Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Is the Sandy Bridge processor THAT much better than the current i5?

You still need to wait if you can...

Besides cpu performance bump, you just never know how much it might also reduce the heat overall along w/ prolong battery life from new cpu.

Design change is also possiblity.
 
jvmxtra said:
You still need to wait if you can...

Besides cpu performance bump, you just never know how much it might also reduce the heat overall along w/ prolong battery life from new cpu.

Design change is also possiblity.
Click to expand...

A design change will not happen.
 
If its the quad I would think yes but if its not then a slight increase in speed/efficiency.
 
CPU Speed is so relative; I doubt most users wouldn’t notice a big difference between the current i5 to i5 SB. I too am waiting for the new MBP, in the mean time I ending up with a Lenovo T410 with a Core i5 4.2GHz w/windows. What a big disappointment, I see the round circle spinning as much as my old laptop. Human nature - we always hope new things will be 2 fold better but in reality its only 10% better :)
 
At the end of the day. NO.

Oh sure there will be some sort of performance bump, but like any other marketing this is highly overrated. It happens each time a new chip or chipset is released.

I know, I always buy into it, only to find that in practical day to day use, the speed increase or feature improvement is modest at best.

Cheers :)
 
zenio said:
At the end of the day. NO.

Oh sure there will be some sort of performance bump, but like any other marketing this is highly overrated. It happens each time a new chip or chipset is released.

I know, I always buy into it, only to find that in practical day to day use, the speed increase or feature improvement is modest at best.

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think like always, many people will be disappointed. Apple always seems to underdeliver with these things...I remember last year waiting for Arrandale, people's GPU predictions turned out to be huge wishful thinking after apple dropped a 330M in the MBPs (not to mention the innumerable other letdowns).
 
murdercitydevil said:
Yeah, I think like always, many people will be disappointed. Apple always seems to underdeliver with these things...I remember last year waiting for Arrandale, people's GPU predictions turned out to be huge wishful thinking after apple dropped a 330M in the MBPs (not to mention the innumerable other letdowns).
Click to expand...

One should always expect to be disappointed with the GPUs apple puts into their laptops. They are fairly consistent about sticking in the weakest midrange gpu they can find.

zenio said:
At the end of the day. NO.

Oh sure there will be some sort of performance bump, but like any other marketing this is highly overrated. It happens each time a new chip or chipset is released.

I know, I always buy into it, only to find that in practical day to day use, the speed increase or feature improvement is modest at best.
Click to expand...

Well, this is a little relative to the situation you are in and depends on a lot of factors. Sure don't expect much if its a jump from 2.4ghz to 2.53ghz and the same architecture. But the jump from the old G4 powerbooks to the Core Duo MBP was significant and I think that if you are moving from an old Core 2 Duo MBP to a Sandy Bridge i7 MBP then I think it will be noticeable. It also depends on what software you are running. Sometimes an older version runs really fast with new hardware, but then you upgrade the software which often comes with new features or bloatware and then its like nothing has changed from your previous experience. Again it depends on your situation.
 
Just wait. No matter what people say, they usually regret buying early when they knew a newer model was just down the line. If you're stuck on the 2010 models, why pay full price? Wait till the newer models come out and then you may be able to get a 2010 brand new at a discounted price from your Apple store.
 
The higher res screen coming to the 13" model and possibly having somewhat affordable SSD options are going to be a much bigger improvement than having a faster GPU and processor.

For normal use, there isn't all that big a difference between my mid-2009 MBP and my much more powerful desktop PC. Gaming, video/audio/3D rendering and graphics work are pretty much the only things where there is a huge difference and even then the old MBP does just fine (excluding gaming), simply takes a bit more time.
 
I honestly think that the sandybridge CPUs will be a decent jump. It's intel's tick tock, where they introduce a new microarchitecture and then as a tick they do a die shrink.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Tick-Tock

Anandtech did benchmarks too, and the mobile quad core performs as fast if not faster than an i7-920 desktop cpu. Notebook cpus are, even clock for clock etc slower than the desktop counterparts, due to power and thermal limitations, but for a notebook cpu to be as fast as a desktop cpu that's still pretty fast by today's standards is quite amazing.

For reference, the i5s used in the current macbook pros a i5-520 (2.4ghz), i5-540 (2.53ghz) and i7-620 (2.66ghz)

For reference the i7-640 is 2.8ghz... Then again this is a quad core, and it has a 45w tdp, where the dual cores are 35w, so apple might not want to include it, but it would make the macbook pro a computing powerhouse.

34960.png


34963.png


Here are benchmarks of the dual cores, current and possible future (passmark)

Intel Core i5 520M @ 2.40GHz 2333
Intel Core i5 540M @ 2.53GHz 2467
Intel Core i7 620M @ 2.67GHz 2734

Intel Core i7-2620M @ 2.70GHz 3415
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back