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Waiting for Haswell MBP Mega Thread

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jafingi said:
Also have an SSD in my 2008 Macbook Unibody (13"), but it's sloooooooow..
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That's because those MacBooks / Macbook Pros only support SATA at 1.5Gbit/s. Later models support 3GBit/s, and the current models support 6GBit/s.

This is why I decided not to upgrade my 2007 MBP with an SSD.

Crucial released a "V4" series of SSDs that use slower memory that's still plenty fast enough for an older computer with a slower bus. I was interested in picking up a V4 drive for my old MBP, but for some strange reason, the V4 sells for slightly *more* than a same-size M4 drive that's much faster.
 
mcarling said:
For maximum performance, the CPU and the VRAM need to be on the same die. For maximum performance, the GPU and the VRAM need to be on the same die. The only benefit to having the GPU on a different die has been that more transistors could be allocated to the GPU. As more and more transistors can be packed onto one die, that advantage has been evaporating. As I wrote before, we're just a few years away from the time when it will be gone completely. At that time (which is not yet) discrete GPUs will not be able to keep up with the best integrated GPUs that will then be available.
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Does the Iris Pro have any VRAM on die? Nope!

So it's great you're talking about a CPU with VRAM on die, but such a thing does not exist. I don't know of any CPU with a gig or two of DDR5 on die, so I think that's way more than a few years away. There aren't even any dGPUs with VRAM on die.

The Iris Pro doesn't even have any VRAM at all. It's using up much slower RAM (taking it away from apps, I might add. Say goodbye to a gig or two of your RAM on a MBP with an iGPU!)
 
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goMac said:
Say goodbye to a gig or two of your RAM on a MBP with an iGPU!
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It shouldn't be too bad provided you have 16 GB of RAM. If you have 8 GB then yes.

I just thought of something and I'm sure someone already mentioned it though I wonder if Apple is counting on Iris Pro being faster than the DDR3 650M and not the GDDR5 version. There is a pretty decent difference between those two 650Ms by the way.
 
bill-p said:
You mean driver updates?

Intel and good drivers... hmmm... if you're the "glass half full" kind of guy, then I guess you can keep hoping that they'll be different this time.

Because Intel has NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVVVVEEEERRRR made any good driver for their iGPU. Yeah, EVER. I can't stress that enough.

If they're even half serious about Iris Pro, then it'll be the first time they ever try to put out good drivers.

Either that or it'll suck like... well, every other Intel iGPU.
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actually the quality of their drivers has increased tremendously and it doesn't really matter for the discussion, since its apple that makes the drivers
 
so far it looks like folks who are predicting a dGPU think so because "Apple wouldn't do anything else"

Any other/better reasons?

I still think the best indicator of iGPU only were the geekbench posts
 
goMac said:
So it's great you're talking about a CPU with VRAM on die, but such a thing does not exist. I don't know of any CPU with a gig or two of DDR5 on die, so I think that's way more than a few years away. There aren't even any dGPUs with VRAM on die.
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The contention was that integrated graphics can never be as fast as discrete graphics and I explained why that's not correct. I never stated that today's integrated graphics are faster than today's discrete graphics. The future lasts a long time.
 
Ice Dragon said:
It shouldn't be too bad provided you have 16 GB of RAM. If you have 8 GB then yes.

I just thought of something and I'm sure someone already mentioned it though I wonder if Apple is counting on Iris Pro being faster than the DDR3 650M and not the GDDR5 version. There is a pretty decent difference between those two 650Ms by the way.
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Even if you have a lot of RAM, it doesn't get around the speed issue. The i7 has DDR3 memory. A GPU typically has DDR4 or DDR5. (Which you've mentioned.)

mcarling said:
The contention was that integrated graphics can never be as fast as discrete graphics and I explained why that's not correct. I never stated that today's integrated graphics are faster than today's discrete graphics. The future lasts a long time.
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I don't think anyone was contending that. The contention was that today's integrated graphics can't rival today's discrete graphics on a Macbook Pro coming out this year.
 
GSPice said:
I still think the best indicator of iGPU only were the geekbench posts
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Can someone explain why is this? Geekbench doesn't test GPUs.

If they do this, if they have a sole GPU that's not any better than what the last year's model could do, they should really sell the machine at a lower price then. It's already practically the most expensive laptop for its screen size, and if they expect people to pay that kind of premium while delivering sub-last year's performance in such a key area, I don't know what to think. This is not MBA where battery life is an absolute defining factor. This is machine that people use for work, (and sometimes heavier duty work at that), and should at least try to keep up with computing trends if it already dares to be so expensive. Current rMBP did just that at the time of its release, and I'd be really disappointed if they bulk the trend.
 
Marconelly said:
Can someone explain why is this? Geekbench doesn't test GPUs.

If they do this, if they have a sole GPU that's not any better than what the last year's model could do, they should really sell the machine at a lower price then. It's already practically the most expensive laptop for its screen size, and if they expect people to pay that kind of premium while delivering sub-last year's performance in such a key area, I don't know what to think. This is not MBA where battery life is an absolute defining factor. This is machine that people use for work, (and sometimes heavier duty work at that), and should at least try to keep up with computing trends if it already dares to be so expensive.
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I agree. It would be pretty disappointing--if not unprecedented?--for a 'Pro'-designated Mac to regress in terms of performance in the name of improved battery life.

Suffice to say, there would be little incentive for anyone not to grab a refurbished 2012/early-2013 MPBr at a much lower price than the new Haswell model if this turned out to be the case. Which is why I'm guardedly optimistic that Apple has a few tricks up its sleeve--hopefully in the form of a dGPU!
 
To make myself more clear, gaming performance is not something only important to people playing games - it's important to people making games (when it came out, rMBP was a decent representation of an average budget gaming setup in terms of performance after all), as well as for various 3D CAD visualizations. Looking at those Anand tests, I was actually being very generous with my wording that the new iGPU "would not be any better". Looking at the 47W variant that's been benchmarked on the GeekBench, it's is really a lot worse than 650M in practically everything except raw OpenCL compute tests.
 
mcarling said:
The contention was that integrated graphics can never be as fast as discrete graphics and I explained why that's not correct. I never stated that today's integrated graphics are faster than today's discrete graphics.
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goMac said:
I don't think anyone was contending that.
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I guess you must have missed this gem, to which I responded:
sonyisawesome said:
Integrated will never be good as Dedicated graphics card. This is a fact of life.
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GSPice said:
I still think the best indicator of iGPU only were the geekbench posts
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That's one good indicator. The other good indicator is that Apple have already switched to integrated graphics for the 13" rMBP. It's not such a big step from 4,096,000 pixels to 5,184,000 pixels. It only requires 26% better graphics performance to drive 26% more pixels. The Iris Pro HD 5200 graphics offers about double the performance of the HD 4000 graphics in the 13" Ivy Bridge rMBP, so the Iris Pro HD 5200 in a 15" rMBP would exceed Apple's graphics performance standards for last year by about 50%.
 
Marconelly said:
To make myself more clear, gaming performance is not something only important to people playing games - it's important to people making games.
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That's an interesting observation.

So the new rMBP is likely to drop the discrete GPU in favor of Intel's new integrated one. I think it's fair to say the iMac will do the same; while the iMac isn't concerned with battery life, the other factors remain: lower cost, lower heat, less space taken up inside the machine.

And then, with the discrete GPU gone from every Mac below a Pro, why would any company bother to port any first-person shooter, RPG, or other graphics-intensive game to the Mac?

Even if the iMac were to come with a GeForce 750m ... the MacBook Air and Pro still won't, the Mac mini still doesn't, so any graphics-intensive game would have a much smaller audience. Why bother?

I think this is the end of high-end games being ported to Mac OS... and every kind of software that dries up makes the platform less appealing as a whole.
 
Brian Kendig said:
I think this is the end of high-end games being ported to Mac OS... and every kind of software that dries up makes the platform less appealing as a whole.
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are there any games that absolutely require the 750m and that wouldn't run on the iris pro? If i understand correctly, they won't have a smaller audience, the games will just run a bit slower on the same amount of computers as before.
 
Hi! I just decided to create an account. I have followed this thread since page 90 and I'm tired of all this iGPU vs. dGPU discussion. Could we just move on ? You guys all repeating yourselves... Thanks :D
 
bkin94 said:
are there any games that absolutely require the 750m and that wouldn't run on the iris pro? If i understand correctly, they won't have a smaller audience, the games will just run a bit slower on the same amount of computers as before.
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Right. A 750m would provide slightly higher frame rates than Iris Pro HD 5200 at the same resolution. The performance difference is not enough to enable a higher resolution at a given frame rate.

The complaints about the expected switch from discrete Nvidia graphics to integrated Intel graphics is a tempest in a teapot.
 
So I was very content on getting a 13 rMBP when it's refreshed but today I was looking at games on the Mac App Store and almost all the big ones require a separate graphics card. Which is ridiculous since the 13 inch doesn't even give you an option. It's also ridiculous because my 2009 MacBook HAS a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M. So if the new 13 inch doesn't have a dGPU I'm just **** out of luck for all those cool games on the Mac App Store?
 
mcarling said:
I guess you must have missed this gem, to which I responded
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Ok. I a dGPU is on die with a CPU, is it still really an iGPU, or is it still a dGPU?

Integrated GPUs are referred to as integrated because it's really just the CPU with some extra circuitry pretending to be a GPU, which is very different than a dedicated GPU. It's also why an iGPU shares memory with the CPU (because it IS the CPU.)

So a dGPU moved on die with a CPU is still a dGPU, just moved.

bkin94 said:
are there any games that absolutely require the 750m and that wouldn't run on the iris pro? If i understand correctly, they won't have a smaller audience, the games will just run a bit slower on the same amount of computers as before.
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Yes. Intel's shader processing blows chunks, to the point a lot of games will actively not work (and block) Intel graphics. It's not just performance, their drivers are bug-a-riffic.
 
goMac said:
Yes. Intel's shader processing blows chunks, to the point a lot of games will actively not work (and block) Intel graphics. It's not just performance, their drivers are bug-a-riffic.
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could you please list some examples of current games not working?
 
 
I must be the only person who does not care in the slightest about the GPU. I almost never game on my laptop. I do alot of stats, and the software is not optimised to use multiple cores never mind GPU's for the most part. So I don't care. I do care about clock speed, RAM bandwidth and capacity....I guess that makes me oldschool :D
 
The Mercurian said:
I must be the only person who does not care in the slightest about the GPU. I almost never game on my laptop. I do alot of stats, and the software is not optimised to use multiple cores never mind GPU's for the most part. So I don't care. I do care about clock speed, RAM bandwidth and capacity....I guess that makes me oldschool :D
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Obviously you're a Mac fanboy who will justify the MacBook (it's no longer anywhere near Pro because of a lack of dGPU) in any way possible. ;)

But seriously, I don't mind a lack of dGPU either, but I can see why people would be miffed.
 
Brian Kendig said:
I think it's fair to say the iMac will do the same; while the iMac isn't concerned with battery life, the other factors remain: lower cost, lower heat, less space taken up inside the machine.
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It is fair to say that this is bollocks. The Iris Pro is hardly cheap, and there is no space that needs to be saved in the iMac, since it does not use a battery. There might be a lower end iMac with, say, a 4570R and no dgpu, but the thought that the iMac lineup will have no dgpu is absurd.
 
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