Technical Retina Macbook Pro Questions

[TyleRomeo]

It may be too early for some of these questions but lets give it a shot.

1. Are each of the Thunderbolt ports on their own bus or are they sharing one bus?

2. Are the Thunderbolt ports running PCI Express 3.0 or 2.0?

3. Are each of the USB 3 ports on their own bus or are they sharing one bus?

4. Is the HDMI port a 1.3 or 1.4?

5. What is the capacity left of the stock 256GB SSD when you first started your new Retina Macbook Pro? 215GB?

Thanks to all those lucky ones who already have the new machines.

 

[Stetrain]

All I can really answer is the Thunderbolt question. Since both Thunderbolt ports support display output, the controller chip is either a Light Ridge or Cactus Ridge controller.

Both of those chips provide 4 Thunderbolt lanes, two per port.

The non-retina Macbook Pro uses the Light Ridge chip as well (known from previous gen teardowns), but it only had one physical port.

I don't think that either of these chips are using PCI-E 3.0. Intel has announced that they will bring PCI-E 3.0 to Thunderbolt but no timeframe yet.

Light Ridge is the bigger chip that features four Thunderbolt channels (4 x 10Gbps bidirectional = 80Gbps aggregate bandwidth) and two DisplayPort outputs, it's used in the MacBook Pro, Mac mini and iMac.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4772/meet-the-2012-thunderbolt-controllers-cactus-ridge

 

[Xcelerate]

4. Is the HDMI port a 1.3 or 1.4?

I'm not positive but I think it's 1.4. Someone on here was mentioning that 1.4 requires putting having an actual port on the laptop and paying fees to a committee ... something to do with branding.

 

[dagamer34]

1. They should be on their own bus.
2. Doesn't matter as the Thunderbolt chip and cables have their output fixed at 10Gbps bidirectional.
3. Ivy Bridge chipset supports 4 USB 3.0 ports each on their own separate bus. It's not a hub.
4. No reason for it not to be 1.4, but there are almost no benefits anyway, unless you plan on outputting to a 4K display anytime soon (and even then, only at 24Hz).
5. Can't answer.

 

[TyleRomeo]

Thanks guys for clearing things up. I'm reading that most of the issues are now with scrolling with the Retina display at 1680x1050 or 1920x1200. I hope they iron out that issue soon.

 

[chx1975]

Why does Apple claim only two external displays? This is extremly baffling. I am fairly sure the Kepler family can drive four displays, we know it can do three (Apple claims internal + two external), we know Light Ridge multiplexes http://www.anandtech.com/show/4832/the-apple-thunderbolt-display-review/8 two DP signals on one cable. I would expect two per port and if you do four then the internal shuts down (like the Air with two).

Edit: I think I got it. I presumed the two ports meant there are two TB controllers and so four displays but it ain't so http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thunderbolt-performance-z77a-gd80,3205-3.html says both Cactus Ridge (which is used per ifixit, they found a DSL3510L) and Light Ridge only got two DP. The signalling for this boggles my mind but -- apparently, this is how it is. I truly wonder whether it'd been so difficult for Apple to allow the HDMI to be the third but I guess they didn't want that because they only have a TB display. So I guess plugging in an alien HDMI cord will force one of the DisplayPorts into DP++ mode and deliver a DVI signal that way.