5100 iris in it.

Its not because the integrated graphics are bad. Its because the shared video memory makes it bad. They need purely dedicated memory on the motherboard like i have seen on AMD motherboards called "128MB DDR2 Side-Port". On that you had two options, run 128mb of full 1333mhz (that was fast at the time when ddr2 was limited to 667-800mhz) or have memory matching at up to 512mb of vram. so if you had 800mhz memory it would match the memory clock on the side port with your system memory. Shared System memory is whats bottlenecking the cpus greatly.

You think intel's integrated graphics are so great. How come even the 15" retina macbook pro with integrated graphics only are have the same issues. I have never read the 15" retina's with dedicated graphics have any such issue.

 

[ChrisDB]

Not sure if you are insulting my intelligence or not, but I'm pretty knowledgeable with electronics. I have a Masters in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I may not know how to design complicated circuits on a motherboard, but i have a fair knowledge of how things work.

Also, Genius bar employees are not fairly intelligent across all Apple stores. Some Apple stores lets some bad apples in as a genius employee.

As for outperforms on a rMBP, I wouldn't say by much. based on 3d mark scores i have conducted on my friend's i7 rMBP and my i7 MBA the differences are smaller than I thought. He managed to get p1400 on 3dmark11 and I managed to get p1237. Its about a 14% difference.

The fact of the matter is, even though intel's integrated graphics truly has increased over the years, these extremely high res screens needs a dedicated video card. You guys may not see the ui lag, but put a macbook air next to a macbook pro 13.3" and you'll see the stutters. I truly wish Apple went back to dedicated video cards. At least a 840m in these high res screens. And its not like windows pc's aren't getting lag issues too. Stupid manufacturers are pairing uhd screens with 4200/4400 and they are lagging. I have even heard the ux301la from asus is too, that has 5100 iris in it.

Its not because the integrated graphics are bad. Its because the shared video memory makes it bad. They need purely dedicated memory on the motherboard like i have seen on AMD motherboards called "128MB DDR2 Side-Port". On that you had two options, run 128mb of full 1333mhz (that was fast at the time when ddr2 was limited to 667-800mhz) or have memory matching at up to 512mb of vram. so if you had 800mhz memory it would match the memory clock on the side port with your system memory. Shared System memory is whats bottlenecking the cpus greatly.

You think intel's integrated graphics are so great. How come even the 15" retina macbook pro with integrated graphics only are have the same issues. I have never read the 15" retina's with dedicated graphics have any such issue.

I agree with you on every point .

Even 2009 Macbook Pro's with 9400 gt graphics with "only" 256 mb can run yosemite with no lag , because memory is not shared with the sistem as intel graphics .

Apple did this because of battery life , dedicated video cards consume lots of power , that's how they manage to get such great battery life , running them only on integrated .
I think that broadwell macbook's will come only with integrated graphics .

And also I'm sure that iPad Air 2 PowerVR GPU is more powerful than Intel Iris .