I'm not sure how to take this?
I guess if some people just want six displays, then I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I was just genuinely curious about what people do with that many displays outside of finance and film.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New MacBook Pro's Dedicated AMD Graphics Chips Are 'Significantly' Faster and Support Dual 5K Displays
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I guess if some people just want six displays, then I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I was just genuinely curious about what people do with that many displays outside of finance and film.
No, they didn't.
In 2010 with the last of their 17" MBP's - the time when many people here seem to think the MBP was last 'Pro' these are what the specs looked like.
The video card in the MBP was a GeForce GT 330M vs. the Radeon HD 5770 in the Mac Pr. That's:
- 25.6 GB/s vs 76.5 GB/s memory bandwidth
- 9.2 Gtexel/s vs. 34 Gtexels/s Texture Rate
- 48 vs. 800 shading units
- 121.44 GFLOPS vs. 1360 GFLOPS
The Mac Pro was between 3-10x as fast.
The MBP could drive 1 additional display (2 total) while the Mac Pro could drive 6.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the situation today:
For video cards we have the Radeon Pro 455 on the MBP vs. the Mac Pro with up to two AMD FirePro D700's.
- 80GB/s vs. 264GB/s memory bandwidth
- 40.8Gtexel/s vs. 108.8Gtexel/s Texture rate
- 768 vs. 2048 shading units
- 1306 GFLOPS vs. 3482 GFLOPS
The Mac Pro is ~3x as fast per graphics processor.
The MBP can drive 2 5k displays vs. up to 3 5k displays on the Mac Pro.
Apple has continued to make the MBP more compact with better battery life, while also closing the gap in performance between it and their top line workstations.
Because in both cases it's a comparison of what was available in Apple's top of the line workstation at the time.
.75%? that's absurd. We don't have the results that would really be an Apples to Apples comparison since, well, Apple didn't make a broadwell 15", but the general rule for broadwell vs haswell was more like 3-5%. But that also came with reports of ~1 hr of improved battery life on PC laptops and big gains in the iGPU, which shockingly, you failed to address.
Yes, but the difference in the processor options could have been more like +3% to +20%. And money is money. Why would I choose to spend an extra $15 (even though its really a lot more than that, see iGPU and battery improvements), for nothing? Wouldn't you rather get the Macbook and a 12 pack of beer? Its just silly to defend Apple on this and requires a whole lot of cognitive dissonance on your part to do so.
To really give this a price per performance mark, you'd have weigh multiple factors and consider how important they are to you. +3% of CPU performance might not mean much, but +1hr battery and +40% or more on the iGPU might. Its not impossible to see this adding up to $100-200, maybe more, of value. For some users it certainly could have been negligible, but the point is that for still other users it wasn't. Argue with me all you want, it won't change the facts.
I agree with that assessment. However, your base numbers were for two GPUs released in 2010.
Another way to look at it is Apple has really dropped the ball on its Mac Pro.
I would agree with that. However the point is that the overall performance spread over the last 5-6 years has actually improved even as Apple has continued to trim the size of their laptops. People who want a true workstation replacement in their MBP are bound to be disappointed. Apple doesn't make such a machine. They consistently equip them with GPU's of moderate power consumption with a target audience of a certain type of graphics professional.
Thats true to a point but not a point here. Apple failed, digital technology has kept moving, bigger images, bigger video files, higher resolution, and Apple has not kept moving, and decided not to keep up with that progress. I think the people most vocal about this dismal overpriced "PRO" machines where hoping for a laptop that kept up with the Progress of digital media. These Fail.
I heard a guy say NETFLIX flickers on a 5k external display from these Laptops... ??? HEY ZEUS, thats just a joke for such an expensive machine. You can't run netflix? How can you do anything, video, photos.. wow.. its just wow.
Hey if this was an update to the MACBOOK and was priced accordingly, BEST LAPTOP EVER, but they arrogantly tacked "PRO" on the end and subsequently blew it.
So, if Apple has reduced the price of the Haswell 15" MBP by $15, you would have been happy? I seriously doubt that. Even if Apple had reduced prices by $200 (which would be approaching to making each processor option available at the price of its next lower option and thus would have resulted in a larger performance improvement at the same price than switching from Haswell to Broadwell would have achieved), I highly doubt that people still wouldn't have bitched about a two-year old processor (which is hyperbole in itself, even with a strict one-year cycle by Intel, for half of the year, computers will have a more than six-month old CPU).
Wait, you're saying a streaming service that relies on a webpages media stream might flicker on a high resolution display is a sign of weakness in the laptop over an issue with Netflix's implementation of HTML5?
Are you joking? Like, seriously? These machines do video editing in 4K without flicker? Did you take maybe half a second to think that maybe a web stream itself might be the issue?
Nah, I'm sure that "a guy" is a much more reasonable source for diagnosing the issue.
Some people.....
Are we supposed to believe the text or the graph ? Graph shows that 2015 model is faster while the text says the opposite. In any case, even if the bars where switched between 455 and 370X, the difference is disappointing especially if you think that 2016 model has a new generation polaris gpu. So much for amd, so much for mac.
If you where to edit 4k on an external 5k it would flicker as well. If you edit 4k on the screen, on the laptop screen, it won't flicker. An external monitor and the monitor built into the laptop are different monitors. Not sure if your getting that part.Wait, you're saying a streaming service that relies on a webpages media stream might flicker on a high resolution display is a sign of weakness in the laptop over an issue with Netflix's implementation of HTML5?
Are you joking? Like, seriously? These machines do video editing in 4K without flicker? Did you take maybe half a second to think that maybe a web stream itself might be the issue?
Nah, I'm sure that "a guy" is a much more reasonable source for diagnosing the issue.
Some people.....
Why would it flicker? Source?
I haven't seen any reports of a flicker, where are these claims coming from?
Just because you haven't seen any reports, doesn't mean they aren't there. Only the Pro Users who push these MacBooks beyond what they are intended to do.. Watch netflix and write blog posting?? See it. So you will probably never see it.
We just tested a few here in our studio and we saw it flicker, its more of a ROLL, and a catch up, sometimes disconnects intermitenly, like not having enough GPU power to play the video and hold that screen resolution, it seems I have no idea. Their are lots of people talking about it on these forums, just search.. The reports are out there, They are there are there from 2011 all the way until now the 2016 macbook pros. Just look. If you have a 2016 MacBook Pro, why don't you test if yourself.
Granted it could be lack of good drivers from Apple and possibly the USB-C to external monitors.. Who knows, but as the hardware is right now, its pretty sloppy.
Why don't you test your 2016 MacBook Pro for us, on an external 5k, more than 1, because it says it supports 2. Do Final Cut Pro X, Premiere, watch videos, Streaming and Local and tell us what you see.
Happy with $15 less?..... happier yes. Happy no. (Again, remember how the $15 thing was completely absurd?)
$200 less though, that would have been appropriate and would likely have made a lot of people happy.
Thanks so much!~
From my reading it doesn't look like its hot swappable and it requires a reboot in order to switch between the eGPU and the internal GPU. Slightly annoying since it would be nice to be able to come into work dock the machine and have the eGPU enabled without requiring a reboot.
Also the CPU. And the eGPU. And the power controller. And the south bridge. And the pci controller. And the bypass capacitors. Silly Ph.D. morons with their years of design experience and fancy schmancy degrees.
For me in the big mistake Apple made was the RAM limit of 16GB! This is a joke even when using Photoshop you are going to hit that limit fast. I recon many users would have opted for less battery life for greater horsepower MacBook Pro . Let's hope next year we get at least a 32GB option. And more powerful GPU than this mid range one. they are charging way to much for what is a mid range laptop spec. come on Apple!
