Intel to Supply Apple with Special High-End Haswell Processors for MacBook Pro

[GermanyChris]

I am new to Macs, as my 13" rMBP is my first one, so I have a question: is there a time in the past where Apple has released a new MBP that was actually lower-performing than the previous generation? Maybe I have too much trust in them, but I would assume that whoever was in charge of the MBP would be against a step back in performance. Surely they have higher standards than that. Surely whatever flavor of Haswell that goes into the new MBP will be a step up in performance from the previous generation. Surely...

The change from Power to x86 took real world performance a set back…

====================

The MBP IMHO isn't really pro to begin with. Single Drive, low RAM ceiling, no Quadro/FP or even decent non Pro graphics. Pro is a marketing term to differentiate nothing more.

 

[Steve121178]

apple don't drop Dedicated GPU (Nvidia/ATI) .. that would be huge mistake.. Remember rMBP 13" sales.. not good right .. reason no GPU

No, the reason was that it was a rip off.

 

[HurryKayne]

No, the reason was that it was a rip off.

no..but obviously..everyone has his own perception..
its been due its resemblance with Air for the dual core
it must had a quad core instead in.

 

[Apsik]

You should learn more about other computers and operating systems.

My home PC is a 4 year old Dell that's running Win7 x64. It's been upgraded from 12 GiB of RAM to 24 GiB. Processor upgraded to 2.93 GHz i7 (940). Crappy Radeon HD that died was replaced by a 1.5 GiB Quadro. Disks replaced by a pair of SSDs, plus 22 drives in eSATA expander cabs (59 TB total). Power supply upgraded to an Antec 620 watt "High Current Gamer".

It's very hard to make a claim that Apples are more upgradeable than other systems.

after 4 years of housing the dell is some melted - because of plastic. Creak when opening, moving and putting his hands on him, the buttons are worn paint, as long as they are all ... and MBP after 5 years still pleasantly opens and closes, the buttons go with a nice finger-clik night I sit in front of my computer without waking children typing on the keyboard but of course Congratulations, buy I'm not going sweeten apple .... But the superiority of the old MBP on the PC is a small crumbs that how you will gather it together it turns out that it is a diamond ... The PC laptop is a donut. Once you buy and do not want to try the next

 

[HurryKayne]

I understand that fear but if this Iris Pro ends up being faster than the dedicated card Apple would have used anyway then does it really matter?

Intels Haswell chips are manufactured on a 22nm process. Broadwell is set to be produced on a 14nm process. NVIDIA and AMD are stuck right now at 28nm and they may well be still at 28nm when Broadwell launches. Intel is ahead of the game in power consumption and gate size.

The point I'm trying to make is I think the concerns are perhaps unfounded at this stage due to Intel being so far ahead in fabrication they could conceivably deliver a better midrange GPU (which is what Apple has always used in the MacBook Pro range) than NVIDIA and AMD can at the power consumption Apple wants.

I was totally against Apple dropping the dedi GPU in place of an Intel Iris Pro chip. But that was before this story broke about them getting an especially powerful chip that could potentially beat the overclocked 650m in the current Retina MacBook Pro, now I'm on the fence and I want to see the notebook before I make any decisions.

I don't believe in dreams..i hope i'm wrong.

 

[GermanyChris]

after 4 years of housing the dell is some melted - because of plastic. Creak when opening, moving and putting his hands on him, the buttons are worn paint, as long as they are all ... and MBP after 5 years still pleasantly opens and closes, the buttons go with a nice finger-clik night I sit in front of my computer without waking children typing on the keyboard but of course Congratulations, buy I'm not going sweeten apple .... But the superiority of the old MBP on the PC is a small crumbs that how you will gather it together it turns out that it is a diamond ... The PC laptop is a donut. Once you buy and do not want to try the next

He's talking about a desktop.

 

[andeify]

What if Apple gave two options..?

cMBP with a discreet GPU, updated Hawsell CPUs but no gains in battery life

MBPr with these special Haswell CPUs, longer battery life but no dGPU

which would you go for?

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

Just as an FYI, here, guys, the 4950HQ processor has a recommended customer price of $657.

If we're looking at something better than that, we're easily looking at a CPU that costs over $700 alone.

That's $700, just for the CPU and a GPU with worse performance than the 650M in the previous Retina MBP.

For Haswell, it is undeniable that price for performance would take a major hit and consumers would be getting screwed in every category outside of battery life if Apple went with CPUs like the 4950HQ without a dedicated GPU.

 

[Riemann Zeta]

The change from Power to x86 took real world performance a set back…

Not true at all. In addition to Mac OS X exhibiting superior performance running on x86 machines, the transition to Intel took Apple from single core 1.33-1.5GHz PPC G4 chips to dual-core 1.86GHz Intel chips.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

what a rubbish response

is your day job a speechwriter for politicians?

OK, rather than attempting to hurl intellectually vapid insults as a response to my post -- a post that wasn't even directed at you -- please explain where in my post I'm wrong. Guaranteed you can't do it because what I stated is 100% fact.

If you want to object to my post fine, that's what forums are for. But please use your brain when responding and not your knee-jerks.

 

[Freyqq]

New review from anandtech on the Iris 5200: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7182/90-minutes-with-the-clevo-w740su-featuring-iris-pro-hd-5200

The review shows almost no benefit to the L4 cache in compute.

 

[Apsik]

or maybe someone knows the sale of the last 12 months: MBP vs MBPr it would be perhaps the best indication that Apple wants to invest in MBP without retinal or not....

 

[mcarling]

No, the reason was that [the 13" rMBP] was a rip off.

Not a rip off, just Retina displays were very expensive a year ago because yields were poor.

What if Apple gave two options..?

cMBP with a discreet GPU, updated Hawsell CPUs but no gains in battery life

MBPr with these special Haswell CPUs, longer battery life but no dGPU

which would you go for?

No brainer. The rMBP of course.

Just as an FYI, here, guys, the 4950HQ processor has a recommended customer price of $657.

If we're looking at something better than that, we're easily looking at a CPU that costs over $700 alone.

That's $700, just for the CPU and a GPU with worse performance than the 650M in the previous Retina MBP.

You're quoting prices for customers who buy batches of 1000 CPUs. Those prices have very little to do with the prices Apple pay when buying millions of CPUs.

 

[erigas]

I wonder if the high end Iris pro would better than GT750M (or whatever nVidia would be put in a rMBP) in CAD and simulation based applications.
I think I read somewhere that nvidia sucks for CAD and the new highend solution from Intel would be closer to a mobile workstation card for its raw compute power.
Any thoughts?

 

[mcarling]

or maybe someone knows the sale of the last 12 months: MBP vs MBPr it would be perhaps the best indication that Apple wants to invest in MBP without retinal or not.

I don't have any numbers, but I ask every time I go into an Apple store. The answer I always get is that they sell more rMBPs than cMBPs. I have no idea what the ratio might be.

 

[blueTattoo]

I wonder if the high end Iris pro would better than GT750M (or whatever nVidia would be put in a rMBP) in CAD and simulation based applications.
I think I read somewhere that nvidia sucks for CAD and the new highend solution from Intel would be closer to a mobile workstation card for its raw compute power.
Any thoughts?

It's just a benchmark, but...

Notebookcheck- GT 650M (GT 750M is the same chip, better clocks, but nothing major)

And Iris Pro 5200

 

[TheHateMachine]

after 4 years of housing the dell is some melted - because of plastic. Creak when opening, moving and putting his hands on him, the buttons are worn paint, as long as they are all ... and MBP after 5 years still pleasantly opens and closes, the buttons go with a nice finger-clik night I sit in front of my computer without waking children typing on the keyboard but of course Congratulations, buy I'm not going sweeten apple .... But the superiority of the old MBP on the PC is a small crumbs that how you will gather it together it turns out that it is a diamond ... The PC laptop is a donut. Once you buy and do not want to try the next

All of my "wat". He was talking about a desktop, even then Dell makes solid metal laptops that will last forever. Comparing a MBP to a $300 netbook is kind of silly.

 

[TMay]

I wonder if the high end Iris pro would better than GT750M (or whatever nVidia would be put in a rMBP) in CAD and simulation based applications.
I think I read somewhere that nvidia sucks for CAD and the new highend solution from Intel would be closer to a mobile workstation card for its raw compute power.
Any thoughts?

I'm running SolidWorks, but not on a Mac, and my opinion is that the AMD W series (example, W8000) are a bit more usable in that card supports OpenGL graphics, OpenCL compute, and a mix of both simultaneously, which I don't think that the Kepler (example, K5000) supports. I have a Quadro 4000 now.

Based on that, I would find the GT3e to be a very flexible way to maximize a mix of processes, which is what CAD is about, i.e., background rendering and simulation while you refine the design in the foreground.

 

[HurryKayne]

What if Apple gave two options..?

cMBP with a discreet GPU, updated Hawsell CPUs but no gains in battery life

MBPr with these special Haswell CPUs, longer battery life but no dGPU

which would you go for?

the former

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It's just a benchmark, but...

Notebookcheck- GT 650M (GT 750M is the same chip, better clocks, but nothing major)

Image


And Iris Pro 5200

Image

Max. Amount of Memory 128 MB
Shared Memory yes

 

[Apsik]

All of my "wat". He was talking about a desktop, even then Dell makes solid metal laptops that will last forever. Comparing a MBP to a $300 netbook is kind of silly.

yep
guest of MAC will defend this from the PC aspired

 

[Count Blah]

What if Apple gave two options..?

cMBP with a discreet GPU, updated Hawsell CPUs but no gains in battery life

MBPr with these special Haswell CPUs, longer battery life but no dGPU

which would you go for?

The cMBP, No contest. It can be upgraded by the user to add another year or two to it's usefulness, instead of paying the exorbitant amount Apple charges for upgrades at purchase time. That, plus a dGPU!!

 

[GermanyChris]

Not true at all. In addition to Mac OS X exhibiting superior performance running on x86 machines, the transition to Intel took Apple from single core 1.33-1.5GHz PPC G4 chips to dual-core 1.86GHz Intel chips.

Not while running Power optimized apps like we were for a couple years after the transistion.

 

[FrozenDarkness]

off topic but I HIGHLY doubt Apple will remove dedicated graphics in general since there's no reason to. The most I see happening is them offering a 15" macbook retina without dedicated graphics but i mean the logic board probably doesn't change much so I don't see why Apple will remove this feature.

 

[mcarling]

off topic but I HIGHLY doubt Apple will remove dedicated graphics in general since there's no reason to.

Cost, reliability, and battery life are all good reasons to eliminate the discreet GPU. As the number of devices that fit on a single die increases, ultimate performance will become a fourth reason in two or three years. For a given power (heat dissipation) budget, integrated graphics already offers better performance than discrete graphics.

 

[Renzatic]

Cost, reliability, and battery life are all good reasons to eliminate the discreet GPU. As the number of devices that fit on a single die increases, ultimate performance will become a fourth reason in two or three years. For a given power (heat dissipation) budget, integrated graphics already offers better performance than discrete graphics.

This is like saying a truck is better for moving things than an 18-wheeler because it gets better gas mileage. The fact your new Macbook Pro with an integrated graphics card is running cooler and lasting longer on a battery won't matter much when it can't perform the same tasks nearly as well as your old MBP with a discrete graphics card.

The MBP is supposed to be a portable workstation. Size, heat, and battery should be secondary concerns in relation to its main task of getting things done. With an integrated GPU alone, it's only one step above being a souped up Air with a nicer screen.