Ivy Bridge + battery life

[roofz]

cnet reports that the battery life improvement from ivy bridge over sandy bridge is between 10 and 12 minutes.

That's a negligible improvement in my book, when batteries are marketed to be able to run on 420 minutes on a charge.

Is there still a chance we might see retina on the new MBPs, or is it more likely that they won't be released until Haswell?

 

[GGJstudios]

Already being discussed here: 2012 Macbook Pro Redesign

 

[roofz]

Read the last 3 pages, and no, there is currently not a discussion about the possibility of retina being added into the new line given the weak battery life improvement.

 

[Risasi]

Got a link to that CNET article?


P.S. Is this what you're talking about: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57417957-1/our-first-ivy-bridge-laptops-how-do-they-perform/

If so, I'll hold out judgment until Apple releases their own IB laptops...

 

[roofz]

Got a link to that CNET article?


P.S. Is this what you're talking about: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57417957-1/our-first-ivy-bridge-laptops-how-do-they-perform/

If so, I'll hold out judgment until Apple releases their own IB laptops...

yup! that's it

 

[Bear]

cnet reports that the battery life improvement from ivy bridge over sandy bridge is between 10 and 12 minutes.

That's a negligible improvement in my book, when batteries are marketed to be able to run on 420 minutes on a charge.

Is there still a chance we might see retina on the new MBPs, or is it more likely that they won't be released until Haswell?

That was for one non-Apple system and the runtime was in the 240 minute range, not the 420 minute range.

You have to take into account not only processor power usage, you also need to look at battery capacity. Based on what they did for the iPad, there's a chance for the MacBook batteries to be nicely improved as well.

As for "Retina", remember it's a minimum dpi at a particular distance. So how much more resolution would say the 15" need over the current high res option?

 

[ixodes]

Increasing battery life for the hardware makers is a daunting task. There are far more variables & challenges that the non-engineers may realize. Then there's the topic of battery technology to consider.

For me, at the end of the day, any increase, no matter how incremental is a plus. I've never allowed battery run times to influence my purchase. There are other considerations of greater importance to me.

Working in a multi-platform environment at work & home, I've found that I have usually enjoyed better battery life from my Macs, not to mention my personal preference for Apple laptops.

Year after year since system 7, PowerBooks & MacBook Pro's have delighted me with their operating system, performance, and ergonomics.

 

[dusk007]

Check out the Notebookcheck tests. There is seems that IB is actually worse than Sandy for Battery life.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Ivy-Bridge-Quad-Core-Processors.73624.0.html

Medium load like videos is lacking and there IB is surely better but the small difference implies no more than equal battery life.

Especially idle is bad. The only difference being the CPU and 2W more is not nothing. That is a big clevo a MBP has a 10W idle power. 2W on top of that for the switched CPU and idle power draw increases quite a lot.
Turbo is more aggressive which means more real performance gains in mobile than in desktop.
I think the default voltages are still very high probably because of an imperfect 22nm process. Some steppings down the road might bring significant change.
One would wish for undervolting options in the MBP. Considering that on CB they could undervolt by 0.15V which decreased power consumption by quite a bit.

 

[Risasi]

Those are all quad core CPU's, no dual cores in the bunch. Which will likely be the 13" MBP...assuming there is one, and the MBA's certainly won't be quads. They also aren't Apple machines. Maybe it will be worse in the Macbook's coming out...then again maybe not. We're just going to have to wait it out. I'm still expecting a bit more usable runtime on the new machines, maybe about an hour or so. I wouldn't get too worried about battery life just yet.

 

[dusk007]

Well Dual Cores aren't released yet.
But you the difference between SB DC and IB DC should be comparable.

 

[roofz]

I don't think it would make a difference if it was a dual core or a quad core, because the cnet tests held these factors constant. they tested a quad core ivy bridge chip against a quad core sandy bridge chip

 

[Risasi]

cnet, feh...

How about Anand?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5772/mobile-ivy-bridge-and-asus-n56vm-preview/7

One thing that we need to point out is that the original Sandy Bridge i7-2820QM laptop from Intel was an awesome example of how to deliver great battery life. We never did reach that same level with any of the retail quad-core laptops that we tested over the past year, but then most of the other quad-core laptops also included some form of discrete graphics. Compared with that particular notebook (which never shipped as a retail product), our Ivy Bridge notebook has worse battery life. Once we start comparing with retail laptops however—particularly those with switchable graphics—Ivy Bridge ends up looking like it will deliver similar to slightly better battery life relative to Sandy Bridge.

Go ahead and downgrade my posts all you want.

CNET's article was not dealing with an Apple product, and doesn't take into account Apple's efficiency optimizations of battery use. Until we have laptops in hand running IB mobile CPU's we won't really know if they are better or worse.