New MacBook Pro 15" Kaby Lake and Radeon Pro 560/555

[TheOkeland]

They were expecting a reasonable GPU performance upgrade not a Rebranded 460 card. Something like an NVIDIA 10 card which is what everyone wants in the first place, a faster SSD, Kaby Lake, 32GB Option. Those would be my guesses for an upgrade.

A faster SSD?
This SSD is capable of 2GB/s Read and Write, what do you need more?
Even 500MB/s is more than enough for most of the things you can do with a Laptop.

The only improvement over 2GB/s in SSD speed would be to reduce the response time. Can't imagine a real use-case that utilizes full 2GB/s.
Okay,....., maybe you would have to wait 2 seconds not 1 to import a Video into FCPX, but who cares?

Look at high performance RAID array, there is no 2GB/s. So why would you need e.g. 4GB/s for a Laptop SSD???
[doublepost=1496736184][/doublepost]

Its a minor incremental upgrade, what did you expect? Its not like there is anything better component-wise at the moment... And its a very decent upgrade from the 2015 or earlier MBP, especially where the GPU is concerned.
[doublepost=1496734147][/doublepost]

Well, the AMD GPUs in the MBP are faster than any comparable workstation Nvidia card. On a more serious note, AMD is not better than Nvidia, they are more or less on par in terms of performance per watt. The only Nvidia GPU right now that could compete with the Pro 460/560 in the same segment is the GTX 1050, which is fasters imply because its specced for gamers (faster VRAM) while the Pro 450/560 are specced for stability (just like Nvidia Quadro's). In raw performance, the AMD beats Nvidia here.

As to CUDA etc.... I think you'll generally find that Metal-enabled software will perform on the same level or faster, not to mention that modern macOS makes it very easy to use hardware acceleration in third-party apps (and this is a huge advantage it has over Windows or Linux). This is also the reason why FCPX performs so much better than competitor apps even on stronger hardware. Its not just about the size, but how you use it.

And now with Metal 2 the performance could rise again. If it really speed the things up to be 10x as fast, that would be really cool.

 

[leman]

And now with Metal 2 the performance could rise again. If it really speed the things up to be 10x as fast, that would be really cool.

Thats not how it works. The 10x merely means that the CPU can schedule 10x the amount of drawing commands in the same time (under certain circumstances). The entire point of Metal is efficient GPU utilisation. If you are already feeding the GPU efficiently, there is no difference which API you use.

But there are much more important things in Metal 2 than the "10x" salespitch.

 

[sentential]

Kabylake is garbage; stay away!
https://www.extremetech.com/computi...g-issue-cluelessly-suggests-stop-overclocking

 

[Samuelsan2001]

They were expecting a reasonable GPU performance upgrade not a Rebranded 460 card. Something like an NVIDIA 10 card which is what everyone wants in the first place, a faster SSD, Kaby Lake, 32GB Option. Those would be my guesses for an upgrade.

There isn't anything to update it with GPU wise within its thermal limits. If you want apple to make a huge fat desktop replacement with dual Nvidia cards and 64GB of desktop DDR4 RAM in it and a 3 hour battery life at low usage then you'll be waiting forever.

If you expected anything else on this update other than what was done, then you really do need to learn some research and observational skills, what you want will never happen. They have never made portable computers with that mind-set and they never will, which I for one am very pleased about they make machines that I want, with the priorities I care about.
[doublepost=1496749450][/doublepost]

Kabylake is garbage; stay away!
https://www.extremetech.com/computi...g-issue-cluelessly-suggests-stop-overclocking

What are you on about??Utter nonsense. You overclock any chip at your own risk and no mobile variant chips are over-clockable anyway due to the set nature of portable cooling. (this is a MacBook pro forum after all)

 

[leman]

Kabylake is garbage; stay away!
https://www.extremetech.com/computi...g-issue-cluelessly-suggests-stop-overclocking

OMG, the CPU overheats if you overclock it! Such garbage

Regardless of it, what does thermal performance of enthusiast-level desktop CPU has to do with MacBook Pro?

 

[TheOkeland]

Kabylake is garbage; stay away!
https://www.extremetech.com/computi...g-issue-cluelessly-suggests-stop-overclocking

Kayb Lake is not rubbish! There are overclocking problems, but they were problems with Skylake too.
It depends on the CPU, if you got a really good CPU in the die lottery, you can overclock a CPU quite high, but most of the CPUs are not really capable to do more than 100MHz to 300MHz.

 

[dnmurphy]

They were expecting a reasonable GPU performance upgrade not a Rebranded 460 card. Something like an NVIDIA 10 card which is what everyone wants in the first place, a faster SSD, Kaby Lake, 32GB Option. Those would be my guesses for an upgrade.

Works for me.

 

[sentential]

OMG, the CPU overheats if you overclock it! Such garbage

Regardless of it, what does thermal performance of enthusiast-level desktop CPU has to do with MacBook Pro?

Quite a bit actually because it implies little headroom and or high leak or very poor yields or all 3. As for Skylake no there weren't any reported issues with it; there was for Haswell and everyone knows how that turned out, i.e. poorly.

Kayb Lake is not rubbish! There are overclocking problems, but they were problems with Skylake too.
It depends on the CPU, if you got a really good CPU in the die lottery, you can overclock a CPU quite high, but most of the CPUs are not really capable to do more than 100MHz to 300MHz.

Yes it is, the only notable feature is that it has an integrated TB3 controller and a couple of compile updates which does benefit the 13" users but that's all. Mostly all KB has is a clock bump at the expense of additional real world power use

 

[TheOkeland]

Quite a bit actually because it implies little headroom and or high leak or very poor yields or all 3. As for Skylake no there weren't any reported issues with it; there was for Haswell and everyone knows how that turned out, i.e. poorly.



Yes it is, the only notable feature is that it has an integrated TB3 controller and a couple of compile updates which does benefit the 13" users but that's all. Mostly all KB has is a clock bump at the expense of additional real world power use

So there is no 10bit-H.265 en-/decoding? No SpeedShift or more battery efficiency?

I agree, in raw processing power Kaby Lake does not make a big difference, but for example 4k decoding could really have a big impact.
Having a high-resolution display is quite lame if you are not able to play high-res content...
Software decoding is an option, but it consumes more power!

 

[tummytree2000]

The MBP is a waste. I am frankly disappointed with apple. They did address the iMac. Thou the one for general market is a bit weak compare what you get now for the price. The iMac Pro is more promising. But they should have just offered that version from the beginning.

Biggest issue with the MBP. Is that the Razer Blade is still a better buy price wise.

 

[vipergts2207]

The MBP is a waste. I am frankly disappointed with apple. They did address the iMac. Thou the one for general market is a bit weak compare what you get now for the price. The iMac Pro is more promising. But they should have just offered that version from the beginning.

Biggest issue with the MBP. Is that the Razer Blade is still a better buy price wise.

It's Apple, there's always going to be a better buy price wise. That's not new.

 

[BoxsterRS]

Kayb Lake is not rubbish! There are overclocking problems, but they were problems with Skylake too.
It depends on the CPU, if you got a really good CPU in the die lottery, you can overclock a CPU quite high, but most of the CPUs are not really capable to do more than 100MHz to 300MHz.

Who would want to risk overclocking a 3k laptop for a couple of MHz more?

 

[Fishcake21]

AMD RX 480 VS GTX 1080 Ti in FCPX. 4K Export on AMD took 305 seconds and on NVIDIA took 1140 seconds. Look up the facts yourself.

PRO users want PRO hardware? I use FCPX. AMD is what I need. It sucks if your software only uses NVIDIA. Apple will not intentionally HURT their products and HELP their competition. Until FCPX is written to use NVIDIA. Do not expect those cards. Simple as that.

My mistake on the SSD. Though does it really need to be faster?

Blame Apple. There is no rocket science involved that nvidias pascal has a lot more teraflops and resources to beat with AMD. They optimize fcpx to work only with AMDs and their pro BS open source technologies, otherwise how do you explain the same cards with nvidia outperforming with windows.

 

[TheOkeland]

Who would want to risk overclocking a 3k laptop for a couple of MHz more?

No one, because you are not able to overclock HQ-CPUs.

But the Post I refereed to posted a Link about overheating-problem with the i7-7700k CPUs.
Since Intel does not solder the DIE direct to the Heatspreader, there are problems with every overclockable CPU. Some models have more problems, some have fewer. And furthermore it depends on the CPU itself. Two different 7700k-CPUs can perform quite differently while overclocking.

Just because Intel is not willing to solder the DIE to the Heatspreader, but uses more or less rubbish Thermal Compounds, this problem will exist for every CPU-Generation.

AFAIK there are NO problems with other Kaby Lake CPUs, especially not with the Laptop-CPUs.

 

[Ethosik]

Blame Apple. There is no rocket science involved that nvidias pascal has a lot more teraflops and resources to beat with AMD. They optimize fcpx to work only with AMDs and their pro BS open source technologies, otherwise how do you explain the same cards with nvidia outperforming with windows.

Well we can blame the Windows program developers for optimizing for NVIDIA too. I use both and like both. The fact is, I use FCPX and it performs better with AMD. Until that changes, we will be seeing AMD across the lineup. AMD is more open to custom cards too.

 

[dannys1]

They were expecting a reasonable GPU performance upgrade not a Rebranded 460 card. Something like an NVIDIA 10 card which is what everyone wants in the first place, a faster SSD, Kaby Lake, 32GB Option. Those would be my guesses for an upgrade.

So you've just said you understand 32gb is impossible because the Intel chips don't support the lower power dimms yet and you still expected it??

Obviously Apple isn't working with Nvidia anymore so why would you ever expect that to be included?

A faster SSD? You realise it already has the fastest SSD on the market at 3.5GB/s read and write - there is nothing faster.

People moan when Apple don't update regularly and now they've updated with anything thats available they moan again. It's a good job the Apple execs are running the company and not this forum.

 

[sublunar]

Another interesting factor here is the fact that the update seems to have made the entry level 2017 15" model roughly the same performance as the 2016 top spec model.

If you assume battery and keyboard remains unchanged, and the screen touch bar, and track pad haven't seen any changes, then there's very little to differentiate between a 2016 and 2017 model. While researching this article I have noticed that non touch bar buyers of the 2017 model get 2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM whereas the 2016 model only got 1866MHz RAM.

2017 - Entry level 15" MBP SKU (UK BTO with 512Gb SSD £2529)
Kaby Lake 2.8GHz i7-7700HQ (6Mb Cache)
Only 256Gb SSD
AMD Pro 555 2Gb GPU

2016 - High End 15" MBP SKU (Refurbished store £2119)
Skylake 2.7GHz - i7-6820HQ (8Mb Cache)
512Gb SSD
AMD Pro 455 2Gb GPU

* Bear in mind that the GPUs are virtually the same performance, just rebadged AMD units.

So if you compare a BTO 2017 low end machine with 512Gb SSD - in the UK that's £2529.

In the refurb store there appears to have been a tacit price cut of remaining 2016 models - the high end one has been reduced to £2499 from £2699 and being refurb that gets a further approximate 15% discount giving the price of the stock 2016 high end SKU £2119. Making it over £400 cheaper than a BTO 2017 Macbook Pro. This is reflected in stores like John Lewis but it's clearly while stocks last. If you want one hurry up!

The final differentiator would be the Kaby Lake hardware decoding of HEVC h265 over the Skylake version which would be a battery saver but the 15" model has a full AMD GPU which presumably could also decode/encode on chip in hardware with High Sierra - obviously the 13" versions running Iris Graphics would be in trouble.

Final Cut Pro X users would probably be best off with a 2017 Macbook Pro though.

You'd also expect future MacOS iterations to make any software issues with battery life go away.

If we disregard any trivial differences between CPU, GPU, keyboard and battery, and assume the Refurbished models have had the keyboards checked over - or certainly would qualify for proper assistance from Apple if there's a problem - is there now a case for taking a gamble on a refurbished 2016 top model rather than a brand new 2017 if Apple haven't bothered with any engineering changes for the 2017 Macbook Pros?

My final point would be an initial thought on the 2018 Macbook Pro based on the assumptions on the 2017.

A 2018 Macbook Pro Coffee Lake model, being another 14nm refinement, to potentially be another slot-in replacement for the 2017 Kaby Lake on similar motherboards. Cynically speaking, any enhanced core versions would be a costly BTO extra while the traditional 2 and 4 core models would take a price cut.

It's Cannon Lake presumably in 2019 before we would see any innovations on the 10nm process.

 

[Hawaga]

2017 - Entry level 15" MBP SKU (UK BTO with 512Gb SSD £2529)
Kaby Lake 2.8GHz i7-7700HQ (6Mb Cache)
Only 256Gb SSD
AMD Pro 555 2Gb GPU

I just ordered this one but I'm now wondering if I may regret not taking the Radeon Pro 560 option (4GB Gpu) instead of 555

Will it make a huge difference regarding video editing (4K)?

 

[vipergts2207]

I just ordered this one but I'm now wondering if I may regret not taking the Radeon Pro 560 option (4GB Gpu) instead of 555

Will it make a huge difference regarding video editing (4K)?

If you're doing 4K video editing, you definitely should've gotten the upgrade. Cancel and reorder.

 

[Hawaga]

Thank you for your answer.

Could you please be more specific about what the upgrade will exactly change regarding 4K editing?

 

[vipergts2207]

Thank you for your answer.

Could you please be more specific about what the upgrade will exactly change regarding 4K editing?

It's been noted by people who've tried both that the 460/560 handles 4K better than the lower-end GPU's. I have not compared them myself though, I've just used my 2016 with 460.

 

[sublunar]

The AMD Radeon Pro website shows the difference between 555 and 560. The headline, though, is 1.9 TFLOPS v 1.3 TFLOPS with 16 compute units vs 12 compute units and 1024 stream processors vs 768 and perhaps most interestingly, 4Gb VRAM vs 2Gb VRAM.

On the face of it, a £90 upgrade appears to be well worth it for 4k Video with the only remaining issue being heat generation and subsequent throttling.

 

[kevk74]

I really don't understand that people are missing the fact that Kaby Lake adds 10 bit H265 HEVC hardware acceleration WITHOUT needing to fire up your battery hogging graphics card or doing the decompressing and playing all in software and having to dump it all back on the CPU cores? I don't know about you, but I want to start saving video in 10bit H265. The 8bit H265 support of Skylake does NOTHING when everyone is using 10bit MAIN10 instead and then it all reverts back to the CPU (and raw horsepower) to decompress and play 10bit HEVC. Now if you have a 15" Retina 2016 you can use the graphics card but again you will chew threw battery to play? Either that or do it in software entirely on the CPU? Kabylake takes ALL that load off the CPU and does it in a hardware decoding block and should save battery life using the integrated card and no CPU? Add in the increase the lower power consumption of Kaby Lake and then the boost of the SSDs from 2MB/s Read/Write to 3.2MB/s Read/Write (I know write speeds on both slightly less respectively) but you don't see this as the biggest "bang for buck" Apple has ever offered in a refresh??? I ACTUALLY was upset the 2016 refresh didn't have Kaby Lake and have been waiting for 10 bit H265 hardware acceleration almost exclusively?!