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Intel Arrandale Benchmarks Show Major Improvements for Notebooks

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The embargo is up for news and reviews on Intel's new Arrandale mobile processors. Arrandale represents the 32-nm die shrink of the Nehalem processors and will represent the first Nehalem processors that are usable in a laptops such as the MacBook Pro. These new chips also offer improved integrated graphics on the same chip. While there was some unconfirmed talk that Apple may skip this generation of chips, they remain the best option to upgrade the MacBook Pro.

Anandtech provides an overview of the newly announced chips which run as fast as 2.66GHz (Dual Core) as a base speed with Turbo speeds as high as 3.33GHz. Direct comparisons of the 2.53GHz Arrandale and the 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo currently used in the MacBook Pro showed notable improvements at the same clock speed:


081610-arrandale_500.png


The performance advantage was even more impressive for Cinebench (38-43%) and x264 HD encoding (26-45%), along with notable improvements in the integrated graphics performance. Anandtech found battery life to be on-par with the current Core 2 Duos, but this is expected to improve with later generations of Arrandale. In conclusion:
From the balanced notebook perspective, Arrandale is awesome. Battery life doesn't improve, but performance goes up tremendously. The end result is better performance for hopefully the same power consumption. If you're stuck with an aging laptop it's worth the wait. If you can wait even longer we expect to see a second rev of Arrandale silicon towards the middle of the year with better power characteristics.
Click to expand...
Apple is, of course, expected to use these processors in their next generation MacBook Pros, though the exact timeframe for the adoption remains unknown.

Article Link: Intel Arrandale Benchmarks Show Major Improvements for Notebooks
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/04/intel-arrandale-benchmarks-show-major-improvements-for-notebooks/
And I just bought a MacBook Pro. Oh well. Not going to return it after I just got it all set up. These benchmarks improvements look great.
 
not like these CPU's were a big secret, Intel announced that they were going to release them over a year ago
 
alent1234 said:
not like these CPU's were a big secret, Intel announced that they were going to release them over a year ago
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I haven't been following this stuff for years. Just bought a few Macs for home, office and travel through November and December. My Core2Dou machines will be fine for my needs.
 
Improved integrated graphics? Improved over what? The X3100? The current Intel mobile CPUs don't include GPUs, unlike Arrandale.
 
February-March? Doesn't seem too hard. Would Apple update the MBPs prior to releasing an announcement of the tablet though? I'd imagine they'd do it afterwards.
 
oscarfrancis said:
Improved integrated graphics? Improved over what? The X3100? The current Intel mobile CPUs don't include GPUs, unlike Arrandale.
Click to expand...

And the current MBPs have nVidia 9400M GPUs, which work quite well in my humble opinion. So far those intel integrated GPUs have performed poorly.
 
Looks good. I think I'll wait for the lower power update of these chips though. Lower power and less heat with these speeds would be very desirable.
 
oscarfrancis said:
Improved integrated graphics? Improved over what? The X3100? The current Intel mobile CPUs don't include GPUs, unlike Arrandale.
Click to expand...

I doubt the graphics perform anywhere near as well as the 9400m, I also doubt that the Intel graphics support OpenCL. All new Macs have to support OpenCL really. So either Apple's going to have to put a dedicated graphics chip in their Macbook and 13" MBP, or maybe use their chip company to make a new chipset controller with decent graphics silicon in.
 
t0mat0 said:
February-March? Doesn't seem too hard. Would Apple update the MBPs prior to releasing an announcement of the tablet though? I'd imagine they'd do it afterwards.
Click to expand...

i can see a notebook refresh being the opening act of the tablet unveiling on the 26th (if that is in fact when it happens).
 
t0mat0 said:
February-March? Doesn't seem too hard. Would Apple update the MBPs prior to releasing an announcement of the tablet though? I'd imagine they'd do it afterwards.
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The whole tablet thing is probably going to be a bit of a yawn. I just want the damn Macbook Pro line to be updated so that I can get one. I don't need a new laptop, but my old G4 Powerbook is starting to die.
 
My 15" MBP won't be a year old till the beginning of April. I think I'll hold out till Apple can work it's customary magic on a quad core mobile MBP with decent battery life and design characteristics.
 
Core i3 in the Air ... i5 in Pros

Core i3 Chips 330M & 350M Will go into the Air

Core i3 350:

  • 2.26Ghz
  • 667 GPU Speed
  • 3mb L3 Cache

Core i3 330:

  • 2.13Ghz
  • Everything else is the same

Core i5 Chips:

  • 540m at 2.53Ghz
  • 520m at 2.4Ghz
  • 430m at 2.26Ghz
  • All have 3MB L3 Cache & 766Mhz GPU Speed

I say no more then 3 months (March 30th) will have new notebooks. I have a slightly different configuration in the "MacBook Air Realistic" Thread I did.

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT INTEL IS SLATED TO RELEASE 17 NEW CPUs IN EARLY 2010

ATI Will be a good graphics alternative too for these processors.

iDisk


:apple:
 
Maybe we'll be lucky and Intel will offer a CPU for Apple that doesn't have the integrated GPU because as far as I can tell they are already separate dies.
 
Igfx is obviously improved over past intel offerings because these were the bottom of the barrel. We didn't need anandtech to tell us that, if intel hadn't improved upon their worst in class offerings it would be a feat.

Why aren't anandtech saying that an improved intel igfx, is still worst in class, worst than pretty much all their competitors?

Maybe if intel wasn't bankrolling anandtech we 'd actually see an objective review.

And after all that hype a 15% or so increase in performance and no increase in performance in battery life, with a new architecture, is far from being notable. And what with the current bottlenecks being ram and ssd speed, it's actually negligible.

Of course I am not on intels big marketing payroll and I can call it like it is.
 
oscarfrancis said:
Improved integrated graphics? Improved over what? The X3100? The current Intel mobile CPUs don't include GPUs, unlike Arrandale.
Click to expand...

The X4500MHD. The Anandtech article also claims that the GPU is able to keep up with the AMD 790GX. Which appears isn't that slow. I can't seem to find anything that specifically compares the 9400M to the 790GX.
 
3 Things they can do

alphaod said:
Maybe we'll be lucky and Intel will offer a CPU for Apple that doesn't have the integrated GPU because as far as I can tell they are already separate dies.
Click to expand...

Then Intel could use those liberated transistors to increase the size of the L3 cache, other good use or just make a lower power using version.
 
Intel nor Apple can remove the integrated graphics on these chips because the CPUs memory controller is located on the graphics die and not the CPU die.
 
Leaving the research to others how do these chips stack up to the i5 & i7's in the current iMac?
 
What sucks about this is that Intel is using their great new CPU to push their inferior graphics chips. Having a complete platform for system builders is fine, but including the graphics chip on the CPU die was fail from the start.
 
eastcoastsurfer said:
What sucks about this is that Intel is using their great new CPU to push their inferior graphics chips. Having a complete platform for system builders is fine, but including the graphics chip on the CPU die was fail from the start.
Click to expand...

Amen, a fact always silenced by mainstream tec media.
 
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