The AnandTech MBP with Retina display review is UP!

[scarred]

After reading Anand's review and the colorful thoughts in this thread, I'm actually nervous about getting my new rMBP. However, I do have to keep in mind that I am upgrading from my first mac, a white MacBook from Mid-2007 (Macbook 2,1). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do imagine that the new rMBP will be a world of difference for me. I'm barely able to run iTunes and Lightroom at once.

Frankly, I don't plan on upgrading my rMBP for another 4 - 5 years, and I do expect it to last that long. My thought after reading Anand's review was that, if you have an older MacBook, you're undoubtedly going to see significant gains.

You sure you read the same review I read?

He gave it an editors choice award!! He very very rarely does that. This is a great computer. You need Mountain Lion apparently, but that is coming July 22nd ish.

I think everyone is focusing on the negatives a tad too much. The rmbp is a great notebook. It has some "1st gen" pains... so if you can't handle those, then ya maybe skip it. But there is nothing else like it right now. You'll have the best notebook money can buy if you do keep it.

 

[magbarn]

You sure you read the same review I read?

He gave it an editors choice award!! He very very rarely does that. This is a great computer. You need Mountain Lion apparently, but that is coming July 22nd ish.

I think everyone is focusing on the negatives a tad too much. The rmbp is a great notebook. It has some "1st gen" pains... so if you can't handle those, then ya maybe skip it. But there is nothing else like it right now. You'll have the best notebook money can buy if you do keep it.

It is apples best at this time just like the 1st gen air was the best in class in its time. However, just like the 1st gen air, Apple had to make some compromises to make it work as some of the hardware hasn't caught up yet. (The Intel iGPU and 4200 rpm hard drive were pretty horrid looking back) If those compromises are ok with you then by all means enjoy the best laptop screen in the biz.

 

[cmdrmac]

You sure you read the same review I read?

He gave it an editors choice award!! He very very rarely does that. This is a great computer. You need Mountain Lion apparently, but that is coming July 22nd ish.

I think everyone is focusing on the negatives a tad too much. The rmbp is a great notebook. It has some "1st gen" pains... so if you can't handle those, then ya maybe skip it. But there is nothing else like it right now. You'll have the best notebook money can buy if you do keep it.

Oh don't get me wrong. The only way I'm returning it is if the machine has manufacturer defects. I'm nervous about Apple releasing a new OS version in the next 4 years that is incompatible with the 2012 rMBP. I've been very happy with my 2007 MacBook and its still going strong. It's just not a great machine for multi-tasking and ML will be incompatible with it.

 

[magbarn]

Oh don't get me wrong. The only way I'm returning it is if the machine has manufacturer defects. I'm nervous about Apple releasing a new OS version in the next 4 years that is incompatible with the 2012 rMBP. I've been very happy with my 2007 MacBook and its still going strong. It's just not a great machine for multi-tasking and ML will be incompatible with it.

No way they're going to do that as they would abandon their whole current laptop line as the rMBP has the best current hardware at this time. The rMBP is going to be a HUGE upgrade for you lol.

 

[pandamonia]

You do realize Haswell has a completely re-designed built in GPU that according to Intel's claims is over 2x-3x faster than ivy bridge? (Which is believable as the HD4000 is much faster than SB's HD3000 and it was just a refinement of HD3000 not a re-design) Also, it's currently assumed that the next gen Nvidia/Intel will have the hardware scalers builtin for the rMBP non-standard upscale/downscaling resolutions. The current problem is that the current HD4000/650M do not have some of the scaling required for retina resolution modes in their silicon, so the CPU has to try to make up for it. The ideal, is to off-load this to the GPU so the CPU is free to do other tasks.

You realise that there is NO hardware acceleration currently. So Haswell is pointless to reference when your not even using the GPU TODAY to power the scrolling and UI.

Anandtech knows jack **** about Haswell. he's always well wishing the future. Often gets it wrong also i might add.

I remember how he said IVY should have a way better GPU.

The Software is the issue and not the hardware. The 650M can handle simple scrolling EASY with the correct software. This will be better in ML

 

[Mike07335i]

With all this talk about lag, hardware maxed out, etc.. Anyone consider that the retina was actually designed on mountain lion and not lion? I would wait for mountain lion to reserve judgement as I am sure a lot of the issues will be ironed out or greatly improved upon.

Mike

 

[The "Dude"]

With all this talk about lag, hardware maxed out, etc.. Anyone consider that the retina was actually designed on mountain lion and not lion? I would wait for mountain lion to reserve judgement as I am sure a lot of the issues will be ironed out or greatly improved upon.

Mike

I absolutely believe that the retina was developed and tested primarily on the ML platform. And it's using a custom build of Lion in the meantime to spread the short gap between now and it's release. Many of the issues (which are way overblown) will be resolved in a months time.

 

[BigZ9]

It doesn't.

Safari shows 30-40% CPU usage when I scroll the Anandtech homepage.

I also use AdBlock and don't have Flash installed either - just saying.

Thank you for providing real world results corvus I wonder if getting the base model 2.3Ghz would affect the results... If you have Developer Tools installed by anychance could you actually fire up Quartz Debug and turn on the FrameMeter. This is the tool Anand was using to show his FPS and CPU usage. A screenshot of that of the results when browsing Anand or facebook would be great.

 

[jcpb]

Oh commentary...

everyone leave jcpb alone. hes absolutely fine with subpar performance in a $3000 machine.

Because 20 fps is nigh unusable.

You're joking, right?

So you're OK with shelling out $2700 on a laptop that lags when scrolling through Facebook, a website that any $500 laptop can deal with without a problem? errr... ok...

First of all, I don't use Facebook, and I completely disagree with Mark "Privacy is dead" Zuckerberg.

Second of all, why do you care? I really don't.

 

[stevelam]

From Anand's review:




These are pretty strong statements for anyone to make, and I have yet to duplicate his Safari CPU usage results. They're also strong statements for someone who is not part of any inside relationship between Apple, Intel, and NVIDIA. I'm not saying Anand is right or wrong, but assertions like those do make me pause. And using Facebook for benchmarks? Really?

If the claims in his review are so true, why is this up on NVIDIA's blog:



All marketing hype?

That's from nvidias blog. Obviously it's marketing.

And I'd take the word/test results of a respected tech reviewer over some nonsensical forum member trying to justify their $3000 purchase any day.

I understand your pain though. If i had a RMBP in my hands right now, I'd probably try to come up with all sorts of inane arguments to keep it as well.

 

[PeopleTheseDays]

If the claims in his review are so true, why is this up on NVIDIA's blog:



All marketing hype?

You're not going to use the discrete GPU 100% of the time are you?

---

I still don't get why people continually make the same unwarranted "oh if you're waiting X, why not wait for the Y after that???" in the same sarcastic tone. That makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever. There are THRESHOLDS that are reached in technological development, such as the 960 x 640 display on the iphone's 3.5 inch display. Any higher resolution is going to be wasted, sure it will be an "improvement", but the threshold for not seeing the pixels has already been achieved.

That is what people are saying when they want to wait for Haswell and have the 60 fps UI that they want. If Broadwell goes beyond, okay, that's great for Broadwell, but the 60 fps threshold has been reached. We know that this number is where the smoothness of UI is great, and if you've gamed before, you would know that 18 fps, even 30 fps isn't very good. At least 30 fps is playable, but really? 18 fps and people are cheering; standards have gotten low. People need to stop making these sarcastic "oh why don't you keep waiting" remarks.

---

I find it interesting that people give this new laptop a free pass on UI responsiveness, while many iOS users can't give the pass to Android's laggy UI (I personally can't give a pass to android either).

 

[corvus32]

Thank you for providing real world results corvus I wonder if getting the base model 2.3Ghz would affect the results... If you have Developer Tools installed by anychance could you actually fire up Quartz Debug and turn on the FrameMeter. This is the tool Anand was using to show his FPS and CPU usage. A screenshot of that of the results when browsing Anand or facebook would be great.

The attached screen shots were taken when I scrolled down and hit the bottom of the Anandtech and BBC News websites.

They show a frame rate of 43 and 48 fps, respectfully, and would spike to over 50 fps at times.

I'm using a non-BTO 2.6GHz rMBP running OS X 10.7.4 (11E2620) and Safari 5.1.7 with the screen resolution set "Best for Retina display" 1440x900.

 

[PeopleTheseDays]

The attached screen shots were taken when I scrolled down and hit the bottom of the Anandtech and BBC News websites.

They show a frame rate of 43 and 48 fps, respectfully, and would spike to over 50 fps at times.

I'm using a non-BTO 2.6GHz rMBP running OS X 10.7.4 (11E2620) and Safari 5.1.7

Is this at the scaled resolutions? Looks like 1440 x 900

 

[corvus32]

Is this at the scaled resolutions? Looks like 1440 x 900

Yes.

 

[Hellhammer]

The attached screen shots were taken when I scrolled down and hit the bottom of the Anandtech and BBC News websites.

They show a frame rate of 43 and 48 fps, respectfully, and would spike to over 50 fps at times.

I'm using a non-BTO 2.6GHz rMBP running OS X 10.7.4 (11E2620) and Safari 5.1.7

Try disabling adblock and installing Flash. Especially Flash ads have a negative impact on performance, and this isn't really comparable unless you recreate Anand's tests.

 

[corvus32]

Try disabling adblock and installing Flash. Especially Flash ads have a negative impact on performance, and this isn't really comparable unless you recreate Anand's tests.

The attached image is with AdBlock disabled and Flashed installed.

I scrolled to the bottom of the Anandtech webpage and then back up to the top as quickly as possible.

It shows a frame rate of 52 FPS. The ad at the top of the page is a Flash ad (I checked by secondary clicking on it).

 

[BigZ9]

The attached screen shots were taken when I scrolled down and hit the bottom of the Anandtech and BBC News websites.

They show a frame rate of 43 and 48 fps, respectfully, and would spike to over 50 fps at times.

I'm using a non-BTO 2.6GHz rMBP running OS X 10.7.4 (11E2620) and Safari 5.1.7 with the screen resolution set "Best for Retina display" 1440x900.

Wow thanks a lot! This proves that this is definitly a case by case sorta basis, and laginess is not subject to every rMBP. Last request though, does the frammeter show any significant drop in performance when you maximize the safari window to the size of the screen, and do you notice anything yourself?
Also, if you could check performance on http://www.theverge.com, cause it completely stutters when scrolling fast for me. Sorry for asking you to do all this lol.

 

[KohPhiPhi]

I don't know if it's jealousy or what, but really people, just make your purchase, or don't, and be happy with your decision. And maybe we can get back to actually posting some interesting and useful topics here.

And here I thought that internet discussion boards were to discuss the topic at hand... I guess I was wrong...

 

[5630745]

http://youtu.be/94OenZ71ADY

His YT vid is just as good.

 

[blueicedj]

The attached image is with AdBlock disabled and Flashed installed.

I scrolled to the bottom of the Anandtech webpage and then back up to the top as quickly as possible.

It shows a frame rate of 52 FPS. The ad at the top of the page is a Flash ad (I checked by secondary clicking on it).

could you check the performance on Facebook? This whole thing has me very worried about me order....

 

[KohPhiPhi]

Because 20 fps is unusable. You're joking, right?

It's not "unusable", but it's less than what you get in a 2-year old MBA with an old integrated GPU and half the price tag... so basically, scrolling performance has gone backwards. Does that sound "acceptable" to you?

 

[limo79]

You realise that its CPU that is the issue here and not the GPU as everyone would expect.

OS X poorly uses new technologies available in GPU chips and probably still base mostly on CPU. Example: Video hardware acceleration was long ago in Windows XP. Apple discovered it in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in August 2009. This is some kind of drama. H.264 GPU accel was available in all GF8600GT video chips (see specification), but OS X 10.5 Leopard was not prepared for it. Later they released first unibody series with GF9400/9600GT and they advertised that these Macs with OS X 10.6 SL have H.264 accel. Sorry guys, but OS X is far behind Windows in some points and Adobe Flash story was the best proof. I believe that now we can observe something similar. Anand Shimpi clearly describe that situation with OS animations performance was better on OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion", but we should not expect miracles.

Apple must to take the current technology state into consideration, otherwise Apple consumers will have problems. You can always design a super duper laptop with 4K display, but it can be pointless to present it now. Some things need a time.

 

[corvus32]

Wow thanks a lot! This proves that this is definitly a case by case sorta basis, and laginess is not subject to every rMBP. Last request though, does the frammeter show any significant drop in performance when you maximize the safari window to the size of the screen, and do you notice anything yourself?
Also, if you could check performance on http://www.theverge.com, cause it completely stutters when scrolling fast for me. Sorry for asking you to do all this lol.

'The Verge' with AdBlock disabled and Flash installed.

The first screenshot shows a frame rate of 39 FPS.

The second one shows a frame rate of 45 FPS.

 

[JPOWA]

Do you have Facebook? Try Facebook if you can! He says its the worst case...

 

[d00d]

I'm also fairly curious about the non-"best" resolution effect on web page scrolling as I expect I'd use the 1680 and 1920 resolutions a good deal of the time.