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Intel's Skylake Chips Will Drive Three 4K Monitors at 60Hz

redheeler said:
You mean Apple should have held off Mini DisplayPort on any Mac until Thunderbolt became standard using the same port to avoid confusion?

I agree this will always cripple the current rMB somewhat though. A first-gen product, so it's to be expected.
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My history is a big foggy, but in that case I think MDP came first, right? So Thunderbolt probably should have used a different cable design.

I don't really know if the annoyance outweighs whatever advantages there were in piggy backing on the existing standard...

USB-C is a little different though-- I think the rMB was pretty much the first and only product with that port, Apple is certainly involved in the Thunderbolt planning, and the two announcements came very close together. It looks a little to me like the product was designed to have Thunderbolt, but Intel's timeline shifted and Apple decided they wanted to release the product anyway.
 
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Analog Kid said:
My history is a big foggy, but in that case I think MDP came first, right? So Thunderbolt probably should have used a different cable design.

I don't really know if the annoyance outweighs whatever advantages there were in piggy backing on the existing standard...
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They were smart to use the same port because Thunderbolt can output a Mini DisplayPort signal which can be used with Mini DisplayPort cables. And yes, MiniDP came first.
Analog Kid said:
USB-C is a little different though-- I think the rMB was pretty much the first and only product with that port, Apple is certainly involved in the Thunderbolt planning, and the two announcements came very close together. It looks a little to me like the product was designed to have Thunderbolt, but Intel's timeline shifted and Apple decided they wanted to release the product anyway.
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You might be right. USB-C is still a very capable port without Thunderbolt, just not as capable.
 
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HobeSoundDarryl said:
All this focus on 4K (or better) in impending hardware, phones (but not iPhones yet) shooting video at 4K, 4K camcorders dropping in price, 4K TVs dropping in price and increasingly overtaking prime real estate at TV-selling stores, H.265 seemingly impending, etc.

Then, visit any :apple:TV 4 speculation thread and find it packed with some of us putting down 4K as a "gimmick", "nobody can see a difference from average seating distances", and on and on. Nutshell sentiment: "1080p is good enough" just as "720p was good enough" when Apple continued to cling to that as maximum HD (and thus 1080p was the "gimmick", "nobody can see", etc).

Glad to see lots of stock hardware bringing the capability to the masses. Wonder if 4K will still be "gimmick" and "nobody can see" when Apple gets around to implementing it in Apple hardware? Rhetorical: I already know as I saw how quickly the "720p is good enough" argument evaporated as soon as Apple embraced 1080p. Rinse. Repeat.
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There's a cost to pushing all those extra pixels... slower frame rates, lower battery life, higher (costlier) bandwidth usage.

It's the industry's way of getting us to upgrade. 3D failed, curved screens failed so now it's all about 4K.

It will happen eventually, but I see no reason why Apple should rush to support 4K just to have another check mark on their spec sheet.
 
NMBob said:
And I don't understand how there can't be electrical cross-talk. The shielding can't be that great when you can have the wires for an upto 100W "something" turning on and off right next to your video signal wires.
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Not hard to filter out the GHz components of the power transients, and the communications lines are differential so they aren't affected by common mode.

In effect, they're using different parts of the radio spectrum...
 
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Nobody talking about the most exiting feature of skylake?

Inverse hyper threading. :)

Some great potential for speed gains there in software that suck at using multicore,
yeah I'm looking at you Photoshop..
 
I've been running on the original rMBP (mid 2012) and have been super happy with it. But damn if Skylake hasn't got me pondering an upgrade.
 
Hopefully this means the next gen. of Mac Pro's are not too far away. Maybe Oct. ?

Looking forward to buy a new 2nd gen. Skylake Processor based Mac Pro when they are finally made available.
 
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And none of the high end Skylake CPUs will be in the Mac laptops. The 3 simultaneous monitors is wrt 1080p. AMD/Nvidia have done that for years.

Skylake itself is a flop wrt improvements over existing Intel CPUs. Emphasizing the iGPU won't help when it competes against Zen and Arctic Island integrated APU. First results of that will be next spring. Skylake results testing has already been dismal.

I can only assume that Macrumors is betting on Apple to add some style to what otherwise the rest of the industry has coined not worth an upgrade.

28nm AMD APU tech from the Piledriver era has better graphics performance than the highest available Skylake. Sorry folks, but Intel isn't going to push the industry forward. They're waiting on Keller and AMD to release Zen before realizing they missed the boat: HSA.
 
Crosscreek said:
Mac Mini with quad core and a couple of usb type c please.
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Sure, if only the highest-end part is available. So much for the 399$ Mac :p

It bears repeating every time, but the Intel's GPU parts are weak, and remain weak. Before the iGPU units on the i-series the GPU parts were such a joke that only headless servers would use them. The point that the iGPU became something less joke-worthy was around Sandy-bridge where it was about 20% below where a 99$ GPU would be at. That places the Haswell part at slightly above a 99$ part and Broadwell at probably just slightly higher than current 99$ parts.

The thing to consider, is look at the size of the 600$ GPU part from AMD or nVidia and now try and figure out how you'd fit a large enough air-cooled heatsink in such a device like a MacMini.

You don't. That's why we continuously get "laptop scale" GPU parts in the Mac Mini and in all but the top-end iMac. Apple only gets away with it because they control the OS, so a sub-standard part somehow manages to perform better on the Mac than it would on Windows.
 
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I think it's time to retire my Mac II and finally upgrade. :D

Seriously... this looks really good. A new laptop may be in the future.
 
unplugme71 said:
I'm happy I waited for a rMBP. I hope they put 2-4 USB-C ports on the 13" and 4-6 on the 15". That way you can do what you wish with these ports.

If the 13" comes with Quad core I'll be buying that, otherwise the 15" it is.
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32GB of memory is my wish. I JUST bought the 15" rMBP, honestly couldn't wait any longer. I'm thinking these won't be available until Dec.
 
Barry Bishop said:
and when are we going to see a Mac Pro update?!?!?
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This has nothing to do with the Mac Pro! Further the Mac Pro will get updated when the technology arrives to make a worthwhile upgrade. That hasn't happened yet.

In a nut shell if you are expecting major Mac Pro updates every year, you are not I tune with Intel and their slow turn around on Xeon hardware. Especially the support chips for Xeon. At best the platform will see a two year cycle for significant updates.
 
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Mr. Retrofire said:
Impressive! The Skylake iGPU is up 10x faster than the Sandy Bridge iGPU (<= 130 GFLOPS).
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Yep a huge advantage that gives any machine built on SkyLake a much longer life span as the GPU becomes "good enough". I was actually waiting for SkyLake until my old MBP died early in the year. It sucks to be forced into a buy when you know SkyLake is almost here but I can say that the new MBP 13" has really left a positive impression upon me!
 
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Karma*Police said:
There's a cost to pushing all those extra pixels... slower frame rates, lower battery life, higher (costlier) bandwidth usage.

It's the industry's way of getting us to upgrade. 3D failed, curved screens failed so now it's all about 4K.

It will happen eventually, but I see no reason why Apple should rush to support 4K just to have another check mark on their spec sheet.
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And the benefit to all those extra pixels is sharper images. Do you feel the same about "retina" or the more recent launches that go beyond what was originally defined as retina (apparently the maximum that human eyes can resolve)? Let me guess: no, that's completely different. Yes, pushing more pixels asks more of underlying hardware... just like Retina (for which we don't seem to find much fault with Apple as they roll those many-more-pixel displays out; in fact, retina or retina+ is often one of the most touted reasons new hardware from Apple is a "must have upgrade").

Apparently, more robust hardware is about to hit. If Intel is going to build this into stock, core hardware, Apple has to move along. Else, there is going to be tons of cheaper Windows computers displaying 4K on up to 3 monitors while Apple "takes it's time" (even though the very same chips will be within the next generation of Apple computers).

This 4K issue is dazzling. We will whine to no end about anything where we don't feel like Apple is advancing with latest & greatest... except this one thing... where the status quo is apparently "good enough" (until Apple goes there and then all such positions won't turn on Apple for doing so... just as they didn't when this crowd argued with Apple when "720p was good enough" but didn't fault Apple when they embraced 1080p). Mysteriously, once Apple adopts it, it's gimmicky, failure, useless status is magically transformed into gushing praise & "I'm already in line" greatness.
 
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JDHiro said:
Ha! TBH, I think a 30" 6-8K would be just about perfect. 28" feels like it could use a bit more space, and 32" is a bit too much screen to fit in your field of view.
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yeah, I like 27" personally. Although I have 2 24" side by side right now and its nice multi-tasking or live monitoring
 
miduga said:
With that new information... can we now be more optimistic about a new Mac Book Pro Retina with Skylake this October?
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I don't think so. Chip ships about now. Even if you have the specs - doesn't a new motherboard need to be fabricated? New shell to fit it all? I think we won't see new laptops with Skylake until March 2016 at the earliest? Maybe even May / June 2016?
 
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