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T-Minus (3) Days Until VEGA!!
- Thread starter fate0311
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Trebuin
macrumors 65816
When people start getting their Vegas in, I'd like to see some benchmarks. I'm still in the market because my 2011 MBP's camera, wifi, & video card are all failing. Thankfully the video card has only given me a couple of glitches so far...been 3 years from the warranty replacement. I just need to make it through this deployment, not much longer.
dan9700
Suspended
Im getting i9 32gb ram 512gb ssd and vega 20 ill do every test for you guys delivery on the 26th
I am having such a hard time with this. MBP 15", i7 or i9, 1tb, Vega 20, 32gb, or iMac Pro base.... I had a MBP 15" 2017 one for my desktop, and it didn't do so well when I was pushing the cpu and trying to game as well a little. I am unsure what direction I want to go especially since I have a 2015 13" MBP I could sell or keep.
One thing I like about the MBP is I can take it with me without separate machines, and I can sell it/ship it and upgrade easier than the iMAC where it would be harder to sell.
Just havn't come across that one thing that I haven;t figured out what it is to make me pull the trigger sadly.
One thing I like about the MBP is I can take it with me without separate machines, and I can sell it/ship it and upgrade easier than the iMAC where it would be harder to sell.
Just havn't come across that one thing that I haven;t figured out what it is to make me pull the trigger sadly.
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Trebuin
macrumors 65816
My preferred setup would be i9, 32GB ramp, Vega 20, like you, but bump to 2TB drive for the sake of future-proofing & long term life...I mean I'm on a 2011 still. Anyhow, I'm concerned about the heat that the i9 & Vega 20 would put off in the keyboard, palm rest, & the bottom, so I may go with the i7 Vega 20. I'll be waiting to see how your's turns out. I need to dig up the software I like to test with & send it your ways.
Trebuin
macrumors 65816
https://benchmark.unigine.com/heaven
That's what I've been using nowadays. Run that app independently to see the general performance & comfort level. Also run a Cinebench CPU & GPU test (really dated, but still helps me compare). Finally, for a thermal test, again, run heaven but also run the following in terminal until your CPU is maxed:
yes > /dev/null
ref: https://geekgiant.in/how-to-undervolt-a-mac-to-increase-its-battery-life/
Run intel power gadget to see the cpu speed/temp & something that will monitor the GPU temp as well.
The result of this will be very predictable: the laptop will throttle. This is a torture test that tests the computer beyond any reasonable practical application. What real-world scenario pushes for high GPU utilisation maxing out the CPU memory subsystem? Encoding videos and playing games at the same time? Rendering a video while running a probabilistic simulation?
fokmik
Suspended
i think playing a modern game will stress enough and test the system
Depending on the video codec, encoding/transcoding video alone would push both CPU and GPU to max. Same with just video editing with some real-time effects.
I'd be curious to how much throttling we'll see here. Probably a good amount of it :/
If you are transcoding two different videos (one on the Cpu, one on the GPU), maybe. Same with video editing: I very much doubt that you will get 100% CPU utilisation when also using the GPU under normal circumstances. A limiting factor will be synchronisation of the work between CPU and GPU. So unless you load them with unrelated tasks, I don't think so. Don't get me wrong, real world apps will certainly push both hard at the same time, I just don't think that they will reach the level of utilisation that the torture test does.
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Probably the same amount as any other MBP before or any other laptop in the comparable weight class (Dell XPS, Blade etc.). None of these can maintain 100% utilisation of CPU and GPU without throttling. You'd need to get one of those larger laptops with desktop-class cooling.
Trebuin
macrumors 65816
Predictable does not give numeric info to actually compare. That's why I asked for the tests. The combo of both will show the worst case scenario of stress loading the MB. It also makes comparing against my current hardware because I can replicate the same conditions...100% CPU with high GPU load. Games go all over the place depending on the scene & what level of CPU is being used.
AvengerNX08
macrumors regular
I am actually curious on how these will perform in Bootcamp. I ordered the i9/Vega 20 and I am trying to be as much prepared in advance as possible, after all there is reason to believe the throttling issue is still very much present while using Windows...
Will simply disabling the processor‘s turbo boost via Windows power management and using the AMD drivers from bootcampdrivers.com (when they are available) be enough to stop any potential throttling? Or will one have to reduce the processor‘s speed to MBA level of performance to keep the CPU from throttling?
One more thought here: Does the i7 @2.6GHz use 45 watts? What would the i9 use if it's frequency was lowered to 2.6GHz from 2.9GHz? If it were to use less power then it could potentially be less power demanding and cooler than the i7. I sense I might be wrong about this though!
By the way, what would happen if one were to use a 100 watts charger and a cable capable of delivering 100 watts?
Will simply disabling the processor‘s turbo boost via Windows power management and using the AMD drivers from bootcampdrivers.com (when they are available) be enough to stop any potential throttling? Or will one have to reduce the processor‘s speed to MBA level of performance to keep the CPU from throttling?
One more thought here: Does the i7 @2.6GHz use 45 watts? What would the i9 use if it's frequency was lowered to 2.6GHz from 2.9GHz? If it were to use less power then it could potentially be less power demanding and cooler than the i7. I sense I might be wrong about this though!
By the way, what would happen if one were to use a 100 watts charger and a cable capable of delivering 100 watts?
I can only tell you that if I disable turbo on 2.2 the 555x can maintain full speed without any problem while gaming, although the whole system is uncomfortably hot. But that's around 30W GPU, the Vega will surely consume more.
They both will consume the same power at the same frequency and same workload. There may be some small differences depending on cache hit ratio (i9 has larger cache) one way or another. For the i9 to require less power it would need to run at lower voltages, and so far I haven't seen any indications of that being implemented by Apple.
100 watt charger won't matter, I could run it for maybe 30 seconds at 100W, it gets too hot and throttles down to about 85W.
AvengerNX08
macrumors regular
The question is, what would be considered uncomfortable temperatures 🙂 I still have the 2016 MBP with the 2.9GHz quad core – that one can maintain its base frequency and also maintain clocks on the 460 gpu, which uses 35 watts. Temperatures are in the low 70s range during heavy gaming sessions. Isnt the Vega 20 supposed to come with a 35 watts package as well?
koyoot
macrumors 603
Yes, it is. But the CPU easily exceeds the 45W, thanks to less strict Power Limit States.
That is the reason people see higher temperatures and throttling, on 6 core machines.
I never noticed any throttling issues on Bootcamp with i9/560X setup.
A big question is driver availability. I hope that the Vega Mobile will work with stock Vega drivers and Bootcampdrivers modded drivers can be used.
All CPUs in the 15" MBP are designed to settle at 45W power draw on average in a sustained multi-core workload.
It depends on your draw in the silicone lottery 🙂 You can test it out: set a custom lower TDP power limit and run Cinebench etc. until your clocks settle at 2.6Ghz. Since i9 is higher binned SKUs, there is a high probability that its more power-efficient than a i7 running at the same clock. But again, this will depend on two individual CPUs. Put differently: if you test 1000 i7 vs 1000 i9, I am confident that i9 models will be more power efficient on average. But some of the i7 will outperform some of the i9s in this regard.
If you are looking to limit CPUs power draw, your best bet is probably simply setting a custom TDP. There are free tools that allow you to do this.
No idea. But I don't think that MBP's power system (not its cooling system) is designed to deal with more power in sustained operation. It can certainly surpass the normal limits on burst workflows (I've seen my CPU drawing over 80Watts), but it can't maintain it for longer than few seconds.
Fair enough. I agree that it's a good test for examining the limits of the cooling/power system. Just wanted to warn against overinterpreting the results (which we all know will happen).
Trebuin
macrumors 65816
@leman Yea, I remember the iMac pro benchmarks...you really had to use some experience to interpret what it actually mean...IE, heating caused throttles & so on & eventually for continuous high level use...lower end CPUs would win where as games also liked lower end cpus, but shorter bursts of work would win with more cores. It's a mess, but at least I know what I am looking for.
koyoot
macrumors 603
Cocoi
macrumors member
Nov 20-23 with no movement save for being charged. Should ship any minute now I guess.
I am super curious about the VEGA 20 and any extra heat venting requirements. The 2018 MacBook Pro is already so thin, I wonder if the GPU is going to be vented via the same pathway as the CPU. I can't wait to see how hot these get, I will probably still buy one, but just wondering where an i9, 32gb RAM, with a Vega 20 will run temp wise. Also if the GPU is max 35watts, is their a max amount of heat 35watts can put out? Maybe 35watts worth? 🙂
I have a VEGA frontier and its actually a pretty decent card, I think the temps and watts could improve, but it actually is pretty solid card IMHO, considering the competition is shooting the moon at the moment... I am hopeful for the VEGA 20. If its not too hot and around 1060 level, prob a little less, a loaded MacBook Pro is gonna be pretty boss. Maybe Apple is listening to the pros?? Maybe they are listening to us right now??
I have a VEGA frontier and its actually a pretty decent card, I think the temps and watts could improve, but it actually is pretty solid card IMHO, considering the competition is shooting the moon at the moment... I am hopeful for the VEGA 20. If its not too hot and around 1060 level, prob a little less, a loaded MacBook Pro is gonna be pretty boss. Maybe Apple is listening to the pros?? Maybe they are listening to us right now??
Same here. Mine is supposed to arrive Wednesday. I'm planning on doing running some benchmarks and games that night and posting my results. Hoping that it is much faster than the 560x that I returned!
Nde
macrumors 6502a
I'm not trying to be rude or anything. I read many post about gaming here. What kind of game are we talking about? Battlefield 5, Fortnite, or Hello Kitty Adventure?