Waiting for Haswell MBP Mega Thread

[Sym0]

I think the only argument that matters is the fact that giving the 15 rMBP Iris Pro will mean it's one of the most expensive laptops on the market with sub-par GPU and CPU performance compared to laptops half its price.

Not only does Iris Pro under perform as a GPU but you have to sacrifice speed on the CPU to support it. Without it you get a 400Mhz CPU bump - the 47W quads without it are cheaper and faster.

So a 15 MBP with HD4600 and 750M will have better CPU and GPU performance, and if you stay on the 4600 battery life will be the same too.

Not only that but an Iris pro is likely not any less expensive to include than a 750m especially bearing in mind you're getting a worse CPU and GPU, significantly so in both cases.

Honestly, some people really talk out of their ass on this forum. As it stands there is basically zero benefit to putting the Iris Pro in the 15, and a lot of draw backs. The 13 is the only one that would benefit.

The only time the Iris pro would confer any gain whatsoever over the alternative is doing heavy GPU work on battery power - which is a fringe case. Cue all the integrated "fanboys" saying that they do this all the time and only ever run off battery, while simultaneously claiming nobody uses or needs the GPU.

Why not put a 17w Air chip in your 15 MBP - I'm sure the battery life would be awesome then (actually probably wouldn't)! Nobody needs a 2.7Ghz quad core either, nobody uses GPUs or quad core CPUs so why offer them? It's sure funny listening to people say nobody uses a GPU, but need a quad core and 32Gb of ram. For the vast majority of people the ONLY thing that stresses the system is running games/graphical programs. You need 16Gb of RAM and a quad core about as much as you need a GPU for browsing the internet and running excel.

This.

Hence why I bought the current top model for 20% off.

The update will be rudimentary and all those waiting for it will be disappointed. And lost 3-4 months playing with a very good if not the best laptop on the market.

I have loved avery minute of mine for 3 months now, and the only thing that needs improving is the software, OS X has it's issues and updates are slow and few and far between. Improve on that and the user experience will improve far more than a spec bump.

 

[Manic Mouse]

As it was said several times by others and myself Iris Pro will probably be in the low end rMBP 15" whereas higher end models will have HD4600 and a dGPU

Why? It's not any cheaper, and is worse. Hardly a winning combination.

The advantage the Iris Pro has over the competition is TDP (NB NOT battery life) - that's it. It's designed to go into laptops that are too small to thermally handle a dGPU and that's the ONLY time it offers any advantage over having a faster CPU with 4600HD and dGPU.

Since we know the 15" can thermally handle a dGPU there is absolutely no reason to pick the iris pro over a 750m. None. It doesn't offer better battery life outside of fringe cases, it doesn't offer better performance and it isn't any cheaper.

I can see it being good in the 13" rMBP. In any of the 15"ers there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to use it, a whole lot of performance (both CPU and GPU) reasons not to.

 

[Jordan-D]

Why? It's not any cheaper, and is worse. Hardly a winning combination.

The advantage the Iris Pro has over the competition is TDP (NB NOT battery life) - that's it. It's designed to go into laptops that are too small to thermally handle a dGPU and that's the ONLY time it offers any advantage over having a faster CPU with 4600HD and dGPU.

Since we know the 15" can thermally handle a dGPU there is absolutely no reason to pick the iris pro over a 750m. None. It doesn't offer better battery life outside of fringe cases, it doesn't offer better performance and it isn't any cheaper.

I can see it being good in the 13" rMBP. In any of the 15"ers there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to use it, a whole lot of performance (both CPU and GPU) reasons not to.

I'm not saying that what's I want, it's what it's most likely to happen. Unless it was 13" rMBP's benchmark we saw back in July

 

[ohbrilliance]

Not absolutely dead yet, but it is getting painful to use and effecting my productivity.

Have you upgraded to an SSD? That typically transforms a machine into something much faster.

 

[Creep89]

Btw, whats that? Hackintosh? Was searching for some benchmarks of the HQ line and found this weird one.

 

[ohbrilliance]

My 2.4GHz late-2008 MBP is getting dog slow, even with 8GB of RAM and an SSD. Whenever I cmd-click a few links to open new tabs, my whole machine slows to a crawl while they load, and they take forever. If I'm in a Hangout with some people, my CPU is easily at 50-60% just from video chatting and if I open a link it will glitch their audio/video for a few seconds, stutter, start loading the tab, and then catch up to the feed. It's getting pretty bad.

That doesn't sound right at all. Have you looked into the process list of Activity Monitor? It sounds like you have a runaway process. What browser are you using?

 

[Narcaz]

@Creep 89 nice finding. Maybe a 15'' Air for all the battery life guys?

Just for the record: Not everything is worse with a Intel HQ processors. Beside TDP, the benefits are OpenCL performance and video transformation.

What i really don't like is Intel's way of selling iGPUs. A dual core with Iris Pro would be a beast for the 13'' rMBP. But they offer only higher GPU performance with their highend models (and those are slower than the MQ+dGPU combo). Even worse a 4750 HQ with 40 Execution Units has clock speeds at 200 - 1200 MHz (with Turbo Boost), a 4850 HQ is clocked at 200 - 1300 MHz (with Turbo Boost). There is no technical reason for stuff like that, they just want you to spend more money for a CPU and GPU performance increase. It just seems greedy.

Another reason is they don't allow external Thunderbolt GPUs, because it would attack their profitable highend market. For most users even an Air has enough CPU power. The main bottleneck is GPU performance and with an external dGPU this problem would be solved. But Intel would not see any extra money if you buy an external AMD/nVidia card.

With the switch to iGPU only, Apple would totally depend on Intel. A competition between Intel, nVidia and AMD seems more flexible. If Broadwell gets delayed (not unlikely) they have nothing new to offer in the GPU department until 2015 while others can sell Crystal and Maxwell GPU powered machines.

 

[mcarling]

That's why I complain. I'm just interested to get the best performance for the buck. If iGPUs are faster in the future, i will buy them.

As of today, the best absolute graphics performance, without regard to price, can still be had from discrete GPUs (and this will continue for a few more years). As of today, the best graphics performance for the buck is that of the Intel Iris 5100 and Iris Pro 5200 integrated graphics.

 

[Nexos]

Well, I have a guess about iris pro and a dGPU. I have been following this topic since, umm... WWDC. So most of you are afraid of a iGPU, well I am too actually, replacing the dGPU because of Geekbench. Am I wrong? Well, I want you guys to check it out again. It says they are not sure if this is the rMBP or the cMBP. Now think of the Ivy Bridge generation. The cMBP has a underclocked GT 650m while the rMBP has a overclocked one. So, what if that geekbench score is only for the cMBP and the rMBP actually has a dGPU? It can be a way of Apple trying to pull more people to rMBP. Well, this is just a guess though. There are quite some contractions but well this is the best I can guess.

 

[Jordan-D]

Well, I have a guess about iris pro and a dGPU. I have been following this topic since, umm... WWDC. So most of you are afraid of a iGPU, well I am too actually, replacing the dGPU because of Geekbench. Am I wrong? Well, I want you guys to check it out again. It says they are not sure if this is the rMBP or the cMBP. Now think of the Ivy Bridge generation. The cMBP has a underclocked GT 650m while the rMBP has a overclocked one. So, what if that geekbench score is only for the cMBP and the rMBP actually has a dGPU? It can be a way of Apple trying to pull more people to rMBP. Well, this is just a guess though. There are quite some contractions but well this is the best I can guess.

Well the cMBP is not expected to be renewed but we can only speculate until Apple announces its new line

 

[mcarling]

Well, I have a guess about iris pro and a dGPU. I have been following this topic since, umm... WWDC. So most of you are afraid of a iGPU, well I am too actually, replacing the dGPU because of Geekbench. Am I wrong? Well, I want you guys to check it out again. It says they are not sure if this is the rMBP or the cMBP. Now think of the Ivy Bridge generation. The cMBP has a underclocked GT 650m while the rMBP has a overclocked one. So, what if that geekbench score is only for the cMBP and the rMBP actually has a dGPU? It can be a way of Apple trying to pull more people to rMBP. Well, this is just a guess though. There are quite some contractions but well this is the best I can guess.

This is logical because the rMBP has about three times as many pixels as the cMBP. However, two things argue against:
- Intel HD 4600 or HD 5000 integrated graphics would be good enough for the relatively few pixels of the cMBP, and
- the cMBP will almost certainly be discontinued this year.

 

[The Leafs Fan]

i doubt it.. i think more near future with the way every manufacturer is coming up with ways to improve upon the design, and intel making pretty good progress in sizing down chips along with balancing performance with battery efficiency. i think it's in apple's benefit to at least start researching and developing their own take on this now.. who knows.. maybe they already have.



but how can you say that with such confidence? recently, apple has been adopting more of the market trends.. ipad mini for example. and also related to what PDFiero said above.. if Apple becomes last to adapt.. then they will let competitors take away more of their market share.. the nexus 7 has already eaten away at the ipad's share. another example is the rumor of apple already testing larger display iphones.. even the 5C is a product resulting from apple reacting. with the pc market slowly dwindling.. it's smart that every manufacturer find ways to innovate the hardwares to renew consumer demand.

Why don't you think about it? OSX would have to be rebuilt for touch, many productivity apps would be left behind, and OSX would develop the many problems that Windows 8 currently deals with. I'm not saying it cannot happen, but it's VERY UNLIKELY.

 

[jz-]

I think the only argument that matters is the fact that giving the 15 rMBP Iris Pro will mean it's one of the most expensive laptops on the market with sub-par GPU and CPU performance compared to laptops half its price.

Not only does Iris Pro under perform as a GPU but you have to sacrifice speed on the CPU to support it. Without it you get a 400Mhz CPU bump - the 47W quads without it are cheaper and faster.

So a 15 MBP with HD4600 and 750M will have better CPU and GPU performance, and if you stay on the 4600 battery life will be the same too.

Not only that but an Iris pro is likely not any less expensive to include than a 750m especially bearing in mind you're getting a worse CPU and GPU, significantly so in both cases.

Honestly, some people really talk out of their ass on this forum. As it stands there is basically zero benefit to putting the Iris Pro in the 15, and a lot of draw backs. The 13 is the only one that would benefit.

The only time the Iris pro would confer any gain whatsoever over the alternative is doing heavy GPU work on battery power - which is a fringe case. Cue all the integrated "fanboys" saying that they do this all the time and only ever run off battery, while simultaneously claiming nobody uses or needs the GPU.

Why not put a 17w Air chip in your 15 MBP - I'm sure the battery life would be awesome then (actually probably wouldn't)! Nobody needs a 2.7Ghz quad core either, nobody uses GPUs or quad core CPUs so why offer them? It's sure funny listening to people say nobody uses a GPU, but need a quad core and 32Gb of ram. For the vast majority of people the ONLY thing that stresses the system is running games/graphical programs. You need 16Gb of RAM and a quad core about as much as you need a GPU for browsing the internet and running excel. So if you don't need a GPU you probably also don't need your quad core CPU or your 16Gb RAM either.

Apple laptops have never be known for price-performance ratio. Although clock speeds are lower, you also get a 128MB L4 cache. If you stay on HD4600 battery life will still be good, but if you're always on it, there's no point having a dGPU. When you are on HD4600, performance would be lower. If you ignore the lower clocks, the price is lower for Iris Pro than it is for a dGPU. It's also a component that seems to have a number of problems in older generations, so one less to worry about, and the extra space can allow for some extra battery.

Just because someone doesn't need the power, doesn't mean they can't buy a rMBP, and that doesn't make them a "fanboy". Sure, it would be nice for many people if they kept the dGPU, but that doesn't mean there are absolutely no reasons to get rid of it.

 

[The Leafs Fan]

Apple laptops have never be known for price-performance ratio. Although clock speeds are lower, you also get a 128MB L4 cache. If you stay on HD4600 battery life will still be good, but if you're always on it, there's no point having a dGPU. When you are on HD4600, performance would be lower. If you ignore the lower clocks, the price is lower for Iris Pro than it is for a dGPU. It's also a component that seems to have a number of problems in older generations, so one less to worry about, and the extra space can allow for some extra battery.

Just because someone doesn't need the power, doesn't mean they can't buy a rMBP, and that doesn't make them a "fanboy". Sure, it would be nice for many people if they kept the dGPU, but that doesn't mean there are absolutely no reasons to get rid of it.

Couldn't have said it better my self.

 

[FlameRevenge]

So am guessing that the new MacBook Pro would be released at the end of October just like when it was first introduced, but this time with Haswell and maybe the new intel gtx765M so it would be better than it's windows rivel Razer Blade 17inch.

 

[The Leafs Fan]

I'm just wondering, we've all been having this conversation with one another, yet we barely even know each other. I would just like to know, what country you guys are from. I'll start, I'm from Canada

 

[eric_n_dfw]

Storage speeds / Switching to Win/Linux talk

My "ancient" late 2006 era 17" MBP is finally having enough issues to force me to buy a new machine. My main reason for waiting on the new ones is that I hope to see the same jump in storage transfer speeds that the Haswell MBAir's are seeing. If my screen finally dies (it's got some kind of loose connection in the panel I think) I'll probably just pick up an Air for now and give it to my wife next year when the next-next gen MBP's come out or something. Not sure if I can live with a 13", 900 pixel high screen though.

As for those that talk about the ease of switching to another OS:
I work on Linux and my Mac all day, don't have much need for Windows but use it on occasion. You are correct that, given that your needed applications are available cross-platform, it's not that big of a context switch. For me, IntelliJ, Chrome and a good bash shell exist on both - I just use GitHub, Dropbox and similar tools to keep things in sync. (I've yet to find a decent ssh program/terminal for Windows though)

The rub comes for my non-work related things and the inertia of having your content in the Apple ecosystem. I have tens of thousands of photos in iPhoto libraries, thousands of tracks in the iCloud Match service and our family has a bunch of iDevices and other Mac's that play nicer together than if I add other OS's.

I guess I just like Steve Job's walled garden too much.

 

[jz-]

I'm just wondering, we've all been having this conversation with one another, yet we barely even know each other. I would just like to know, what country you guys are from. I'll start, I'm from Canada

While we're at it, why don't we share the computers we're waiting on*? I'm from Australia, on a Late 2008 Macbook.

 

[mneblett]

My 2.4GHz late-2008 MBP is getting dog slow, even with 8GB of RAM and an SSD. Whenever I cmd-click a few links to open new tabs, my whole machine slows to a crawl while they load, and they take forever. If I'm in a Hangout with some people, my CPU is easily at 50-60% just from video chatting and if I open a link it will glitch their audio/video for a few seconds, stutter, start loading the tab, and then catch up to the feed. It's getting pretty bad. It's been almost 5 years... I think it's time for a new machine. Time for a new machine indeed. After I get my new one I'm going to wipe this one clean and use it for testing out new stuff. It's gonna seem even slower... bah

Exact same machine, similar issues. If I'm truthful with myself, the machine is actually fine for 90% of what I do. The problem is two-fold: (i) that 10% is slowly starting to get bigger and more noticeable; and (ii) its is not Thunderbolt-capable. The latter is an issue because I'd like to move to the next-gen Thunderbolt display to be able to easily plug in my MBP and get the TB's hub services when I need a desktop environment.

Between the Haswell MBP, a TB display and a Time Capsule with ac, it is going to be a *very* expensive fall. Oh well, beans and crackers can be quite tasty when you are self-rationalizing a stupid-big cash outlay!

 

[iSolidus]

While we're at it, why don't we share the computers we're waiting for? I'm from Australia, on a Late 2008 Macbook.

This sounds like a AA meeting, hah! Anyway, I'm from the Netherlands, using a late 2007 Blackbook.

 

[The Leafs Fan]

While we're at it, why don't we share the computers we're waiting for? I'm from Australia, on a Late 2008 Macbook.

I thought you said waiting for, not waiting with

 

[Narcaz]

Apple laptops have never be known for price-performance ratio. Although clock speeds are lower, you also get a 128MB L4 cache. If you stay on HD4600 battery life will still be good, but if you're always on it, there's no point having a dGPU. When you are on HD4600, performance would be lower. If you ignore the lower clocks, the price is lower for Iris Pro than it is for a dGPU. It's also a component that seems to have a number of problems in older generations, so one less to worry about, and the extra space can allow for some extra battery.

Just because someone doesn't need the power, doesn't mean they can't buy a rMBP, and that doesn't make them a "fanboy". Sure, it would be nice for many people if they kept the dGPU, but that doesn't mean there are absolutely no reasons to get rid of it.

Honestly, could you or someone else show me a benchmark, a test, a hint or something else, that supports these claims about performance, battery life and costs? It gets repeatedly posted since this iGPU vs. dGPU debate started and I posted a few times a real world test and other statements by OEMs, that dont support this opinion. Please show me your right.

 

[BlockEight88]

I expect the dedicated GPU in the 15" Haswell MBP will be Intel Iris Pro 5200 HD graphics. Integrated GPUs are just as dedicated as discrete GPUs.

If you meant to ask which discrete GPU Apple will put into the Haswell MBP, then I think the answer is probably none. Technology is moving on. Integration leads immediately to lower costs and greater reliability and sooner or later to increased absolute performance. The fastest discrete GPUs still offer greater absolute performance than the fastest integrated GPUs. However, discrete GPUs no longer offer the value for money that they did in recent years.

ps: Thank you for proving the point I made yesterday that some of the people in this thread demanding a dGPU don't even know what the "d" in "dGPU" stands for.

I really, really hope Apple doesn't abandon a dedicated GPU in the upcoming haswell 15" rMBP. I am sure many will be very upset. I don't care how powerful intel hd graphics are, I want a dedicated GPU. That's why I'm passing up the 13" rMBP.

 

[jz-]

I thought you said waiting for, not waiting with

Whoops, I typed 'from' first but saw the same word twice when skimming over and changed it.

Honestly, could you or someone else show me a benchmark, a test, a hint or something else, that supports these claims about performance, battery life and costs? It gets repeatedly posted since this iGPU vs. dGPU debate started and I posted a few times a real world test and other statements by OEMs, that dont support this opinion. Please show me your right.

I made no claims about improved performance, but Anandtech's review shows benchmarks higher on Iris Pro, but the majority of the review has gaming performance, in which Iris Pro is behind. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested/16
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested/17

The graphics card does take up some space, I'm assuming it's removal will increase the space available for battery.

Intel's prices are at http://ark.intel.com/products/family/75023
The 4700MQ is $383, the 4750HQ is $440, but Apple can probably negotiate further. I don't know how much a 650M/750M costs but I'd assume it's over $57.

I'm not saying Iris Pro is better than the 750M in all situations, just that it could be better for some people. For anyone who wants to say that these people shouldn't get a 15" Macbook Pro, I'd like to see an alternative that runs OS X and has a 15" retina display.

 

[The Leafs Fan]

I really, really hope Apple doesn't abandon a dedicated GPU in the upcoming haswell 15" rMBP. I am sure many will be very upset. I don't care how powerful intel hd graphics are, I want a dedicated GPU. That's why I'm passing up the 13" rMBP.

Did you even read what he said? You should probably stop refering to a dedicated GPU, as that can mean both a iGPU and a discrete GPU. And while you're at it, stop blathering this nonsense that some people have gotten in their heads that discrete GPUs will always be better, and give you more performance for your money.

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