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MacBook Pro Intel Iris Plus 640 (nTB) versus 650 (TB)...

MartinAppleGuy

MartinAppleGuy

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Original poster
Sep 27, 2013
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I’m looking to grow the Apple family and get a MacBook Pro. I’m a web designer/developer, working with a code editor and Photoshop most commonly. I’m looking st the non Touch bar model and then the Touch bar, and I see that the nTB has a 640 GPU (quite similar benchmark wise to my dedicated NVIDIA 750m in my iMac). The Touch bar model has the 650 GPU which in benchmarks seems to crush iMac. I’m wondering if anyone has had a change to play and games or other wise push these new GPUs on the new 13” MacBooks.
 
The GPU in your iMac is slightly more powerful than both those GPU's. You probably won't see much difference between the them though. None of them are really powerful enough to run most modern games (2015 and onward) even at 1080p with medium settings. Even Nvidia's current low end card 940M is faster. You can play most older games fine though.
 
eviljack said:
The GPU in your iMac is slightly more powerful than both those GPU's. You probably won't see much difference between the them though. None of them are really powerful enough to run most modern games (2015 and onward) even at 1080p with medium settings. Even Nvidia's current low end card 940M is faster. You can play most older games fine though.
Click to expand...

I’d just be impressed if I could run some of my mac comparable games such as Outlast and everything. I’m seeing a large difference however in benchmarks such as passmark between the 640 and 650.
 
I too am waiting for gaming tests with the 13" TB model. Specifically how well a game like Cities: Skylines will run which, based on very little research, will run fine on medium/low settings. I have one on order either way as I plan on eventually going the eGPU route in 6 months or so but I'm interested in hearing what others have experienced.
 
The 2017 has
  • Intel HD Graphics 630
But no one has indicated if this is faster or the same as the 2016 MBP. People complained when the 2016 was released that the internal gpu was slower than the 2015 internal iris pro graphics.
 
MrGuder said:
The 2017 has
  • Intel HD Graphics 630
But no one has indicated if this is faster or the same as the 2016 MBP. People complained when the 2016 was released that the internal gpu was slower than the 2015 internal iris pro graphics.
Click to expand...

The MBP 2017 base non touch bar model has an Intel Iris Plus 640.
 
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MrGuder said:
I wonder why the 15" gets a lower internal gpu the the 13"
Click to expand...
It was the same for the 2016 models. I guess it's because they also have dGPU's for when you need the performance. But it would be sweet to have the higher tier iGPU for when on battery power.
 
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MartinAppleGuy said:
I’d just be impressed if I could run some of my mac comparable games such as Outlast and everything. I’m seeing a large difference however in benchmarks such as passmark between the 640 and 650.
Click to expand...

Don't look at passmark, its one of the most pointless benchmarks. I have no idea how exactly they do their tests but the results often make no sense at all. Probably one of the most reliable websites with this information is notebookcheck.
[doublepost=1497026578][/doublepost]
MartinAppleGuy said:
So what kind of difference would I see between the 640 and the 650?
Click to expand...

Probably similar to 540 vs 550: around 5-10% But also the 550 has more thermal headroom, so the performance in games is likely to be more stable.
 
Sadly Notebookcheck don't have anything for them yet :/
leman said:
Don't look at passmark, its one of the most pointless benchmarks. I have no idea how exactly they do their tests but the results often make no sense at all. Probably one of the most reliable websites with this information is notebookcheck.
[doublepost=1497026578][/doublepost]

Probably similar to 540 vs 550: around 5-10% But also the 550 has more thermal headroom, so the performance in games is likely to be more stable.
Click to expand...
dly
 
MartinAppleGuy said:
So what kind of difference would I see between the 640 and the 650?
Click to expand...

On paper, they are "similar" in performance. In reality, there's quite some performance gap. Indeed, the 650 is on a CPU with 28W TDP while the 640 is on a CPU with only 15W TDP. So, the 650 will be able to sustain steadier framerates than the 640. Also, whenever a game is both CPU and GPU intensive (a lot of action on the screen), the 650 will have a much better performance.
 
Thanks seems like it may be worth the upgrade! Many thanks!
masterpace said:
On paper, they are "similar" in performance. In reality, there's quite some performance gap. Indeed, the 650 is on a CPU with 28W TDP while the 640 is on a CPU with only 15W TDP. So, the 650 will be able to sustain steadier framerates than the 640. Also, whenever a game is both CPU and GPU intensive (a lot of action on the screen), the 650 will have a much better performance.
Click to expand...
 
MartinAppleGuy said:
Thanks seems like it may be worth the upgrade! Many thanks!
Click to expand...

You're very welcome! Please bear in mind that neither the 640 or 650 are gaming GPU's. I have a dedicated gaming laptop for heavy duty stuff. However, I was still surprised that my sleek MBP 13 2016 (with a 550) could handle games like "Deux EX - Human Revolution" and "Doom 2016" at 720p with medium settings and have on average 35+ fps. Even "Just Cause 3" was doing ok. Of course, I'm using Bootcamp with latest drivers and clean install (no much processes or icons running in the background). All in all in "high performance" mode (both Intel control panel and Windows one). Basically, all optimized. Even the latest Prey, in medium settings and 1280x800 is giving me 40+ fps on average. We're talking about a 550 on the 2016 model. As per experts, the 2017 one, with a 650, might give you about 15 % performance increase.

Last year, I was testing a Surface Pro 4 with an intel HD 540. When the game starts and there's no action, fps were similar to the 550. However, as soon as action comes in, the fps on the 540 dropped substantially, almost like a slideshow, while the 550 usually remains more stable, with some lighter dips. Again, those chips are not meant for gaming. But sometimes, you just want to bring one nice laptop (the MacBook Pro) and make a few compromises, performance wise...
 
Fancuku said:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+Iris+Plus+640

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+Iris+Plus+650

Around 25% difference.
Click to expand...

Would love to see some actual, real life benchmarks. I believe the 25 % is an optimistic scenario where GPU has full power and CPU is in the background (not realistic). The only issue with those GPU benchmarks is that they are stressing the GPU alone, leaving the CPU behind. In real life scenarios, like gaming, both the CPU and GPU are equally important. The issue with integrated graphics is the both CPU and GPU are competing for the same resources (power).
 
satinsilverem2 said:
I read somewhere online that the 640/650 are just 540/550s with a little bump in MHz and nothing really else.
Click to expand...

Hence, the 10-15 % increase I'm expecting. Not worthed the upgrade from last year and certainly not radical or breakthrough innovation.
[doublepost=1497054467][/doublepost]And again, if gaming is a priority, something sleek like a Razer Blade would be a better fit. If some want something as close to a MacBook, design and quality wise and wants to game, this is the way to go. I could afford two laptops, so I kept gaming and the rest separately. If not, I would have chosen the Blade, for its overall "package", for a similar price point.
 
Can someone explain embedded dram and how it relates to speed.

The 2015 15" Macbook Pro has the integrated Intel Iris 5200 Pro graphics processor with 128 MB of embedded DRAM

The 2017 15" Macbook Pro has the integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 (no DRAM)

So will the 2017 15" MBP have a slower integrated processor because it doesn't have embedded DRAM? The 2015 will be faster because it does have 128 MB of DRAM?
 
The 2017 15" MacBook Pro has a Radeon Pro 555 graphics card. Is the Intel GPU integrated in the CPU even used at all? Even if it were, an HD 630 is much faster than what's in the 2015.
 
PieTunes said:
The 2017 15" MacBook Pro has a Radeon Pro 555 graphics card. Is the Intel GPU integrated in the CPU even used at all? Even if it were, an HD 630 is much faster than what's in the 2015.
Click to expand...
But just speaking of the integrated graphics and not the dedicated graphics would the 2017 HD 630 be faster than the 2015 Iris 5200 because one has DRAM and the other doesn't.
[doublepost=1497122715][/doublepost]Here is an interesting article that compares the 2.

http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/inde...s-630-mobile-vs-iris-pro-graphics-5200-mobile

"The HD Graphics 630 Mobile requires 15 Watts to run and the Iris Pro Graphics 5200 Mobile requires 47 Watts. The Pro Graphics requires 32 Watts more than the Graphics 630 to run. The difference is significant enough that the Pro Graphics may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the Graphics 630."
 
DarkSel said:
The Iris Pro 5200 is vastly superior to the HD 630 precisely because the 630 is starved for bandwidth due to the lack of eDRAM.

Source: http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compar...Intel-HD-630-Desktop-Kaby-Lake/m8190vsm178724
Click to expand...
Can you elaborate on that link? I see the 5200 is showing a lot of green bars and + numbers but I don't really understand the comparison.

The 630 doesn't have eDRAM but the 5200 does...so does that mean with regards to the integrated graphics only that the 2015 15" MBP would be faster than the 630 in the 2017 15" MBP?
 
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