Intel Launches New Broadwell Chips Appropriate for MacBook Air and 13-Inch MacBook Pro

[koyoot]

Maybe MacBook Air's stay with Broadwell, then MBPs go Skylake first

That is exactly what will happen, especially if Quad Core Broadwell Chips are... cancelled.

One more Thing.

Dual Core ULV CPUs - MBA.
Quad Core CPUs - MBP.

Thats how the lineup should look like now.

Broadwell GPU Iris Pro should be on par with GTX670M in performance. Skylake will level it up another 60%.

That is quite improvement.

 

[ls1dreams]

2011 is ancient. I have had a Haswell MacBook for a year, and it's near silent at all times.

Eh, not really. 2011 is the first year they introduced the sandy bridge i5's. Moving to a 2014 would only gain me around 11% more performance according to geekbench.

Geekbench
Early 2011 (i5-2415M): 2177
Early 2014 (i5-4260U): 2430 (+11.6%)

Passmark (single/multi)
Early 2011 (i5-2415M): 1333 / 3215
Early 2014 (i5-4260U): 1562 (+17%) /3650 (+13.5%)

So you can see, paying $1500 for a 11-17% upgrade, depending on which stat you look at, isn't really worth it to me.

That said, I WOULD really like: a retina screen, USB 3.0, and better HD5100 (vs HD3000) graphics. But they aren't terribly important to me at the moment.

The BIG jump was from 2010 -> 2011 where they went from the Core 2 Duo's to the i5's. For example, that was a 41% jump in single threaded performance, and nearly a 100% jump in multithreaded performance for the base i5's!

 

[Camoxide]

I wish Intel would stop wasting Silicon Space on these dam on-board GPU's.

Even in the "Proper" PC Computing world where people naturally buy proper graphics cards, you still have these dumb GPU's forced onto the chips we don't want.

I'm happy they make them for those with minimal requirement, but PLEASE Intel put this space to better use for proper Desktop users.

They do. In the "E" Versions there's no onboard GPU.

No point creating a separate version in the mainstream line. Cheaper just to leave the design intact and have essentially one product for everything. The desktop versions are basically just separately binned versions of the laptop CPUs.

 

[Digital Dude]

Well, I'm barely getting by on my old MacPro 2009 but since my iPhone 6P/128 is soOoo useful, I'm now looking at a MacBook of some sort. Hopefully, I can fight off the temptation but a i5-13r would do everything I need. However, the rumored 12" Broadwell would be perfect.

 

[ghanwani]

What speed will the memory run at? 1600 or 1866 Mhz?

 

[jdiamond]

Skylake is the biggest jump since the Core 2 Duo

Early 2016 would be the soonest we will see any Skylake-based MacBooks. Sure, if you don't need a new Mac this year - go ahead and wait. That same rule applies to any new generation / upgrade / refresh.

There is nothing special or unique about Skylake that makes it a "must", not any more so than any other iteration of Intel CPUs.

Without Skylake, Apple cannot support any of the modern connection ports needed for our computers. No HDMI 2.0 for 4K. No USB 3.x. No PCIe over TB. No TB 3 or TB 4. Nothing obsoletes a laptop or integrated computer faster than old ports. For me, this is the critical issue.

However, in the old world of CPU performance, Skylake is an ENORMOUS jump - almost as big as the first x86-64 chips. They are doubling the amount of general purpose registers from 16 to 32, and they are doudbling the SIMD lanes per core from 8 to 16. High performance applications, meaning those that are code optimized, will likely run 2-3 times faster on Skylake at the same frequency as Broadwell.

As for early 2016, anything's possible, but Apple historically only seems to update the 15" Macbook Pros in late fall. I sincerely hope it's earlier rather than later. I don't think I can hold out 18 months...