I've been reading a bit on haswell in the hopes of waiting to get a non laggy non stuttering rmbp around June or later, well hopefully, but it seems the news is not that encouraging. The platform for gfx is still the less than perfect (boy, that's an understatement) hd 4000 which justs grows in terms of what it can do, how much an how fast, but is essentially the same poor architecture. Seeing as apple doesn't look like it's putting a discrete gpu in the 13.3" retina am I right in thinking that there' not much to look for in haswell and one might as well buy the current model?
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Haswell and GFX performance
- Thread starter macman34
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The intital info given was that Haswell iGPU performance was going to be significant. Well it's not, it's modest at best.
There will be improvements across the board for sure, nothing that will WOW you. Mainly battery life will be the most significant to most.
Grab a current gen rMBP, if you love what Haswell has when it comes out, resell the rMBP and pay the difference.
There will be improvements across the board for sure, nothing that will WOW you. Mainly battery life will be the most significant to most.
Grab a current gen rMBP, if you love what Haswell has when it comes out, resell the rMBP and pay the difference.
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Thanks for chiming in man, yeah I was thinking the same thing, as experience has taught me that waiting is no good and the best time to buy is always now. So might as well grab one now like you said since the improved gfx won't be anything to write home about.
Only thing I can't stomach is the 128gb ssd rip off by apple. Sure they 've lowered the prices from the preposterous initial ones but 128gb on a pro machine in 2013 is the biggest joke since Balmer laughed at the iphone. I guess I could put it up on ebay and split the difference from getting a larger one via owc or someplace.
Only thing I can't stomach is the 128gb ssd rip off by apple. Sure they 've lowered the prices from the preposterous initial ones but 128gb on a pro machine in 2013 is the biggest joke since Balmer laughed at the iphone. I guess I could put it up on ebay and split the difference from getting a larger one via owc or someplace.
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Edit: If 128GB is too little for you, it's likely they'll step up the base SSD to 256GB in the next refresh. In that case, it's worth the wait for you.
Edit: If 128GB is too little for you, it's likely they'll step up the base SSD to 256GB in the next refresh. In that case, it's worth the wait for you.
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http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Retina_2012You can't swap the SSDs in the retinas...yet. Apple are using proprietary SATA connectors, amongst other things. THAT trumps the 128GB joke
Edit: If 128GB is too little for you, it's likely they'll step up the base SSD to 256GB in the next refresh. In that case, it's worth the wait for you.
You can't swap the SSDs in the retinas...yet. Apple are using proprietary SATA connectors, amongst other things. THAT trumps the 128GB joke
Edit: If 128GB is too little for you, it's likely they'll step up the base SSD to 256GB in the next refresh. In that case, it's worth the wait for you.
Uh yes you can lol. Get your facts straight.
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128GB SSDs are a joke, I agree. You'll fork more money over going the OWC route because you'll soon realize, no one on eBay wants the stock 128GB SSD lol.
Get a refurb with a 256GB SSD.
yeah talk about adding insult to injury, all the more so when they can perfectly fit a standard ssd in the slot they've left under the trackpad. They even use a bracket to hold it in place because their blade ssd is too small and would rattle...
There goes the proprietary connectors for space saving argument out of the window. This is probably the only laptop in apple's history, or in the history of laptops with a hollow space right in the heart of the laptop for no other reason than, well greed and money grabbing. And then they say that the 13.3" despite the price drop isn't selling as well as expected, well, I guess there's a limit to what people will put up with.
Anyway, are you sure though about not being able to swap it for another ssd via owc? I was quite sure I could, and that the blade one they used is the same as the one used in the 15" rmbp and the imacs and owc have ample of upgrades for these.
There goes the proprietary connectors for space saving argument out of the window. This is probably the only laptop in apple's history, or in the history of laptops with a hollow space right in the heart of the laptop for no other reason than, well greed and money grabbing. And then they say that the 13.3" despite the price drop isn't selling as well as expected, well, I guess there's a limit to what people will put up with.
Anyway, are you sure though about not being able to swap it for another ssd via owc? I was quite sure I could, and that the blade one they used is the same as the one used in the 15" rmbp and the imacs and owc have ample of upgrades for these.
Winner. I stand corrected, and buying a current rMBP just became a lot more tempting...
Depends on the igpu that will be in the rmbp, the 4600 that was tested by toms is 20% better, we are expecting 50% over the 4600 with the 5100 and more with the 5200
if you are talking about cpu performance its the same thing that they have been serving us for a long time 5-15%, amd does the same thing
if you are talking about gpu performance, we only had 4600 numbers, and that is really incremental, the others are not
you can change the SSD in the retinasYou can't swap the SSDs in the retinas...yet. Apple are using proprietary SATA connectors, amongst other things. THAT trumps the 128GB joke
Edit: If 128GB is too little for you, it's likely they'll step up the base SSD to 256GB in the next refresh. In that case, it's worth the wait for you.
and 120gb is the most selling size in SSDs, because they dropped the 64gb ones mostly
Good point.
I was maybe thinking though some people who have an imac with no fusion drive won't mind getting a mint 128gb ssd off of ebay, all the more so since in a few months the one year warranties will have started ending, and they won't void anything via opening the thing up, to fit in the imac for a fusion drive. Provided I have it right and you can put the blade one from the rmbp in the imac.
yeah talk about adding insult to injury, all the more so when they can perfectly fit a standard ssd in the slot they've left under the trackpad. They even use a bracket to hold it in place because their blade ssd is too small and would rattle...
There goes the proprietary connectors for space saving argument out of the window. This is probably the only laptop in apple's history, or in the history of laptops with a hollow space right in the heart of the laptop for no other reason than, well greed and money grabbing. And then they say that the 13.3" despite the price drop isn't selling as well as expected, well, I guess there's a limit to what people will put up with.
Anyway, are you sure though about not being able to swap it for another ssd via owc? I was quite sure I could, and that the blade one they used is the same as the one used in the 15" rmbp and the imacs and owc have ample of upgrades for these.
No, you definitely can replace the SSD with one from OWC. They make lines specifically with ones for the MacBook Air and rPro.
Good point, I 'd forgot I 'd read about different classes of igfx with haswell, thanks for that reminder as well as the heads up about the tests. Still the platform is essentially the same hd 4000 despite the renaming scheme in 5100 and 5200, as far as I 've understood. I don't know exactly what this might imply about running a retina display though. What I do know is that I can't trust apple anymore to get the best of the available options in the machine if they can save $2-3 per machine...
I don't want a custom SSD from OWC. I just want a plain regular "Off The Shell" SSD like the Samsung 840 Pro 512 GB that you can find at your local computer store.
Well, you can't do that in the rMBP, unfortunately. If you need to be able to use that model, get a cMBP.
it's very ironic that, like quite a few others, I too stuck a 840 pro in my mini and the little sucker is flying, and it's way faster than ANY of the "top of the line" custom port, "integrated on the motherboard for speed" apple ssds you find on machines selling for $2500+.
If they have any excuses for not including a normal sata ssd for space saving reasons in the 15" rmbp, they have absolutely none for leaving a hole within the 13" macbook with their ssd in a bracket and for not finding enough space to fit one on a desktop computer as the imac.
Anyway, that's how they play ball these days, we 'll have to make do with that. However the fact that we have to play along with it, doesn't mean we are happy campers about it either.
If they have any excuses for not including a normal sata ssd for space saving reasons in the 15" rmbp, they have absolutely none for leaving a hole within the 13" macbook with their ssd in a bracket and for not finding enough space to fit one on a desktop computer as the imac.
Anyway, that's how they play ball these days, we 'll have to make do with that. However the fact that we have to play along with it, doesn't mean we are happy campers about it either.
The only available benchmarks are for the HD 4600 and one can pretty much expect an HD 5100 at least in the 13" rMBP. The improvement from HD 4000 to 4600 is not bad at all especially since drivers seem to improve a lot.
That is just the 20EU GPU. The 40EU Version if not constrained by memory bandwidth will deliver quite a bit more performance. Max. GPU Turbo for all leaked specs seems to be 1300Mhz which would be a lot with 40EUs. Easily double the HD 4000 performance.
Battery life will most likely be great with the SoC chips for the MBA but Intel only claims 20% better efficiency for the normal chips without even saying whether that is the system or the cpu alone.
The architecture is mostly the same except that Intel apparently doubled all the fixed function performance accross the board and the 5X00 have 40 execution units up from 16 in the HD4000 and running at up to 1300Mhz up from 1150Mhz.
Really the only thing that can hurt here is the memory bandwidth and that is what the 5200 with its eRAM is for.
What this implies stands to question. The HD 4000 already supports 4k by 4k resolution which easily handles retina resolution and some displays on top. A lot of the UI problems are most likely software problems which require software fixes as the 650M which is many times faster suffers the same as people report.
In Gaming and all things that require more GPU power Haswell will be a lot better. Instead of running anything but very old games only on low-med, medium and high will be an option.
What chips they will use remains to be seen. Most likely the fastest GPU will only be an option as Intel intends to charge quite a bit more for the 5200 and it will only show in i7 chips. An i5 with 5100 will still be quite good if they use fast enough RAM. When not paired with a quad core there is also more bandwidth left for the GPU.
Apple may also finally put one of the 35W quad cores into the 13" rMBP. Overdue IMO for the price and target group of those notebooks. (It is still "Pro" and could handle the cooling most likely)
Currently they use the cheapest CPUs they possibly can. Other things about the notebook will get cheaper though. Maybe they keep prices the same but offer better more expensive chips. I think they are going to have to.
So you may wait for quad cores, faster GPU or better battery life. With the 13" I think it is worth it. With the 15" it wouldn't because the new quad cores will be virtually the same and no worthwhile GPU upgrade is even possible. The only significant change I expect for 15" is that they might sell one model without any dedicated GPU at all.
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They use the same arch of the HD3000 and HD4000, with off course added differences here and there, not only in terms of the number of execution units but also in terms of the way that some things are done.
actually 2-3 dollars from each machine will net a very large sum in the end of all the machines sold, OEMs save far less than that. I also dont know what you are expecting? 35w quads costs the same as the upgraded cpus on the 15, aside that I can only think of the size of the SSD for the 13 and mba line as being cheap
The SSD is not integrated to the mobo in any apple pc.
I do agree that they could and really should put a HDD on the 13, why a HDD instead of normal sized SSD? Cost cutting, so that the rmbp 13 can be put into the same price bracket of the mbp 13
Now regarding their decision to put the same SSD that is equipping the mba, the rmbp and the imacs is obvious gains of scale
I do agree that you dont need to be happy about apples decisions, you also dont need to buy their products
Isn't the ssd integrated, albeit being detachable, on the air?
I am aware of what shaving off a $2-3 dollars amounts in the large scale, as well as about economies of scale, and of course I can't fault them for looking after their bottom line. But there's a limit to the impact they are willing to have on the users daily computer use to save these $2-3 per device.
And in the case of an 128gb ssd vs. a 256gb ssd on the base model of a pro computer they are imho, way beyond pushing and testing the patience of the consumer. Who has very apparently voted with their money against buying the device and hence the dismal sales and the price drop, which is them acknowledging that they messed up in terms of the original price point they set. Add that to the fact that they enabled fusion on the base 21.5" imac after a few months, again implicitly agreeing that they 'd overpriced the thing. This starts looking like a pattern don't you think?
The rmbp is also, like I said the first notebook in the world, as far as I know that has a hollow center that could house a more powerful component, not only because apple is saving a couple of dollars, but also because they don't want you to have the option to not buy flash memory from them and opt instead to upgrade with a better, larger, and much cheaper product. Which brings us to the bizarre situation of the mac mini from a couple of years or so ago being much faster storage wise with a 840pro samsung ssd, than any top of the line retina pro notebook currently available from apple. Ouch!
@dusk007 Best reply in the thread from me too. Kudos.
I am aware of what shaving off a $2-3 dollars amounts in the large scale, as well as about economies of scale, and of course I can't fault them for looking after their bottom line. But there's a limit to the impact they are willing to have on the users daily computer use to save these $2-3 per device.
And in the case of an 128gb ssd vs. a 256gb ssd on the base model of a pro computer they are imho, way beyond pushing and testing the patience of the consumer. Who has very apparently voted with their money against buying the device and hence the dismal sales and the price drop, which is them acknowledging that they messed up in terms of the original price point they set. Add that to the fact that they enabled fusion on the base 21.5" imac after a few months, again implicitly agreeing that they 'd overpriced the thing. This starts looking like a pattern don't you think?
The rmbp is also, like I said the first notebook in the world, as far as I know that has a hollow center that could house a more powerful component, not only because apple is saving a couple of dollars, but also because they don't want you to have the option to not buy flash memory from them and opt instead to upgrade with a better, larger, and much cheaper product. Which brings us to the bizarre situation of the mac mini from a couple of years or so ago being much faster storage wise with a 840pro samsung ssd, than any top of the line retina pro notebook currently available from apple. Ouch!
@dusk007 Best reply in the thread from me too. Kudos.
I actually agree with you that they should put the HDD in the rmbp 13, that wouldve been a probable to tempting to resist for me, despite me having a late 2011 model, so in terms of what I receive from the cpu power perspective its quite limited, but the form factor/weight and the screen wouldve closed the deal
but yes the reason is economies of scale.
I dont think I mentioned in this thread, but sony made before apple, what the rmbp 13 is. a better 1080p display (except on the viewing angles, which is of no comparison), same form factor, lighter, raid 0 SSD (for some its good, for me its simpler to just remove the raid and put on 1 linux and the other with windows), a external graphics unit, and last year they put a quad in it. It was called the vaio Z21 (2011) or the z13 (2012), it costed 2k. its EOL after the rmbp 13 hit the market.
But yes, I dont think that people actually received the rmbp 13 well, it was considered costly (and it is), and the mbp 13 had a very clear function, make you get into apple. For me its all about the weight (didnt had the 2011 mbas available when I needed a new one)
TL
Rits pricy, I agree they shouldve put a HDD in there, lame that no one made a cable for that and haswell will be a good boost. Broadwell even more, since we are expecting DDR4 and there will be a change in arch for the gpu, this is their last edition of using the same core for the gpu from SB, albeit with modification
Well there is an Intel engineer commenting in this video so I'll take it as truth. Basically in a nutshell. Haswell's integrated graphics will play Rome II: Total War smoothly. And for those of you who play Total War know the games are graphically demanding.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?featur...top_uri=/watch?v=5anAP8nCikA&feature=youtu.be
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?featur...top_uri=/watch?v=5anAP8nCikA&feature=youtu.be
There's your problem. That sentence should read: "Well there is an Intel engineer commenting in this video so I'll take it as marketing spin."
That said, if the Haswell MBPs come with the 40 core iGPU, the performance should, logically, be 2.5 times as fast as the present 16 core iGPU in the present MBPs. We'll just have to wait until we see actual notebooks (optimally the new range of MBPs) to see if this pans out, or falls flat.
Of course, it's mostly irrelevant for the 15", unless you're playing old, or graphically simple games where you can justify forcing the dGPU to be disabled. Even if the new iGPU is a full 150% faster than the current iGPU, the present 650M (let alone an upgrade) will still outperform it by a significant margin, i.e. over 50%.
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exactly, and while I can play shogun 2 tw on the hd3000, its really by far not a pleasant experience, the HD 4000, keeps up the same thing, low settings, low res
still it doesnt matter, from the 4600 we experienced a 20% increase, with the 5100 we are expecting 50% over the 4600, with the 5200 we are expecting more, it will be an improvement, will it make gaming more enjoyable for casual players? sure thing. Are we expecting that suddenly we are facing intel competing on the mid range? nope.
Im in the corner of people that think the 5100 will remove the need for the entry level (if clear performance increase is not there, or does it really matter? is the investment worth it?)
One thing that people need to be sure is that:
GPUs are limited by somethings:
Bandwidth - igpus are limited by this, its very very clear when you use amd or even intel ones, high speeds and lower CAS timings are a must
Speed of core and vRAM - high speeds of both consume a lot of energy, while you may usually be limited by the speed of the vRAM on midrange gpus (like amds in the 5000m and 6000m series), you can also be limited by the speed of the core, intel is pushing for 1300mhz at the core, thats fast and thats to compensate for the lack of speed in the vRAM, i.e. your system ram
Power of the cores - there isnt much to explain here
TDP - this weights heavily on igpus, you are much more limited in terms of power that you need to dissipate
So in the end, while we are expecting the 5200 to be faster than the 5100, we dont know for sure how much, its only 128mb of very fast and very large bandwidth cache, you can see that most demanding games now are consuming around 1gb, so its going to use your slow RAM to source it out, then we have the very high speed of the cores, problem right there, its compensating for something
TL
R will it be good performance improvement? sure. Will it be enough? we dont knowI surely hope that im wrong and in the end the 5200 has more than performance around the 640m that Im expecting and that it actually trade blows with the 650m
I dont know if I can believe this blurb from anand
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6897/best-gaming-notebooks-april-2013
Jarred Walton said:
he really isnt one of my favorite writers there, he leans too much on the green side (and I agree that enduro is not terrible, they invented several new lvls for that), and some other biases