New 2015 MBP 15” /w Radeon M370X benchmarks and RL gaming review

[john0011]

Hi!
New to this forum, and when you post a non-question on the apple support forms, you get ding… this is me there https://discussions.apple.com/people/John0001

Anyway, i just picked up a new MBP 15” with the upgraded GPU . Apple went the AMD Radeon route, and M370X for the top end MBP, just like on the iMac 5K went with AMD and I'm rather impressed. Here is my quick review of the new MBP.

Sorry, but all is done on Winders 8.1… My game will have a mac client in 22- June, but for now, we use Winders…

Apple claims the new Radeon M370X is 80% better than the last high end model /w the NVIDIA GT 750M. I feel they are rather close. the GT 750M scored around 2500 on a 3dMrak 11 http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-750M.90245.0.html and mine scored 3998

The only game I currently play is Final Fantasy XIV, an MMORPG. there is a big expansion coming 22-June and they offer a Mac client! for now i’m boot camped running Winders but you get the point here.

Final Fantasy XIV offers a benchmark for the upcoming expansion here: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/benchmark/

The new MBP /w Radeon M370X (so the one released just a week ago) scored 5105 @ 1080p and they rate that “very high”

We all know that MacBooks are not known for their GPU power, and my benchmark was at lower settings. But the high end 15” MBP does okay with my modern game. Here is a quick vid of an 8 man boss fight on my game; 0 lag, and all at 1200p (not 1080 to cut off the Mac screen)!!!
https://youtu.be/_9_7J_KnAj8

 

[Cuniac]

Looks solid. I've seen people get up to 4040 on that test, each time you run it the score will be a little different but looks grate, I cant wait till my rMBP comes in.

 

[john0011]

ty! just want to spread the word you "can" game on mac! stay away from the MBP 13" since they all have integrated GPUs, but even there it depends on your gaming needs.

here is me on the 2015 12' MacBook playing Diablo 3 @1440p but low settings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IzXkrK80Vc

Someone asked me about fan noise in the iMac 5k. here is a vid and its dam silent! @1440p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP7GAFL87NM

Here is the 2010 MBA 11" i recently sold, and it played World of Warcraft just fine, yet recall WoW is a really old game now, but any Mac these days can do it =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T74kXhyLlho

 

[Cuniac]

ty! just want to spread the word you "can" game on mac! stay away from the MBP 13" since they all have integrated GPUs, but even there it depends on your gaming needs.

here is me on the 2015 12' MacBook playing Diablo 3 @1440p but low settings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IzXkrK80Vc

Someone asked me about fan noise in the iMac 5k. here is a vid and its dam silent! @1440p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP7GAFL87NM

Here is the 2010 MBA 11" i recently sold, and it played World of Warcraft just fine, yet recall WoW is a really old game now, but any Mac these days can do it =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T74kXhyLlho

Nice. But you may want to try diablo at a lower rez. Your running at full retina. but at 12inchs its hard to tell the difference from 1080p. Try dropping it to even 720p. It will still look grate at that screen size and you could probably bump it up to medium

 

[zerophreak]

May I ask, if you play this game or any other game, does your fan suddenly star becoming very noise? Even if I just play Counter Strike Source ON MAC via Steam it starts to become loud and I can't even play it on 2880 x 1800 (its not in the list).

That sounds VERY strange to me. My MacBook Air didn't become loud while playing CS:S in the beginning, it took 5 min to get noisy. But the MBP Retina (I just have the latest one with the i7 4x 2,8 GHz + AMD as you) is loud directly.

Is there something wrong?
And how did you set up your drivers? I can't run a single game on Bootcamp as it doesn't detect my AMD GPU! Catalyst says there is nothing to configure...

 

[john0011]

May I ask, if you play this game or any other game, does your fan suddenly star becoming very noise? Even if I just play Counter Strike Source ON MAC via Steam it starts to become loud and I can't even play it on 2880 x 1800 (its not in the list).

That sounds VERY strange to me. My MacBook Air didn't become loud while playing CS:S in the beginning, it took 5 min to get noisy. But the MBP Retina (I just have the latest one with the i7 4x 2,8 GHz + AMD as you) is loud directly.

Is there something wrong?
And how did you set up your drivers? I can't run a single game on Bootcamp as it doesn't detect my AMD GPU! Catalyst says there is nothing to configure...

So a couple of things here. I've been gaming on laptops for over 10 years now. I started with the Alienware machines back when they put desktop CPUs in them =).
1800p is out of the question here. While i've very happy Apple finally updated their only notebook with a discrete gpu (all others are using integrated GPUs) the M370X is only a mid range GPU.

My last gaming rig was the Razer Blade and that packs the GTX 970M! That top end GPU is on par with the upgraded iMac 5k M295X!

I sold it to afford all these macs i have now, but it was capable of 1800p. Here's a vid i did for the eBay sale showing the power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzHR0Z5tiqg

even with that GPU, i normally played at 1440p. Text was too small and the fan would go into "rocket" mode too much for me. Plus it got physically hot to the touch...

About the fan noise. I have not had much time for extended play on the MBP yet (just got it yesterday =). After these posts, i plan on clocking a good part of the day into it. If you're playing CS, you're going to want to be careful with your settings. you're not going to be able to play at 1080p @ max settings without a lot of fan noise and maybe frame rate drops.

My theory is resolution first, then game settings, but others can disagree. Regardless, i'd start at the bottom, and work you're way up. e.g. do 1080p @ low settings, then 1200p @ low settings, pick which works best, and then bump it up to medium settings.

Remember the higher the resolution the less need for AA and AF. they are both GPU intensive, and help with the "jaggedness." when you start talking 1200p and above, the human i cant really see the jaggedness with such dense pixels, but the GPU will try anyway, burning GPU cycles (and a lot of them!)

Finally, on your driver question. At the VERY end of Windows setup, did you get a Wizard pop to install bootcamp drivers? I've seen this missed before, and you 100% want that to install. You'll know if it installed if Windows was scaled properly after install. e.g. was everything very very very tiny? if so, you need to run the bootcamp drivers.

 

[john0011]

New site look great guys!!!!!

System Resources Utilization Statistics & GPU Temps

TL;DR - Scroll to Results

So i had some good time to spend with the new MacBook; all gaming! So the only game i play is Final Fantasy XIV which is an MMO. There will be a native Mac client coming next month with the expansion pack, but for now we’re bootcamped in Winders.

I’m at the tail end of the main scenario quest, which means i visited a lot of zones, saw some pretty cut screens, and engaged in several battles, both solo and in a group. I played @ 1920x1200 for the majority of the time. I am very happy with the performance so far. I hit zero lag spikes, and FPS was perfect.

Towards the end, my questing lead me to a zone that is more demanding on your system. the two main things in this zone that push your system are a) its very heavily populated with other online players, and b) it’s just plain gorgeous! I once again had no issues, but could tell just by the fan speed i’m really pushing her =)

When i get a new computer, i push it to the limits. If there is going to be a problem, i want to know now, not two weeks after the warranty is up =). I thought it would be a good idea to gather system resource utilization.

Results

I had a pair of quests to do in this GPU intensive area, and both were about the same, but this is not a 1:1 comparison. Like i said, the fan was kicking rather hard here, so for quest A i wanted to do it on my laptop cooler w/o the fan running, and quest B with the fan running to see if it made a difference. i only use a basic laptop cooler, the Targus Dual Fan Chill Mat

i used the AMD System Monitor, which records each CPU core utilization and bus speed, and the GPU utilization & speed, GPU memory speed, and GPU temp. I added a column to add the CPU utilization (it does each core), and a row at the bottom for averages.

After each test, i quit the game, waited for the fan to cool down, then rebooted into OS X to fix up the attached reports, so the system was cooled down each time.

Quest A (attached questA.pdf) - laptop cooler fan off
AVG CPU Utilization: 14%
AVG GPU Utilization: 85%
AVG GPU temp: 80C

Quest B (attache questB.pdf) - laptop cooler fan on
AVG CPU Utilization: 18%
AVG GPU Utilization: 92%
AVG GPU temp: 82C

So we see why the fans are going nuts . if you open the attachments, you’ll see i hit over 90C at some points. This card can go well over 100C, but “normal” gaming goal is around 60-78C. However, since this is an area that is “pushing it” I’m not really concerned. you can also see the cool mat fan was not helping.

Next i wanted to get something more concrete, since the above were two different, random quest.

I wanted to run one @ 1920x1200 and the other @ 1920x1080 to see the differences.

I ran a loop, using a porter in the game. What a porter does is takes you from Point A to Point B automatically on a predefined path. so when i tske the port, it is the identical route and should be very similar loads in both tests.

Again, the point here is to try to push the system. The route here is one of the more GPU intensive routes in the game. For those who may know the game, i took the Chocobo porter from dragonhead to mor dhona.

1200p Loop (attached 1200pLOOP.pdf)
AVG CPU Utilization: 18%
AVG GPU Utilization: 92%
AVG GPU temp: 87C

1080p Loop (attached 1080pLOOP.pdf)
AVG CPU Utilization: 18%
AVG GPU Utilization: 87%
AVG GPU temp: 86C

So not that much of a difference folks… interesting.

I’m not completely sold this is by design yet. There are a few variables i have

1. it’s bootcamped, and the M370X does not exist in ANY Winders box, so i question the drivers. I’ll know for sure on 22-June when the Mac client of my game is out.

2. It’s a similar case on my iMac 5k /w M295X, which again is a Mac only GPU, and that iMac just PURRS along playing the same game with near 0 fan noise. my iMac is bootcamped to Win 7, and the new MBP requires Win8 (i tried). so between the specific GPU designed for OS X, and then adding crappy Win8 may be something…

One thing i’d like to point out is the CPU utilization. In recent years, i hear gamers think the CPU plays a large role in their games. It does not… just look above. I’ve always said if you are buying/building a gaming rig, 80% goes to the GPU and 20% to the CPU. i’d have the same benchmarks with just about any of the i5 processors, and could likely get away with an i3 in some cases. the HDD has nothing to do with it, and chances are you’re not using more than 3.5GB of memory for just the game. the only thing a SSD does for you is reduces seek time to 0 (seek time is the amount of time the disk needs to “find” the data on the drive, spinning drives have to “spin around” to find it), so load screens will be a bit faster, but most SSD today still have a slower read/write then most spinning disks out there.

In other words, the ONLY macbook out there suitable for “real” gaming is the top end 15” since it has a discrete gpu; all others have the integrated Intel GPU, which has come a LONG way, but it’s not for modern gaming, and i feel really bad each time i read a post of someone who bought a $2k+ 13” MBP and does not understand whey they can't game… You can do basic games and older games like Diablo 3 & World of Warcraft on the integrated GPUs now.

 

[jfpk]

I just got the 15" MBP with dedicated graphics. This is my first ever mac product.

I added a win10 install via bootcamp.

When playing blizzard games (starcraft 2, heroes..even hearthstone) in Mac OS, the fans become really loud. I played 1.5 hours of Heroes of the Storm last night. 1920x1200 resolution. LOW graphics options with Vsync enabled. After 1.5 hours, my battery went from 100% to 6%.

I have not tested battery life when bootcamped into Windows 10, but I will say that Heroes of the storm does not even get the laptop warm while in windows. No fan noise, very little heat. So I suspect it will be better with battery life as well.

I will be sticking to Bootcamp for gaming.

Overall I love this machine and like OSX alot. I am a long time windows developer (ASP.net / Sql etc), and wanted to try something new. Glad I went with the Macbook Pro over the other options I was looking at.

 

[Cuniac]

I just got the 15" MBP with dedicated graphics. This is my first ever mac product.

I added a win10 install via bootcamp.

When playing blizzard games (starcraft 2, heroes..even hearthstone) in Mac OS, the fans become really loud. I played 1.5 hours of Heroes of the Storm last night. 1920x1200 resolution. LOW graphics options with Vsync enabled. After 1.5 hours, my battery went from 100% to 6%.

I have not tested battery life when bootcamped into Windows 10, but I will say that Heroes of the storm does not even get the laptop warm while in windows. No fan noise, very little heat. So I suspect it will be better with battery life as well.

I will be sticking to Bootcamp for gaming.

Overall I love this machine and like OSX alot. I am a long time windows developer (ASP.net / Sql etc), and wanted to try something new. Glad I went with the Macbook Pro over the other options I was looking at.

How did you install Windows 10 in BootCamp? I'm trying to install Windows 10 on my 15in 2015 MBP. I partitioned the drive as Grid and then attempted to install. Windows gives me an error that it can not install because it thinks its set up as Master Boot and not Grid. I Exited and checked and it is on Grid. I had windows format that partition and make it NTFS but I get the same error.

 

[jfpk]

How did you install Windows 10 in BootCamp? I'm trying to install Windows 10 on my 15in 2015 MBP. I partitioned the drive as Grid and then attempted to install. Windows gives me an error that it can not install because it thinks its set up as Master Boot and not Grid. I Exited and checked and it is on Grid. I had windows format that partition and make it NTFS but I get the same error.

I just did it via Bootcamp...using the default options. I had the Win10 insider preview ISO (version 10074). In bootcamp setup screen I selected the ISO, put a USB thumb drive in the slot and clicked GO. It built the image onto the USB drive, rebooted into the windows installer and everything just worked.

I did notice that when you do the windows installer, make sure you select "Custom: Install Windows Only (advanced)" which was not the default selection.

 

[jfpk]

How did you install Windows 10 in BootCamp? I'm trying to install Windows 10 on my 15in 2015 MBP. I partitioned the drive as Grid and then attempted to install. Windows gives me an error that it can not install because it thinks its set up as Master Boot and not Grid. I Exited and checked and it is on Grid. I had windows format that partition and make it NTFS but I get the same error.

You know, I may have also reformatted the windows partition from inside the Windows installer... try that. Select the Bootcamp partition and reformat it. I bet that will work.

 

[Cuniac]

I just did it via Bootcamp...using the default options. I had the Win10 insider preview ISO (version 10074). In bootcamp setup screen I selected the ISO, put a USB thumb drive in the slot and clicked GO. It built the image onto the USB drive, rebooted into the windows installer and everything just worked.

I did notice that when you do the windows installer, make sure you select "Custom: Install Windows Only (advanced)" which was not the default selection.

I did all those steps. But when I get to the place were I can select what drive I want to install it on I get that alert that it cant because it thinks its in Master Boot, even though I di

You know, I may have also reformatted the windows partition from inside the Windows installer... try that. Select the Bootcamp partition and reformat it. I bet that will work.

I did all those steps. But when I get to the place were I can select what drive I want to install it on I get that alert that it cant because it thinks its in Master Boot, even though I did it as Grid.. Eh, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I even reformatted the whole HD and tried again, and did that format on the partition from within the windows installer

 

[john0011]

I just got the 15" MBP with dedicated graphics. This is my first ever mac product.

I added a win10 install via bootcamp.

When playing blizzard games (starcraft 2, heroes..even hearthstone) in Mac OS, the fans become really loud. I played 1.5 hours of Heroes of the Storm last night. 1920x1200 resolution. LOW graphics options with Vsync enabled. After 1.5 hours, my battery went from 100% to 6%.

I have not tested battery life when bootcamped into Windows 10, but I will say that Heroes of the storm does not even get the laptop warm while in windows. No fan noise, very little heat. So I suspect it will be better with battery life as well.

I will be sticking to Bootcamp for gaming.

Overall I love this machine and like OSX alot. I am a long time windows developer (ASP.net / Sql etc), and wanted to try something new. Glad I went with the Macbook Pro over the other options I was looking at.

This does not surprise me... Many Mac "native" games are just a winders load with a wine wrapper. We'll see with my game (ffxiv) where they are really excited about it since it's a rare mmo you can cross play PC, PS3, PS4, and soon Mac.

I do own the winders 8 license on my MBP so worse case I'll just keep it for the game.

Hey! I'm a developer too! 10 years as a system admin (ops) and two years ago picked up development. Java stack, so may make sense why I'm all OSX fanboy now lolol.

 

[zerophreak]

How did you all get the GPU drivers on Bootcamp working?!?!??! Did you use a special fix or just installed them (manuelly) from the latest BCA software? I did both and it still won't work...

 

[leman]

When playing blizzard games (starcraft 2, heroes..even hearthstone) in Mac OS, the fans become really loud. I played 1.5 hours of Heroes of the Storm last night. 1920x1200 resolution. LOW graphics options with Vsync enabled. After 1.5 hours, my battery went from 100% to 6%.

You should never play games on battery. Not only will it eat the charge instantly, but your performance will also get throttled.

 

[Cuniac]

So I got win10 up and running and loaded steam and downloaded Max Payne then GTA V direct through rockstar and they ran very well. GTA V had to be put @ 1280x800 and normal setting but ran perfectly. Max Payne ran quite well at 1080p with high settings.

 

[jfpk]

How did you all get the GPU drivers on Bootcamp working?!?!??! Did you use a special fix or just installed them (manuelly) from the latest BCA software? I did both and it still won't work...

BCA did it all for me. It installed the drivers. Device manager shows AMD 370x, and they even installed Catalyst Control Panel. Everything worked with no manual steps needed after bootcamp setup completed.

 

[john0011]

BCA did it all for me. It installed the drivers. Device manager shows AMD 370x, and they even installed Catalyst Control Panel. Everything worked with no manual steps needed after bootcamp setup completed.

Same here. Catalyst CP seems fully functional too. Can game on battery now w/o it drastically dropping GPU speed =)

I would not trust and other drivers at this point, but that's just me.

 

[MBHockey]

thanks for all these tests. Looks like the R9 is a bit better of a performer than originally thought due to the initial benchmarks.

 

[zerophreak]

BCA did it all for me. It installed the drivers. Device manager shows AMD 370x, and they even installed Catalyst Control Panel. Everything worked with no manual steps needed after bootcamp setup completed.

Impossible... I just reinstalled it with BCA . I don't see the AMD but the Catalyst Panel but when I click it it says there is nothing to configure. Gosh....

 

[john0011]

Impossible... I just reinstalled it with BCA . I don't see the AMD but the Catalyst Panel but when I click it it says there is nothing to configure. Gosh....

Weird. Are you getting any of the drivers from the BCA process? at the very end of Winders setup, you should get a pop up wizard to install the bootcamp specific drivers. You can tell if the other drivers installed because if they didnt, it will use the default sizing and the text in winders will be tiny.

or are we overthinking this. You did get the top end 15" that just released the other week right? base price $2499.00. This one? the other macbooks do not have the AMD GPU. Just checking =)

 

[Cuniac]

Weird. Are you getting any of the drivers from the BCA process? at the very end of Winders setup, you should get a pop up wizard to install the bootcamp specific drivers. You can tell if the other drivers installed because if they didnt, it will use the default sizing and the text in winders will be tiny.

or are we overthinking this. You did get the top end 15" that just released the other week right? base price $2499.00. This one? the other macbooks do not have the AMD GPU. Just checking =)

That's the one I have and when I installed via bootcamp catalyst came up automatically after 5 min asking me questions.

 

[zerophreak]

Weird. Are you getting any of the drivers from the BCA process? at the very end of Winders setup, you should get a pop up wizard to install the bootcamp specific drivers. You can tell if the other drivers installed because if they didnt, it will use the default sizing and the text in winders will be tiny.

or are we overthinking this. You did get the top end 15" that just released the other week right? base price $2499.00. This one? the other macbooks do not have the AMD GPU. Just checking =)

No pop up and yes, the latest one. I actually paid $3300.00 so I am kinda happy how great it works - and yea I know I bought a Mac and not PC.

That's the one I have and when I installed via bootcamp catalyst came up automatically after 5 min asking me questions.

Nope, I never got any popup nor message to install the bootcamp drivers automatically.

How does it work? I did the BCA stuff and at the end it says install Windows now, "Exit" button and then I had to restart manually. Does it do that automatically normally? ...

 

[Cuniac]

No pop up and yes, the latest one. I actually paid $3300.00 so I am kinda happy how great it works - and yea I know I bought a Mac and not PC.


Nope, I never got any popup nor message to install the bootcamp drivers automatically.

How does it work? I did the BCA stuff and at the end it says install Windows now, "Exit" button and then I had to restart manually. Does it do that automatically normally? ...

I think I know what you did wrong because what I did had the same response. It sounds like you pre-partitioned the hard drive before running BCA. If you do it before running BCA it will one not format the HD properly, and two not auto restart into the windows installer after its done and you click ok. If this is what happened open disk utility and switch it to one partition. This will merge the two back together. After that's done run BCA. You'll still need to have windows format the BCA created partition but it will install. After that and windows is done the installer for the drivers should open. After that's finished connect to wifi and wait about 5 min till catalyst opens. If you don't see it try rebooting once.

 

[BuCkDoG]

Thanks again for the benchmarks and the updated information! Im honestly still on the fence on upgrading to the newer model. As most of you know either by my posts or from my signature, I have the Early 2013 rMBP with the 2.7 Quad Core i7 Ivy Bridge, 16GB RAM, and 512 SATA SSD. I honestly haven't had any complaints from this machine whatsoever but of course would like more GPU horsepower when playing games. Like i mentioned before, I only play WoW, but I do run WoW at 2880x1800 on low settings except for visual foreground which is set to medium so I can get some distance factor and it runs great and looks great but would simply love to crank it up to high or Ultra even on 2880x1800. I am unsure if this new GPU will be able to run Ultra 2880x1800 at 30+ FPS consistently. If I can find someone that could run that test and prove to me, I would upgrade in a heartbeat.