New retina MacBook Pro GPU

[john123]

I don't think so there is no reason for them to do so other than saving money witch apple is the only company that I trust and its not their priority

This has been covered countless times already in the 200 page "Waiting for Haswell" thread. So, you can revisit my and other posts there, and I will just include the summary here in bold.

There is no more than about a 15% chance that the 15" rMBP will keep a dGPU. The most likely scenario—by far—is that it uses the Iris Pro 5200 across the entire 15" line.

There's literally about a dozen reasons why. Anyone who is foolish enough to try to convince themselves otherwise is begging to be disappointed.

 

[NoamTheMac]

No and no. It has been discussed ad nauseum already. Even in the higher TDP configuration, the Iris Pro has substantially less performance then the current 650M and does not offer much in terms of power consumption under load. Iris Pro has plenty of computation power, but in the end the memory bandwidth is its weak point. DDR4 might improve that with its point-to-point interface. But we don't have it yet

then if what you say is true it seems to me that it is very unlikely that apple will save money and maybe some physical space and lower the performance. maybe the baseline models will only have the iris pro but the maxed out once will have a dedicated GPU (im hoping a GTX 760m+ or maybe even some graphics designing GPU that hopefully will not cost more then the computer itself)

 

[Serban]

This has been covered countless times already in the 200 page "Waiting for Haswell" thread. So, you can revisit my and other posts there, and I will just include the summary here in bold.

There is no more than about a 15% chance that the 15" rMBP will keep a dGPU. The most likely scenario—by far—is that it uses the Iris Pro 5200 across the entire 15" line.

There's literally about a dozen reasons why. Anyone who is foolish enough to try to convince themselves otherwise is begging to be disappointed.

what are the reasons? performance not, the heat not....probably only the battery life, even the price i think is more expensive for a quad core i7 with hd5200 than hd4600+750M. Please im noob so explain if i am wrong

 

[sarthak]

This has been covered countless times already in the 200 page "Waiting for Haswell" thread. So, you can revisit my and other posts there, and I will just include the summary here in bold.

There is no more than about a 15% chance that the 15" rMBP will keep a dGPU. The most likely scenario—by far—is that it uses the Iris Pro 5200 across the entire 15" line.

There's literally about a dozen reasons why. Anyone who is foolish enough to try to convince themselves otherwise is begging to be disappointed.

I agree. Everyone keeps stating how the Iris Pro 5200 does not perform as well in Games. Apple's target market for Mac notebooks has never been gamers. Looking forward, it's all about Performance per Watt and only Intel's Iris Pro IGP can deliver substantial increase in battery life while maintaing or increasing performance in pro applications such as Final Cut, Adobe suite or AutoDesk products.

In 3dmark at 720p resolution. Read again what I wrote - Iris Pro packs more computing power but its weakness is the memory bandwidth. Every game test at 1680x1050 gets a significant hit with the Iris Pro. And it won't change even if Apple gets some mythical Iris Pro+ part with double the number of cores and more speed. Memory bandwidth is whats crippling the system.

Well like I said, gamers are not the target market, it has never been and it will never be the target market for Mac notebooks/desktops.

what are the reasons? performance not, the heat not....probably only the battery life, even the price i think is more expensive for a quad core i7 with hd5200 than hd4600+750M. Please im noob so explain if i am wrong

Performance in Pro Applications (Final Cut, Adobe suite, AutoDesk apps) is far greater with the Iris Pro than with NVIDIA cards. The Performance per Watt or in other words, efficiency is far greater with the Iris Pro and as a result you have a dramatic increase in battery life. The heat generated by a 47W or 55W chip should theoretically be less than the heat generated by a power hungry NVIDIA chip. The price is on par with the current generation CPU cost and GPU cost combined.

 

[macmastersam]

this should solve the dispute to the speed of intel iris pro 5200 :

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/08/03/i...-hands-on-solid-gaming-performance-on-the-go/

I would like to see dedicated graphics for a retina macbook pro. I too like to game from time to time, but the games i play just wont cut it for a retina macbook pro. The article stated, basically, that the only low points of intel's graphics chip is mainly the anti-aliasing, meaning that you won't reach the "double figures" in framerate when this is turned on. Otherwise, with a few other tweaks, such as dropping the quality from ultra to high, you will recieve a comfortable 30something FPS, and all this was tested in bioshock infinite too

 

[GSPice]

then if what you say is true it seems to me that it is very unlikely that apple will save money and maybe some physical space and lower the performance. maybe the baseline models will only have the iris pro but the maxed out once will have a dedicated GPU (im hoping a GTX 760m+ or maybe even some graphics designing GPU that hopefully will not cost more then the computer itself)

Oh my gosh you're wrong in so many ways!

 

[sarthak]

Oh my gosh you're wrong in so many ways!

Including but, not limited to;

- If the base model has Iris Pro it will have Logic Board A
- If the higher end model has GTX 760M (highly unlikely), the entire logic board and power infrastructure would have to be redesigned to fit the GTX card.
- The power consumption of the GTX would be through the roof and as a result, the higher end model would have 5-7 hours of battery life while the base model with Iris has 9-12 hours of battery life.
- It would also make no sense to have a GTX because either you go with a high end Intel i7-4950HQ CPU with Iris Pro IGP in the BASE MODEL or you go with a lower end i7-CPU and GTX760 card in the HIGHER END model.
- Lower CPU and battery life in the higher end model??????????
- You can't have both i7-4950HQ with Iris Pro and also have a GTX760M, it would cost too much and the 20% performance difference is not worth the loss of battery life, heat generation and automatic graphics switching nightmares.

I'm just stating the reality here, BE WARNED, we ARE going to loose the dGPU in favour of Iris Pro.

 

[leman]

I agree. Everyone keeps stating how the Iris Pro 5200 does not perform as well in Games. Apple's target market for Mac notebooks has never been gamers. Looking forward, it's all about Performance per Watt and only Intel's Iris Pro IGP can deliver substantial increase in battery life while maintaing or increasing performance in pro applications such as Final Cut, Adobe suite or AutoDesk products.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I find your reasoning absolutely logical and convincing. I was simply responding to 'Iris Pro is just as fast' claim, which is simply wrong. For me though, an Iris Pro based rMBP loses lots of its appeal - because it stops being an all-around machine which I can use for work AND recreation.

Performance in Pro Applications (Final Cut, Adobe suite, AutoDesk apps) is far greater with the Iris Pro than with NVIDIA cards.

Only if these tasks are not memory bandwidth limited.

The Performance per Watt or in other words, efficiency is far greater with the Iris Pro and as a result you have a dramatic increase in battery life. The heat generated by a 47W or 55W chip should theoretically be less than the heat generated by a 90W NVIDIA chip.

I am not sure whether this is true. You are assuming that both CPU and GPU are running at max TDP here... I'd like to see some proper testing first.

All in all, I agree that Apple has some compelling reasons to drop the dGPU. I am just not sure that this is a very smart business move + it will make me less likely to purchase such a machine, simply because I annoy playing games in my free time occasionally.

 

[that1guyy]

So who else refuses to spend around $2500 on a "pro" machine with integrated graphics? What a joke haha. Guess I'll pick up a refurb if that is true.

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Including but, not limited to;

- If the base model has Iris Pro it will have Logic Board A
- If the higher end model has GTX 760M (highly unlikely), the entire logic board and power infrastructure would have to be redesigned to fit the GTX card.
- The power consumption of the GTX would be through the roof and as a result, the higher end model would have 5-7 hours of battery life while the base model with Iris has 9-12 hours of battery life.
- It would also make no sense to have a GTX because either you go with a high end Intel i7-4950QM CPU with Iris Pro IGP in the BASE MODEL or you go with a lower end i7-CPU and GTX760 card in the HIGHER END model.
- Lower CPU and battery life in the higher end model??????????
- You can't have both i7-4950QM with Iris Pro and also have a GTX760M, it would cost too much and the 20% performance difference is not worth the loss of battery life, heat generation and automatic graphics switching nightmares.

I'm just stating the reality here, BE WARNED, we ARE going to loose the dGPU in favour of Iris Pro.

You keep bolding your posts. Having something in bold doesn't make you right.

 

[GSPice]

So who else refuses to spend around $2500 on a "pro" machine with integrated graphics? What a joke haha. Guess I'll pick up a refurb if that is true.

So many faces. So few palms.

There could be a million page thread with all the information in the world about hardware and software performance and people would still bring up non sequiturs like this.

 

[Serban]

Apple put 650M in the current laptop along side with the hd4000, so gaming its a part of apple thinking. 4 years ago apple will never put bigger screen than 3.5" for iPhone? never less screen estate than iPads 9.7". The politic of apple is changed but they still are under the same motto: WE TRY TO MAKE THE BEST PRODUCT. In our case the MBP will be the best if it will handle everything like games,pro application, battery life, best design/quality manufacturing.
So to be the best product for this year they kind of put at least 750M or maybe intel made something special just for apple like nvidia did for iMac with 680MX and in this situation a HD5300 can handle everything almost

 

[sarthak]

You keep bolding your posts. Having something in bold doesn't make you right.

Are you sure because the only other post I bolded was that "people like to have Iris Pro for pro apps". All the other bolding is not me. I never said I can predict the future and tell you exactly what Apple is going to do.

 

[Vanilla35]

I think apple will stick to only Iris Pro. However, gamers are seriously getting boned here. Everyone is always comparing Iris Pro to the outdated 650M. Compare it to the 750M which would be the "theoretical" substitute, and it's starting to look like s***. Anyway what really matters is that Iris Pro can barely play Bioshock on high settings. That means when new games come out this year, and next year (especially with games graphic components going through the roof in games), you're looking at basically only being able to play games from 2012 and older with this laptop.

I understand it's where everything is going, as I can imagine many other competitors will go with similar measures. But one thing I noticed that apple doesn't have to deal with here. Most competitors have Ultrabooks, 13"-14" range. With mostly 720p screens. So it makes a whole lot more sense for them. You know certainly that 16"-18" laptops will be keeping dGPU's in them. Apple is mostly alone in their current situation, so no doubt it is a bad situation

 

[john123]

what are the reasons? performance not, the heat not....probably only the battery life, even the price i think is more expensive for a quad core i7 with hd5200 than hd4600+750M. Please im noob so explain if i am wrong

You are, and I guess I will. Again. In addition to all the stuff mseth said, and liberally copying from previous posts in that other thread:

• The people who blather on these forums all day—like me and you—are not representative of the user population. Over 90% of computer users make purchases without looking at benchmarks. (Source: multiple studies of consumer purchasing decisions I ran in my last career in market research.)
• An Iris Pro 5200 + dGPU would be cost prohibitive. The 2.4Ghz + 5200 combo costs a whopping $657. And keep in mind that's far away from Haswell's top speed (3.0Ghz).
• iGPUs are the future for Apple laptops. There's a reason Intel's been throwing ridiculous sums of money into developing this stuff. An integrated platform offers tremendous power savings potential, not to mention better profit and revenue for Intel.
•*The Geekbench benchmark showed an Iris Pro 5200. No dGPU. Keep in mind Geekbench has had no problems detecting dGPUs in the past. While it's possible some hardware or firmware change is making a dGPU undetectable, that's highly unlikely. Besides, per the above, it would be cost prohibitive. The only cost-viable option would be an HD 4600 + dGPU, but that isn't what showed up.
• Apple has not chosen to prioritize graphics power in their laptops. Every generation, you'll find other cards they could have chosen, but didn't for reasons of power consumption. Apple's priority is marketing size, form, and function (i.e., slim and long battery life) above power.
• Note that you won't even find the words "NVIDIA" or "650M" in the text on Apple's current MacBook Pro web page on performance—the very page that specifically talks about graphics. You have to go all the way down to the tiny footnotes.
• We return to marketing, and lo and behold, there are numerous benchmarks where the Iris 5200 beats the 650M. Cherry-picked, sure, but in marketing, that doesn't matter. Being able to show even one pretty bar graph while touting increased batter life is incredibly powerful for marketing.

More cost information:
The current 3635QM in the 2.4Ghz rMBP runs $378.

One Haswell version—the GT3e—has the Iris Pro 5200. That version is considerably more expensive than the other major (quad core mobile) version—the GT2—which has the HD5100. The 4950HQ (2.4Ghz, 5200) costs $657, while the low-end 4750HQ (2.0Ghz, 5200) costs $440.

$440 takes care of the whole kit-and-kaboodle, and runs $68 more than the current low-end CPU but doesn't necessitate the purchase of a dGPU. Paying more than current prices and then adding on a dGPU would be idiotically stupid. If they wanted to add a dGPU, they'd certainly go with a GT2 option for less cost. Bundling up two fully capable dGPUs would be the epitome of insanity and idiocy, especially given that
(A) the current Retinas do OK in day-to-day stuff with the HD4000, and
(B) the HD4600 benchmarks show a significant improvement from their predecessor

This is a company whose stock price has been hammered more than anything due to profit margin compression. You're not going to see anyone on the business side over there just give up margin in a Gomer Pyle "aw shucks" moment.

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Apple put 650M in the current laptop along side with the hd4000, so gaming its a part of apple thinking. 4 years ago apple will never put bigger screen than 3.5" for iPhone? never less screen estate than iPads 9.7". The politic of apple is changed but they still are under the same motto: WE TRY TO MAKE THE BEST PRODUCT. In our case the MBP will be the best if it will handle everything like games,pro application, battery life, best design/quality manufacturing.
So to be the best product for this year they kind of put at least 750M or maybe intel made something special just for apple like nvidia did for iMac with 680MX and in this situation a HD5300 can handle everything almost

No, Apple put the 650M in because the HD4000 is barely adequate. The same cannot be said for the HD 5200, which is literally two solid steps ahead.

Sorry, but the "best" product is not the "best performance." For Apple, aesthetics and things like battery life trump performance. For evidence, look no further than their choices of dGPUs in the past years. They never choose the best available. Why? Battery.

If you honestly think you'll see a 750M, you're deluding yourself. Per my above, that's a 15% chance. Max.

 

[Serban]

best product in a world of IT means that include the best performance.

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yea best product in a world of fashion..is design but this is not the case.

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stop thinking apple like the company who was 5 years ago...
again 5 years ago a mac was not for gaming
iphone has the perfect size 3.5"
ipad only 9.7" and so on...

now we have imac with best mobile GPU, we have 4" iPhone/ we have ipad mini, we have retina macbook pro that runs diablo 3 native resolution (apple present that fact to us). Mac pro will be a mac pro

so yes if the 15" will have only the hd5200 but sorry to say that almost 80% of the people who is waiting for haswell 15" will buy the 13" with hd5100 a better form factor and yes the lack of 16 gRAM. but better portability better money

 

[UBS28]

I know 1 thing, Apple must use a dGPU in the Broadwell MBP. The Maxwell GPU from NVIDIA is 2 times faster per watt over the 7xxm series. So a 850M is 2 times faster than a 750m while the 750m is already 25% faster than the Iris Pro.

So I'm not sure if Apple is willing to do the same with the Haswell MBP, considering next year Apple must go back to dGPU's.

 

[macmastersam]

apple not fussed about gaming my arse:

http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook-pro/performance-retina/

 

[john123]

stop thinking apple like the company who was 5 years ago...

Actually, you're the one doing that. You're acting like it's a Steve Jobs "make it perfect" company. It isn't. It's a company more business focused than ever, under profit margin compression.

again 5 years ago a mac was not for gaming

And it ain't that great for gaming today, either. It's adequate, but no beast. The Retinas were a step backward, in fact.

so yes if the 15" will have only the hd5200 but sorry to say that almost 80% of the people who is waiting for haswell 15" will buy the 13" with hd5100 a better form factor and yes the lack of 16 gRAM. but better portability better money

80%? Uh, no. Try more like 1-2%. The people who are interested in a 15" do not place their #1 priority on portability. The HD5200 is still better than the HD5100. A lot of people need the bigger screen/real estate or the extra horsepower. And, for about the billionth time, the HD5200 is a fine graphics card for everything except for gaming. The 15" will sell just fine.

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apple not fussed about gaming my arse:

http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook-pro/performance-retina/

What exactly do you think this proves? It's at the bottom of the page. There are no benchmarks. The graphics card name appears as a footnote. Hell, read the text. It's all about pixels, not performance.

Gaming was, is, and for the foreseeable future will be an afterthought.

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I know 1 thing, Apple must use a dGPU in the Broadwell MBP. The Maxwell GPU from NVIDIA is 2 times faster per watt over the 7xxm series. So a 850M is 2 times faster than a 750m while the 750m is already 25% faster than the Iris Pro.

So I'm not sure if Apple is willing to do the same with the Haswell MBP, considering next year Apple must go back to dGPU's.

This is yet another example of flawed logic. You insist they "must" and cite performance reasons. Yet performance has never been the #1 concern in laptops. It really won't matter how much ahead the 850M is as long as Intel's stuff is "adequate."

You can go ahead and convince yourself that you're right, but all you're doing is setting yourself up to be angry and disappointed when reality kicks in.

 

[koyoot]

It depends on the game, perhaps it does perform a little slower in BF3 and Crysis 3 however, it does perform very well or better than the GT 650M in Crysis Warhead and GRID 2. It also outperforms in Compute and Video Rendering by a massive margin. Even if it's raw gaming performance is 5-10% slower in some games, it performs well in many other aspects and performance per watt proves it's significantly more efficient.

Apple is set on improving battery life, having 9-12 hours of battery life on a rMBP 15" with a faster CPU, faster memory, equivalent Iris Pro 5200 IGP, PCI-E SSD and other upgrades makes sense. They're not going to mention that it is slightly slower in some games but are going to advertise everything that is important to consumers and prosumers including Compute performance and Battery Life (due to increased PPW). Most people would prefer having the Iris Pro 5200 if it can outperform previous generation in Adobe and AutoDesk apps while increasing battery life. Besides, Apple's target market has never been gamers for notebooks/desktops.

Based on the leaked benchmark of the next gen rMBP, it has the 4950QM with Iris Pro. It doesn't look like Apple is going to skimp on CPU performance either. If they aren't going to put in the Iris Pro 5200 they will have to go with a CPU that is lower end which has HD5000 IGP. Skimping out on CPU performance just to add a power hungry, GT 750M, and keeping battery life at 7 hours (realistically 5hrs) would not make any sense whatsoever.

It's the right time to switch to the Iris Pro IGP. By the time the next-next generation Intel CPUs has been released, there will be a massive number of Windows notebooks on the market with up to 12 hrs battery life and great CPU/GPU performance.

You are misunderstanding. Iris Pro will not increase battery life. The technology in Haswell processors will. Iris Pro draws about the same power as combination of GT750M plus i7 4700M.

Secondly. Putting and HD4600 plus a Processor with higher Clock(2.4 Ghz, 2.7 and 2.8 GHz) Will make it faster than it is with Iris Pro.

Really, Im sure Apple is focused on that what will happen in future of iterations of Intel iGPU. Skylake will probabbly put it skyhigh in terms of performance that even Nvidia or AMD in that power draw will not be able to match. Imagine an iGPU with the performance of iMacs GPU(GTX680MX).

At worst scenario - Intel will offer an GTX675MX performance. So it will be pretty nice. But thats future.

Today Iris Pro lags a little behind overall in usability, for all customers.

 

[sarthak]

You are misunderstanding. Iris Pro will not increase battery life. The technology in Haswell processors will. Iris Pro draws about the same power as combination of GT750M plus i7 4700M.

Secondly. Putting and HD4600 plus a Processor with higher Clock(2.4 Ghz, 2.7 and 2.8 GHz) Will make it faster than it is with Iris Pro.

The Max TDP of the i7-4950QM with Iris Pro is 47W or 55W. The current generation rMBP is rated at 90W draw with the i7 and GT650M. Iris Pro will extend battery life because it consumes less power compared to a single GT 650M part. It is rated higher in Performance per Watt efficiency. The combination of i7-4950QM and Iris Pro consume less power than having i7-3615QM and GT650M.

As far as your other point goes, what is the point in putting a 4700MQ, 4800MQ or 4900MQ which cost nearly the same as higher end 4750HQ, 4850HQ and 4950HQ with Iris Pro 5200 Graphics? With the 4700/4800/4900MQ you also have to put in GT750M graphics which add a lot to the cost. Might as well just go with the HQ series with Iris Pro and save money while extending battery life and compute performance.

 

[RoboWarriorSr]

It depends on the game, perhaps it does perform a little slower in BF3 and Crysis 3 however, it does perform very well or better than the GT 650M in Crysis Warhead and GRID 2. It also outperforms in Compute and Video Rendering by a massive margin. Even if it's raw gaming performance is 5-10% slower in some games, it performs well in many other aspects and performance per watt proves it's significantly more efficient.

Apple is set on improving battery life, having 9-12 hours of battery life on a rMBP 15" with a faster CPU, faster memory, equivalent Iris Pro 5200 IGP, PCI-E SSD and other upgrades makes sense. They're not going to mention that it is slightly slower in some games but are going to advertise everything that is important to consumers and prosumers including Compute performance and Battery Life (due to increased PPW). Most people would prefer having the Iris Pro 5200 if it can outperform previous generation in Adobe and AutoDesk apps while increasing battery life. Besides, Apple's target market has never been gamers for notebooks/desktops.

Based on the leaked benchmark of the next gen rMBP, it has the 4950HQ with Iris Pro. It doesn't look like Apple is going to skimp on CPU performance either. If they aren't going to put in the Iris Pro 5200 they will have to go with a CPU that is lower end which has HD5000 IGP. Skimping out on CPU performance just to add a power hungry, GT 750M, and keeping battery life at 7 hours (realistically 5hrs) would not make any sense whatsoever.

It's the right time to switch to the Iris Pro IGP. By the time the next-next generation Intel CPUs has been released, there will be a massive number of Windows notebooks on the market with up to 12 hrs battery life and great CPU/GPU performance.

Realize that the 650m is over clocked so it would make more sense to compare the iris pro with the 660m since the over clocked 650m has performance similar, if not the same, to the 660m.

 

[Vanilla35]

Lol my thoughts exactly . I'm waiting for broadwell if it's an iGP

 

[bill-p]

Performance in Pro Applications (Final Cut, Adobe suite, AutoDesk apps) is far greater with the Iris Pro than with NVIDIA cards. The Performance per Watt or in other words, efficiency is far greater with the Iris Pro and as a result you have a dramatic increase in battery life. The heat generated by a 47W or 55W chip should theoretically be less than the heat generated by a power hungry NVIDIA chip. The price is on par with the current generation CPU cost and GPU cost combined.

Final Cut Pro X is the only app you listed that will benefit from Iris Pro... because it's using OpenCL.

Adobe suite (especially After Effects and Photoshop), and Autodesk applications, and Maya, and pretty much anything else that makes heavy use of OpenGL will have far lower performance especially at Retina resolution!

There is no excuse for Iris Pro here. It's only for battery life.

As far as your other point goes, what is the point in putting a 4700MQ, 4800MQ or 4900MQ which cost nearly the same as higher end 4750HQ, 4850HQ and 4950HQ with Iris Pro 5200 Graphics? With the 4700/4800/4900MQ you also have to put in GT750M graphics which add a lot to the cost. Might as well just go with the HQ series with Iris Pro and save money while extending battery life and compute performance.

That's false.

4750HQ is roughly $60 more than 4700MQ based on Intel's OEM pricing.
4850HQ is roughly $90 more than 4800MQ based on Intel's OEM pricing.
4950HQ is roughly $90 more than 4900MQ based on Intel's OEM pricing.

OEM pricing for dGPU is about $50 - $60, so factually, CPU + Iris Pro costs about the same or even more than CPU + dGPU.

There is no money saved here.

 

[Vanilla35]

apple not fussed about gaming my arse:

http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook-pro/performance-retina/

Lol this is actually a good find. I suppose I've never looked thoroughly at their product webpage (just tech specs and overview) but I never would have thought they'd even mention gaming; seeing how everyone always says apple doesn't try to do anything for gamers >.> . But they haveeee been trying to accommodate gamers a little bit over the past year or so, so it's good to see that note too. Would seem out of place for them to shoot them in the foot this time around, but ya know.

 

[Acronyc]

I'm just stating the reality here, BE WARNED, we ARE going to loose the dGPU in favour of Iris Pro.

I never said I can predict the future and tell you exactly what Apple is going to do.

But it seems as though you previously stated that you can predict the future.