Macs are SLOWER than PCs. Here’s why.

[leman]

But I can get a PC that's better at cooling (because of better cooling solutions due to a bigger PC) and weight isn't a factor for me.

That has always been the case. Nevertheless, the gap between the MBP and the fastest available laptops on the market has shrunk considerably in the past few years. Just few years ago, you could go and get a laptops with a CPUs that was twice as fast as the fastest MBP. These days, fastest gaming laptops are only 5-10% faster in burst workloads and 25-30% faster in multi-core workloads, at 150-250% increase in weight and even larger increase in overall volume. In terms of overall balance (excluding price obviously), the MBP is still in its unique spot, although other laptops are creeping up on it.

At any rate, it seems that Apple's response to the current challenges is more custom parts, which makes sense. Apple's strategy was always to be "different" from the others. Now that the others have copied most of Apple's unique stuff (unibody design, great trackpads, minimalist symmetric compact enclosures, HiDPI displays), Apple is responding by using custom, exclusive components and unique, impossible to copy solutions. I'm curious to what they will do with the MBP over the next few years.
[doublepost=1556556011][/doublepost]

With that said, Apple has had these chips during the creation of their laptops and still continued to develop a design that was thinner with inadequate cooling capacity. They've been doing that for years. I can't see how that is Intels fault.

And why would Apple throw their working design away just because Intel's chip development was stagnating? Later this or early next year, all this stuff will be fixed with Ice Lake anyway.

 

[pshufd]

Unless you're ok with lugging around an inch-thick gaming laptop (and a lot of people aren't in 2019, myself included), you're going to be looking at the same cooling and throttling issues with the same specs on the Windows side.

It's clear that there are people willing to lug around heavy laptops given the supply of such laptops. For me it's just a throwback to the old days when laptops weighed a lot more. I'm going down to the gym to do some deadlifts, squats and military presses using barbells.

 

[uecker87]

Thermal issues aside, we know how much time we save using macOS. Features like Finder Labels, Tags, Quick Look, super easy color profile management, and so on don’t exist on Windows.

You plug a monitor into Windows and it isn’t recognized most of the time. In Device Manager it will be listed as a “Generic Plug and Play Monitor” and no color profile will be applied to it. These have to be manually configured. On macOS the monitor is recognized and correct profiles available.

Try managing HDR content on Windows. You have to enable HDR to see HDR content. But if you do that the rest of the OS and apps appear messed up. On macOS you don’t need to manually enable HDR. Content will appear correctly without messing up your desktop or interface appearance.

Same thing with eGPU. You have to jump through a couple of hoops on Windows. On macOS it really is plug and play and so easy.

Apple can fix thermal issues easily with changes to hardware design. But Microsoft would take a lot longer to match the ease of use macOS gives users. They have had the last 20 years to catch up, but Windows File Explorer is still quite ancient. It won’t even show thumbnails for some common file formats such as .PSD files that have been used for 25+ years.

Another example. Windows 10 copies Exposé very nicely. They did a job there and also made the Taskbar more like the Dock. Now they have added the “Timeline” feature and have screwed up the appearance of their Exposé. Microsoft has this ability to take something elegant and simple and then make it complicated and messy.

Some of that may very well be true. However, I have never had an issue with a monitor on Windows 10 - maybe I'm just lucky? Not sure.. Never had a HDR display on either OSes, so I will believe you that it is messed up on Windows. For some a big issue, I'm sure. For most right now it probably isn't.

You mention eGPUs... However if you are one of the many of us out there with Nvidia GPUs, well you are out of luck with Mojave.

For day to day usage, I much prefer MacOS... I am just getting sick of all of the hardware issues and the pissing match between Apple with Mojave and Nvidia.

 

[cram501]

And why would Apple throw their working design away just because Intel's chip development was stagnating? Later this or early next year, all this stuff will be fixed with Ice Lake anyway.

Because of where we are today. If they had designed the product based on the chip they had rather than the chip they/we all wanted, we may be having a different discussion... not to mention space savings for removable memory, the butterfly keyboard, etc...

It goes beyond the cpu.

 

[Queen6]

Intel is to blame for providing chipsets that are running a lot hotter then previously. They're cramming more cores, because of the lack of 10nm chipsets and that's the only way to increase performance. Ultimately its apple's fault simply because they knew about the issue and chose not to do anything about it.

Apple was well aware of the 8th Gen CPU requirements and did literally nothing until Vega, even then... As ever Apple serves itself first and foremost, leaving it fans to defend it's inaction. Some OEM's acted and bolstered their cooling solution for 8th Gen CPU's and have advanced them further in time for 9th Gen, allowing their users to significantly benefit from Intel's additional cores & higher boost frequencies with increased performance & portability.

2019 MBP will benefit from the 9th Gen CPU's having a lower power demand, equally Apple will remain to employ the same low marketing strategies to fool the masses and mask the true performance envelope of the MBP. Any sustained heavy computational load will rapidly result in T-junction and associated thermal throttling.

Pity really all for the sake of a few mm. If I spend say $4K on a notebook, $15K on a Workstation or $100K on a Porche for that matter, I rather expect it to deliver, not be thermally limited and roll back performance in a matter of seconds. Then again this is Apple and less is always more, a point well worth considering. The bigger question who is getting more and who is getting less, my money's firmly on Apple execs with the "more"...

My throw away $650 2in1 likely has a more efficient cooling solution than the current MBP, it never throttles and it's passively cooled. Probably has more copper in it for starters

Want to see such numbers on a portable Mac? You'll be pissing in the wind for a very long time...

Base 8750H

You see thing is Apple doesn't care how many Mac's it sells, it only cares that it meets revenue targets for the Mac, for that someone is paying...

Q-6

 

[maflynn]

You plug a monitor into Windows and it isn’t recognized most of the time

I disagree, I've never had an issue plugging a monitor into a PC, well I have once - an Apple Cinema display into my Thinkpad. Yet many people have had many issues with AIO printers with macOS and my scanner no longer worked thanks to macOS.

Apple can fix thermal issues easily with changes to hardware design.

Thermals have been a thing with the MBP since 2015, as many people were complaining about heat, then and what did apple do? Make the laptop even thinner.

Edit: I do think Apple will finally do something about it in the 2019 model, making a 16" laptop

but Windows File Explorer is still quite ancient. It won’t even show thumbnails for some common file formats such as .PSD files that have been used for 25+ years.

And Finder isn't ancient As for previews, windows is highly extensible and getting previews and thumbnails is quite easy. I actually see thumbnails on my PSD right now with just the stock file explorer.

[doublepost=1556558351][/doublepost]Let me just add my $.02 regarding the file explorer, you seem unusually fixated by the age and function of the file explorer. There are plenty of other file explorers that provide even more functions then the built in. You've mentioned that you use macOS's Finder as your main collabrative tool for your team/employees. My personal opinion is that I'd rather use a tool specifically designed for collaboration then the Finder. Especially since the Mac is nearly absent in corporate America.

 

[leman]

It goes beyond the cpu.

Exactly, it goes beyond all these things. I am sure that Apple calculated all the alternatives and decided that simply calmly pursuing the same direction is the best, even if it means negative media coverage. Their market performance didn't seem to take any hit from this decision. Sometimes when things get rough just keeping steady is the right thing to do.

P.S. And since you mentioned "removeable memory"... I certainly don't want removable memory. For what purpose? I want LPDDR4 in my laptops!, it will most likely end up faster than DDR4 anyway...

 

[Falhófnir]

Honestly this is why I'm really looking forward to seeing what Apple bring to the table with their ARM Macs. Taking the A12X as a base, and considering it's a 7.5W passively cooled chip that's going toe to toe with the i7-H chips in the MBP for some workloads* we could be looking at some game changing stuff regarding power and form factor. Linus himself even notes the A12 in the iPhone is designed to pump out the power without throttling!

*and I stress that point before people jump on me about high end CAD and 3D work - though arguably the MBP isn't ideal for that either.

 

[Queen6]

Honestly this is why I'm really looking forward to seeing what Apple bring to the table with their ARM Macs. Taking the A12X as a base, and considering it's a 7.5W passively cooled chip that's going toe to toe with the i7-H chips in the MBP for some workloads* we could be looking at some game changing stuff regarding power and form factor. Linus himself even notes the A12 in the iPhone is designed to pump out the power without throttling!

*and I stress that point before people jump on me about high end CAD and 3D work - though arguably the MBP isn't ideal for that either.

Apple certainly has to do something as the current MBP simply doesn't cut it for any heavy use, it's hopelessly outclassed. As long as it "Just Works" personally I'm all for it. What's currently on offer is just well appointed Ultrabook's with a humorous price point, the performance differential is huge, the cost to professional's more.

If Apple can deliver the hardware, the software devs will support, if not break out your IPP...

Q-6

 

[cram501]

Exactly, it goes beyond all these things. I am sure that Apple calculated all the alternatives and decided that simply calmly pursuing the same direction is the best, even if it means negative media coverage. Their market performance didn't seem to take any hit from this decision. Sometimes when things get rough just keeping steady is the right thing to do.

P.S. And since you mentioned "removeable memory"... I certainly don't want removable memory. For what purpose? I want LPDDR4 in my laptops!, it will most likely end up faster than DDR4 anyway...

It does. As I stated earlier in the thread, my guess is that most people probably don't run into the thermal issue. I'm sure that was part of the calculation. It can to convince people to change to other platforms if it will potentially impact them. I've run into it on my Early 2013 MBP numerous times since I purchased it. The TIM has been changed and it is clean inside. It has always run hot although it has done the job I've needed.

You then add in design changes like the butterfly keyboard to help make it even slimmer..... That will impact the cookie eating/dust bunny user.

By removable memory, I meant upgradeable. I want the LPDDR4 also but I would like to be able to upgrade memory if I need. Right now I'm forced to buy what I think I'll need over the next few years. That isn't the end of the world but circumstances change over time.

 

[Thysanoptera]

That has always been the case. Nevertheless, the gap between the MBP and the fastest available laptops on the market has shrunk considerably in the past few years. Just few years ago, you could go and get a laptops with a CPUs that was twice as fast as the fastest MBP. These days, fastest gaming laptops are only 5-10% faster in burst workloads and 25-30% faster in multi-core workloads, at 150-250% increase in weight and even larger increase in overall volume. In terms of overall balance (excluding price obviously), the MBP is still in its unique spot, although other laptops are creeping up on it.

I'm going to debate you on this one, in the "good ol' days" the performance was limited by the CPU TDP, and both Macbooks and Windows boxes, gaming or otherwise, were limited by it (if comparing same CPU's). You were getting rated TDP at rated frequency and that was it, Macs were perfectly capable of cooling the rated TDP (and still are actually). So there was no reason for the performance to be any different, but Macs were smaller, nicer, better build, much longer battery life etc. Sure, you could get a Windows barebone with a desktop CPU but the mobile SKUs had the same performance.

Now, with the unlocked CPUs all bets are off and Macs with the same CPU as Windows machines are suddenly 20/30% slower in sustained multi core loads. And really, my GS65 is 5% heavier and larger than (still) my MBP but can dissipate around 150W of heat, almost double of what the MBP chassis is capable of.

 

[pshufd]

I'm going to debate you on this one, in the "good ol' days" the performance was limited by the CPU TDP, and both Macbooks and Windows boxes, gaming or otherwise, were limited by it (if comparing same CPU's). You were getting rated TDP at rated frequency and that was it, Macs were perfectly capable of cooling the rated TDP (and still are actually). So there was no reason for the performance to be any different, but Macs were smaller, nicer, better build, much longer battery life etc. Sure, you could get a Windows barebone with a desktop CPU but the mobile SKUs had the same performance.

Now, with the unlocked CPUs all bets are off and Macs with the same CPU as Windows machines are suddenly 20/30% slower in sustained multi core loads. And really, my GS65 is 5% heavier and larger than (still) my MBP but can dissipate around 150W of heat, almost double of what the MBP chassis is capable of.

Some of those gaming laptops have 17.3 to 18.4 inch displays too. Some of them have 660 to 780 Watt PSUs as well. Where is all of that power going to? I'd say that most of it is going towards performance.

 

[librarian]

problem is when you have thin laptops like the razer blade with an rtx2070 maxQ that smokes in gpu performance even the newest iMac with vega.
And because most of production software has migrated(or is migrating right now) to CUDA+Optix(RTX) rendering solutions you should not even care about raw cpu performance either for these laptops. In few years or so software like Cinema 4D or Maya will likely be GPU only and apple will be out of the game, I'm not surprised if Autodesk or Maxon decide to discontinue mac os versions of their software at some point.
The Razer blade has a nice cooling setup and when you're rendering on gpu the temperatures are pretty decent, around 75c at max. Performance on complex scenes is outstanding.
With these laptops eGPU solutions are also borderline useless. You already have all the performance you need, the max-Q rtx solutions may have lower clock speed overall, but nvidia did offset that by adding more CUDA cores so the performance penalty is not as big as you may think, and the RTX cores brings considerable performance boosts on dense scenes (and don't forget image denoise, which is already industry standard).

 

[leman]

I'm going to debate you on this one, in the "good ol' days" the performance was limited by the CPU TDP, and both Macbooks and Windows boxes, gaming or otherwise, were limited by it (if comparing same CPU's).

That is still the case. Its just that many laptops now run the CPU slightly above its TDP, so they get these better benchmark scores. In my book, if the CPU hits the spec, the machine is performing fine.

Now, with the unlocked CPUs all bets are off and Macs with the same CPU as Windows machines are suddenly 20/30% slower in sustained multi core loads. And really, my GS65 is 5% heavier and larger than (still) my MBP but can dissipate around 150W of heat, almost double of what the MBP chassis is capable of.

But it's not really like that. The machines that are really 20-30% faster are also significantly larger, have larger coolers, use open airflow (limits usability in cramped scapes) and their battery life is pretty much terrible.

As to the MSI laptop... Both the 2018 and the 2019 version of GS65 using the i7-8750H have multi-core Cinebench R15 scores of around 1000-1050 which is more or less identical to what the MBP outputs. With the 2018 model, notebookcheck also saw a performance drop when they run Cinebench in a loop, where it stabilised a bit below 1000. So you can't really argue that the GS65 is doing better CPU wise than the MBP... where it of course has the advantage is the beefy GPU, and if you look at the teardowns, you will see how they were able to fit it in and to cool it. Besides, to keep the weight down, GS65 designers removed as much material as they could, resulting in the famously flimsy enclosure. This was reportedly improved in the 2019 version however.

Don't get me wrong, I think its a lovely compact gaming laptop and it would certainly be on my list if I were looking for a gaming machine. But its DNA is exactly that — a gaming machine. It completely focuses on performance and gaming station setup, which — funnily enough — can make it a suitable workstation laptop for some (especially people who need fast GPU first and foremost), but it just lacks in other areas (display, battery etc.). And of course, its still 20% larger than the 15" MBP in volume
[doublepost=1556573955][/doublepost]

And because most of production software has migrated(or is migrating right now) to CUDA+Optix(RTX) rendering solutions you should not even care about raw cpu performance either for these laptops. In few years or so software like Cinema 4D or Maya will likely be GPU only and apple will be out of the game, I'm not surprised if Autodesk or Maxon decide to discontinue mac os versions of their software at some point.

That would be indeed very sad, since it would be a big hit to open standards and equal access to GPU as a computational resource. One would have though that the industry would be smarter than playing into a monopolist hands like this. Well, Nvidia was fairly smart about this entire thing, I still remember how Cg was starting...

 

[richinaus]

I know I'll get a lot of push back on the video, after all I am posting this here at MacRumors - an apple fan site.

I'm sure I'll see complaints of click bait, windows fanboyism, since Linus is entrenched in the windows world. Yet, This topic is more about the MBP and its cooling and performance then about windows machines hence the reason its in the MBP forum.

With that said, I agree with a number of his points.

Long term health of the components and logic board is questionable in my opinion. Yes the CPU is rated at 100c, but that doesn't mean it should consistently be near that temp.

Many other companies have designed cooling solutions to accommodate the hotter running CPUs.

the MBP quickly approaches 100c and where as many other windows machines run much cooler

Apple's cooling profile is more designed to not have the fans running for as long as possible instead of improving performance.

I know of at least one member here at MR, that has stuggled to find a MBP replacement in the windows world that mimicked Apple's fan profile. He hates fan noise and wants a PC that works like a mac. I'm not knocking him, but I think Apple is largely alone with the fan profile skewed towards quiet instead of cool and faster.

So how come all my cross platform apps running on bootcamp are faster than those on MacOS, on the same hardware?
I think it is more to do with apps being more optimised in Windows. I can't think of any other reason.
[doublepost=1556575536][/doublepost]

problem is when you have thin laptops like the razer blade with an rtx2070 maxQ that smokes in gpu performance even the newest iMac with vega.
And because most of production software has migrated(or is migrating right now) to CUDA+Optix(RTX) rendering solutions you should not even care about raw cpu performance either for these laptops. In few years or so software like Cinema 4D or Maya will likely be GPU only and apple will be out of the game, I'm not surprised if Autodesk or Maxon decide to discontinue mac os versions of their software at some point.
The Razer blade has a nice cooling setup and when you're rendering on gpu the temperatures are pretty decent, around 75c at max. Performance on complex scenes is outstanding.
With these laptops eGPU solutions are also borderline useless. You already have all the performance you need, the max-Q rtx solutions may have lower clock speed overall, but nvidia did offset that by adding more CUDA cores so the performance penalty is not as big as you may think, and the RTX cores brings considerable performance boosts on dense scenes (and don't forget image denoise, which is already industry standard).

Thanks for this great post @librarian. Can you confirm this is all of first hand experience?

I have an iMac pro with the Vega 64 and currently it is a good balance across CPU and GPU rendering, but as I mentioned previously all my apps run better under windows 10, and some by a noticeable margin [more obvious GPU based apps like Twinmotion / unreal]. But I also use Fusion 360 which is still clunky on the Mac compared to the Windows version - I put this all down to prioritising the app in Windows [and maybe drivers.....]

I am very tempted to test a Razer for the business, but I also need solid support. Hopefully some updated HP Zbooks / Lenovo P1 etc get updated soon with RTX GPU's but I have not seen any rumours at all on Quadro RTX mobile GPU....

 

[Thysanoptera]

As to the MSI laptop... Both the 2018 and the 2019 version of GS65 using the i7-8750H have multi-core Cinebench R15 scores of around 1000-1050 which is more or less identical to what the MBP outputs. With the 2018 model, notebookcheck also saw a performance drop when they run Cinebench in a loop, where it stabilised a bit below 1000. So you can't really argue that the GS65 is doing better CPU wise than the MBP... w

Oh yes, I can I'm getting 1250 in Cinebench r15 every time, of course that requires changing some settings in BIOS (removing power limits, some udervolt, custom fan curves) but the cooling of it is enough to keep full all core turbo for the duration of the test. And every single run immediately after, I mean the temps are in the 80s. That CPU cannot go any higher, actually using i9 would make sense in it.

You're right with the flimsy feel, the chassis is a thin sheet of aluminium, not a machined block like MBP, they've put some more ribs in it to improve rigidity in 2019 but still feels just weird. The battery life is good, I can make it last 8+ hours of office type work without problem, which is unheard of in gaming laptops. The screen is good enough if you're not a graphic designer, almost full sRGB and plenty bright for a matte screen. On Windows machines I prefer decent FHD covering sRGB than a glossy 4k with full Adobe coverage, I don't do anything that needs to go outside the computer screen anyway, and high dpi scaling is still questionable on Windows.

And of course, its still 20% larger than the 15" MBP in volume

When you put it like this, it seems like a lot, but then it is mostly due to 2.4 mm larger height, which doesn't look that dramatic anymore Being completely honest, the only thing I'm missing in it (hardware wise) as compared to MBP is the chassis build quality and superior power management - that 0.5W CPU package power when you're contemplating whether the email you're about to send is going to get you fired or not.

 

[Sciomar]

I know I'll get a lot of push back on the video, after all I am posting this here at MacRumors - an apple fan site.

I'm sure I'll see complaints of click bait, windows fanboyism, since Linus is entrenched in the windows world. Yet, This topic is more about the MBP and its cooling and performance then about windows machines hence the reason its in the MBP forum.

With that said, I agree with a number of his points.

Long term health of the components and logic board is questionable in my opinion. Yes the CPU is rated at 100c, but that doesn't mean it should consistently be near that temp.

Many other companies have designed cooling solutions to accommodate the hotter running CPUs.

the MBP quickly approaches 100c and where as many other windows machines run much cooler

Apple's cooling profile is more designed to not have the fans running for as long as possible instead of improving performance.

I'm a fanboy of both PC and Apple, it all comes down to buying and using the correct tool for the job at hand. Shouldn't expect a laptop to be capable of performing jobs at the same rate as a built desktop, it's extremely obvious their thermal profiles are different. Expectation management is key.
The video is (ridiculous is a strong term but somewhat fitting) as he's opening with a water-cooled gaming desktop and somehow trying to compare macbooks to that, or maybe he meant to make a sarcastic and Cpt. Obvious type of video.

 

[cram501]

I'm a fanboy of both PC and Apple, it all comes down to buying and using the correct tool for the job at hand. Shouldn't expect a laptop to be capable of performing jobs at the same rate as a built desktop, it's extremely obvious their thermal profiles are different. Expectation management is key.

If I pay a premium for a laptop, regardless of the manufacturer, I expect premium quality and performance. Those are my expectations. I don't expect it to act like a desktop but I also don't expect it to throttle (well, I shouldn't be expected to anyways) or have parts (like the keyboard) to be unreliable..

The video is (ridiculous is a strong term but somewhat fitting) as he's opening with a water-cooled gaming desktop and somehow trying to compare macbooks to that, or maybe he meant to make a sarcastic and Cpt. Obvious type of video.

I'm assuming you didn't actually watch the video. The opening water cooled pc at the beginning is the sponsor of the video.

You should actually watch it. He makes some valid points.

 

[Queen6]

Especially since the Mac is nearly absent in corporate America.

Mac is pretty much out of the game globally and since the 2016 MBP design I've never seen more drop the platform...

Q-6

 

[richinaus]

Mac is pretty much out of the game globally and since the 2016 MBP design I've never seen more drop the platform...

Q-6

just out of curiosity, given you state they are out the game globally, how have they managed to remain the 4th largest computer manufacturer with 6.6% of the market share which is approximately where it has always been except for fluctuations.

 

[Queen6]

just out of curiosity, given you state they are out the game globally, how have they managed to remain the 4th largest computer manufacturer with 6.6% of the market share which is approximately where it has always been except for fluctuations.

Pass, I rarely see Mac's employed professionally these days, maybe all relegated to home use...

Q-6

 

[richinaus]

Pass, I rarely see Mac's these days, maybe all relegated to home use...

Q-6

Bingo. They are a consumer product.

 

[Sciomar]

If I pay a premium for a laptop, regardless of the manufacturer, I expect premium quality and performance. Those are my expectations. I don't expect it to act like a desktop but I also don't expect it to throttle (well, I shouldn't be expected to anyways) or have parts (like the keyboard) to be unreliable..


I'm assuming you didn't actually watch the video. The opening water cooled pc at the beginning is the sponsor of the video.

You should actually watch it. He makes some valid points.

Ha, I did watch it 3 times, his voice is so annoying that I must've glazed over at the end of his ad "click below" bit, so I admit fault there.
You're free to expect what ever you want, but reality is another thing. Apple had to make a choice, build a bulkier machine with better thermals which would make better use of components, or go small and thin. The pro's should've absolutely been built larger and with a better fan, in spite of customers yelling for thin and "sexy". I am only now considering buying a mac computer because I don't intend to play any computer based games. I'll retire my water-cooled, push-pull fan setup ATX tower to my kids. Like I said though, it was purpose built for what I needed and it handled every task without throttling or issue. I love the look of mac's, very small and clean, but I didn't delude myself into thinking they were capable of handling continuous work loads without suffering performance.

 

[DarthVader!]

Apple had to make a choice, build a bulkier machine with better thermals which would make better use of components, or go small and thin.

I think we only talking about a couple of millimeters. Consider laptops from Razer, MSI and ASUS, they have better specs, better performance and better thermal management then the MBP, typically for less money.

The pro's should've absolutely been built larger and with a better fan

Agreed, and that's the gist of the video. There's no argument that Intel rolled out some very toasty CPUs, but the manufacturers had these in hand and had the opportunity to design a laptop around these processors. Many did, some did not. The problem that some of us have is that Apple markets itself as the premier laptop. Paying upwards of 4,000 dollars for a laptop raises ones expectation to receive 4,000 dollars in user experience, performance and quality.

 

[leman]

Oh yes, I can I'm getting 1250 in Cinebench r15 every time, of course that requires changing some settings in BIOS (removing power limits, some udervolt, custom fan curves) but the cooling of it is enough to keep full all core turbo for the duration of the test.

Why doesn't MSI provide all these tweaks in the factory configuration then? Anyway, the MBP is perfectly capable of dissipating 75Watts of power from CPU+GPU combined, so I supposed if one did similar tweaks, you'd see comparable performance increases. I don't think however, that it makes much sense to compare performance profiles of modded laptops. I just don't see how you can argue that the G65 is 25% faster than the MBP if you only get that performance after undervolting etc.
[doublepost=1556621530][/doublepost]

I think we only talking about a couple of millimeters. Consider laptops from Razer, MSI and ASUS, they have better specs, better performance and better thermal management then the MBP, typically for less money.

You are missing the point. These laptops also have a completely different design. They dedicate more space to cooling system, usually neglect any kind of power-saving features and their underside is completely open so that air can get directly to the heatsink. I mean, just look at the pictures of these laptops. You cannot operate them if there is no space underneath the chassis. The MBP uses side air inlets/outlets, which restricts its thermal performance but allows it to be used in cramped environments/on the lap etc. And anyways, since you mention the Razer... Blade's CPU is known to throttle quite a bit and it actually performs worse than the MBP.

It's not magic. There are very clear design tradeoffs and considerations. You can make a thin laptop nowadays that will be able to cool down powerful hardware, but you will have to sacrifice other aspects in the process. The "XXX is only a bit larger but performs so much better than MBP" is only one side of the coin. You also need to consider what it is that XXX sacrifices to get there. if you find a laptop that doesn't sacrifice anything — well, those guys would have truly achieved something very impressive.