Waiting for Haswell MBP Mega Thread

[mcarling]

You summed that up quite nicely. Why ever did we need 9000 posts for that?

Thank you for the kind words!

Well we could get a 16GB RAM option, but I doubt it.

I would not be at all surprised if Apple were to offer a 16GB BTO option for the 13" MBP.

I don't think prices will go down on the 13-inch, they already did that in February. If anything, it'd be $100.

Yields have improved and Apple's Retina display costs have come down since February. A reduction in base price from $1499 to $1299 or $1399 seems likely -- together with the expected elimination of the $1199 cMBP.

I would love to see 256GB SSD as base, but I don't see that happening either.

I also don't see an increase in base SSD capacity this year. It's more important to keep the base price as low as Apple reasonably can.

 

[GSPice]

I don't know; I no longer have an inside source in nvidia engineering. My guess is that nvidia will still be able to produce a desktop discrete GPU that is faster than Intel's integrated GPUs, but maybe not in the laptops.

Interesting. I wonder how nvidia will respond to simply not being able to stay far enough ahead of Intel's iGPUs. Intel does have that inherent advantage of being able to design an architecture with a bit of symbiosis with the main CPU.

 

[Narcaz]

Or Intel buys nvidia someday. The future of nvidia is not looking good. AMD APUs in the xbox/ps4, tegra not selling well and Intel killing their low-mid market with iGPUs.

 

[zOlid]

What do you mean they have better returnpolicys than apple store? The other stores (mediamarkt, elgiganten) does not have the return policy that apple does, i.e if you buy it from apple you can use it, install stuff on it, and still return it within 14 days of purchase, you can't do that anywhere else.

Ehhh.
Yeah you can.
You have 30 days return policy on Elgiganten and Mediamarkt. And you can use it and test it out during those 30days. I did exactly that with the 2013 feb rMBP. I had it for a few weeks but where not happy with the fact that it lagged when scrolling. So i returned it and got the cash back. (the gift card i was talking about was not from this.)
And you have 60days if you wanna buy it online on Komplett.se
So Apple have much less favorable return policy's.

 

[GSPice]

Or Intel buys nvidia. The future of them is not looking good. AMD APUs in the xbox/ps4, tegra not selling well and intel killing their low-mid market with iGPUs.

Can you imagine an iGPU that was essentially a stacked dGPU with all low latency glory..

 

[mcarling]

The fact that the iMac doesn't have Thunderbolt 2 doesn't really signify to me that the Retina MacBook Pro won't recieve Thunderbolt 2.

Lets just take a step back and look to WWDC in June. They released updated MacBook Air's with everything the new iMac received. Haswell CPU, 802.11ac networking, PCIe based SSD Stick.

So if they have the same upgrades why didn't the iMac release back in June? Because the CPU that the iMac uses wasn't ready. Similarly the Retina MacBook Pro did not debut at WWDC ether.

So lets fast forward to this month the new iMac releases and yet still no new Retina MacBook Pro. Based on what you're saying the Retina MacBook Pro will have the same upgrades that the MacBook Air and iMac received, Haswell CPU, 802.11ac networking and a PCIe based SSD Stick. So why isn't it released?

I would surmise the same reason the iMac wasn't released at WWDC. There is a processor holding the MacBook Pro's back from being released ...

I agree with you up to this point.

and I believe that to be Thunderbolt 2 which we all know is coming before the end of this year in the Mac Pro which again isn't released yet.

I think Apple simply don't yet have enough of the Haswell CPUs that will go into the MBPs. I think this probably has nothing at all to do with Thunderbolt.

This to me is significant because they showed the Mac Pro off at WWDC on stage in post-keynote sessions. And by this I mean they actually had one being used by presenters as developers were there. This indicates the hardware was finished to such a degree they felt confident enough to use it in-front of hundreds of people.

So why isn't the Mac Pro released yet if it was already finished in June? Because of Thunderbolt 2. It was obviously using sample silicon from Intel and we know that Thunderbolt 2 isn't coming to the end of this year.

It seems like you might be underestimating the difference between an early beta stepping which samples to Apple so they can do engineering and show off at WWDC with a production stepping that ships for consumption. Again, that's because the CPU for the new Mac Pro is not ready. I don't believe for a minute that the Mac Pro is all ready except for Thunderbolt 2.

Interesting. I wonder how nvidia will respond to simply not being able to stay far enough ahead of Intel's iGPUs. Intel does have that inherent advantage of being able to design an architecture with a bit of symbiosis with the main CPU.

nvidia are in the buggy whip business.

 

[keramidas]

CPU in next rmbp 13'

While I do believe that the next 13'' rmbp will come with one of the 28W intel haswell processors this is interesting:

Intel Core i7-4558U
Launch date Q3'13
Cores 2
Threads 4
Clock Speed 2.8Ghz
Max turbo 3.3Ghz
Max TDP 28W
Max memory 16GB
Graphics Intel Iris 5100
PCI Express revision 2
vPro no
TSX no
Trusted Execution no

Intel Core i7-4600M
Launch date Q4'13
Cores 2
Threads 4
Clock speed 2.9Ghz
Max turbo 3.6Ghz
Max TDP 37W
Max memory 32GB
Intel HD 4600
PCI Express Revision 3
vPro yes
TSX yes
Trusted Execution yes

So taking out Iris 5100, putting in HD 4600 and increasing base clock speed by so much as 100Mhz means a whopping 9W increase in TDP.

Something tells me that that 28W CPU will throttle quite a bit when pushed.

 

[zOlid]

The fact that the iMac doesn't have Thunderbolt 2 doesn't really signify to me that the Retina MacBook Pro won't recieve Thunderbolt 2.

Lets just take a step back and look to WWDC in June. They released updated MacBook Air's with everything the new iMac received. Haswell CPU, 802.11ac networking, PCIe based SSD Stick.

So if they have the same upgrades why didn't the iMac release back in June? Because the CPU that the iMac uses wasn't ready. Similarly the Retina MacBook Pro did not debut at WWDC ether.

So lets fast forward to this month the new iMac releases and yet still no new Retina MacBook Pro. Based on what you're saying the Retina MacBook Pro will have the same upgrades that the MacBook Air and iMac received, Haswell CPU, 802.11ac networking and a PCIe based SSD Stick. So why isn't it released?

I would surmise the same reason the iMac wasn't released at WWDC. There is a processor holding the MacBook Pro's back from being released and I believe that to be Thunderbolt 2 which we all know is coming before the end of this year in the Mac Pro which again isn't released yet.

This to me is significant because they showed the Mac Pro off at WWDC on stage in post-keynote sessions. And by this I mean they actually had one being used by presenters as developers were there. This indicates the hardware was finished to such a degree they felt confident enough to use it in-front of hundreds of people.

So why isn't the Mac Pro released yet if it was already finished in June? Because of Thunderbolt 2. It was obviously using sample silicon from Intel and we know that Thunderbolt 2 isn't coming to the end of this year.

So to me this all points to rMBP and Mac Pro releasing at the same time in the future with Thunderbolt 2.

As to why the iMac never received Thunderbolt 2 I would argue it's a consumer machine just as the MacBook Air is, if it has Pro in the name (Mac Pro, MacBook Pro) then it'll receive Thunderbolt 2 this year and then next year we'll see the consumer products receive Thunderbolt 2.

Also TB2 is a big release feature for Apple.
And the iMac is the wrong venue to release it first on.
Also the biggest improvement for TB2 is that you can drive 4k displays in 60hz. And you are far less likely to get an extra display to a iMac then getting one for your rMBP or MP.


I also think the peoples thoughts about the fact that the iMac have dGPU options affect the rMBP i a big way, are just wrong.
In a iMac you don't have the need for improved battery life. And you have much more space. That is the reason we have iMac's with 780m option even.
The only way it affects the rMBP in anyway is to show that Apple are open to not move their full lineup to iGPU, outside of the MP.
But you also have to remember that the Iris Pro can actually compete on some levels with the old 650m, that we got in the rMBP.
But it can in no way compete with a 680m in the older iMac, so if they had only put iGPU as a option on the new iMac it would be a HUGE drop in performance from the ivy bridge versions.
-

 

[Rick-ITA]

Simply the second CPU is designed to be used with a dGPU, while the first one no.
What does it means? That in the i7 4600 power consumption is not as important as in the i7-4558, thus allowing for an increase in TDP.

 

[keramidas]

Simply the second CPU is designed to be used with a dGPU, while the first one no.
What does it means? That in the i7 4600 power consumption is not as important as in the i7-4558, thus allowing for an increase in TDP.

I find it hard to believe that the 4600 with half the Execution Units will consume more power than the 5000, even running at 200Mhz more.

 

[that1guyy]

Is it foolish to buy a rMBP with ivy bridge at this point?

 

[PDFierro]

Is it foolish to buy a rMBP with ivy bridge at this point?

For full retail price, yes.

 

[johnnylarue]

650m, 750m and 755m are all the same chip. The difference is their stock clock speeds. That means that a 650m overlocked to the same speeds as a 750m basically is a 750m, just with greater potential for instability (obviously the 750m chips will be a more stable batch or Intel wouldn't be selling them at those clocks).

But I don't care how stable those chips are, you're not going to clock them much higher without issues (or introducing way more power and cooling). There simply is very little overclocking headroom left on a 750m. In other words, no matter what you do the 750m cannot be a significant upgrade over the overclocked 650m Apple used last year. And it definitely will use more power/heat for any performance gains it manages, because that's the only way it can happen.

In other words the 15" really can't end up with a serious GPU improvement this year without going to a larger more power-hungry chip (760m), it's just not possible.

As per Anandtech, the principle improvement of the 700M series over the 600M series is a feature called "GPU Boost 2.0", which is said to be a more dynamic/less aggressively throttled turbo boost on the existing Kepler architecture. It was originally introduced in the "GTX Titan" range:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6760/nvidias-geforce-gtx-titan-part-1/5

In other words, a 750M is a 650M with a more sophisticated, temperature-based boost system, which gives it the ability to run at higher clock speeds for (potentially) longer periods of time.

Next year's GPUs will feature a new architecture altogether, which should bring a more noticeable performance improvement than the ~13% speed bump exhibited by the 750M vs the 650M.

All that being said, I'm slowly coming back to my initial intention with regards to Haswell: if the primary improvement of the Haswell line is battery life--which is something I don't particularly need--I'm hedging towards picking up an Ivy Bridge machine at a clear-out price once the new ones are announced, and just upgrading a bit sooner than my usual 5-year cycle next time around.

This all depends on how much Ivy Bridge prices drop, of course... If a similarly spec'ed early-2013 model winds up being $500 less than the Haswell equivalent, it becomes a no-brainer for me personally. All of the projected ancillary improvements (WiFi, faster SSD, etc.) are nice but pretty easy to live without if you ask me.

 

[mcarling]

Is it foolish to buy a rMBP with ivy bridge at this point?

If you need one now, buy one now. The expected changes are minor. If have a computer that meets your immediate needs and you just want to upgrade, it's probably a good idea to wait until the Haswell version has been released.

 

[APPLE-FANATIC]

Im hoping that Apple includes the 1TB and 3TB Fusion Drive options with the rMBPs! It would be a nice little option for those of us with huge media library's. Finally get rid of attaching my ext HD...

 

[mcarling]

Im hoping that Apple includes the 1TB and 3TB Fusion Drive options with the rMBPs!

They don't fit inside.

 

[APPLE-FANATIC]

They don't fit inside.

No? Are you serious? Well damn, there goes that idea, LOL!

 

[mcarling]

Are you serious?

Yes.

 

[Watabou]

No? Are you serious? Well damn, there goes that idea, LOL!

The fusion drive has both a HDD and a SSD so no, they won't fit inside the rMBP.

I'm hoping Apple reduces the prices on the SSD like the iMac though. I think they dropped $30 to go to 512GB which would be a bit better, although still overpriced.

 

[The Leafs Fan]

They don't fit inside.

Yeah they do, remember the iFixit tear down picture I posted a couple of pages ago?

 

[jonawas]

Pretty much all the comments mention Apple stores, but is anybody planning on buying it on Amazon? As far as I know there's a list of tax free states, is this true? Is there a downside on order it from Amazon?

 

[Rick-ITA]

I find it hard to believe that the 4600 with half the Execution Units will consume more power than the 5000, even running at 200Mhz more.

What i mean is that the 28W CPU will probably works often closer to his maximum TDP, while the 37W CPU no.

 

[APPLE-FANATIC]

The fusion drive has both a HDD and a SSD so no, they won't fit inside the rMBP.

I'm hoping Apple reduces the prices on the SSD like the iMac though. I think they dropped $30 to go to 512GB which would be a bit better, although still overpriced.

I agree with you about the SSDs from Apple being way overpriced! I wish they would come down a little. I really need the 512GB, hopefully we will see some sort of reduction, but I'm not holding my breath

 

[mcarling]

Yeah they do, remember the iFixit tear down picture I posted a couple of pages ago?

I've seen that photo before. It doesn't show a fusion drive in that space. I've never seen a photo of a fusion drive in that space. I talked to an Apple Genius a few months ago who says he tried to fit one in and found that the space is too thin. Have you ever seen a fusion drive (or any other drive) in that space?

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Im hoping that Apple includes the 1TB and 3TB Fusion Drive options with the rMBPs! It would be a nice little option for those of us with huge media library's. Finally get rid of attaching my ext HD...

Can you install a hybrid drive in a cMBP? Might be an option.