Waiting for Skylake MBP thread

[Vanilla35]

Long time reader, first time poster in this thread.

I have been thinking about whether or not they will include a dGPU in the highest configuration or not. Personally, I really hope they do, but this time I really suspect that they might not.

My thinking is that with the rumoured performance of GT4e being 50% faster than Broadwell's GT3e [source], the new MBP's could have graphical performance only slightly less than a current 950M.

Broadwell GT3e Sky Diver score ≈ 6440 [source]
50% improvement would be = 9660
GTX 950M ≈ 11000 [source - a reasonable average]

So GT4e could only be around 10% slower than a mid-end discrete GPU.

It would also seem, compared to the M370X (Score of 7824), about 20% faster.

It's all very approximate of course, and hinges on the rumours of 50% performance increase, but if they did only release the GT4e without a dGPU, I would probably still consider buying one. The test for me has always been 'would the iGPU be slower than the dGPU that Apple would likely put in the rMBP'. Since for whatever reason Apple seem averse to Nvidia at the moment, and the fact that both AMD/Nvidia's next generation is unlikely to be suddenly released in Q1 next year (Pascal round the corner, but I don't think it's that imminent), it does make me suspicious as to what dGPU they could actually put in the machine? If the dGPU is almost the same speed, what would the point actually be? What dGPU options are actually on the table that have a TDP that could fit into the chassis of the rMBP, whilst out-performing GT4e?

I don't think that's the reason people want a dGPU to add thickness and cooling pressures on their laptops...
Maybe they will include a dGPU if it have a huge advantage over the Iris Pro yet won't cause heating and thickness goes up.
Speaking about graphics intensive, I think Iris Pro were good enough to handling most of the things we need, maybe except gaming (I think dGPU it's all about gaming btw), but OS X were not really gaming-friendly...

People said both of these comments in practically the exact same manner last year, before the last update. It turns out, apple still did put the dGPU in there. The difference at the time, between the Nvidia 750M and Intel Iris Pro, was not that great; in some cases the 750M performing worse - yet they still kept both of those in the same computer. I suspect they will continue to do this as time goes on, at least for the next few years. Even in the current version, the gap is not very wide, but for some programs you will want the dGPU. Not all performance is equal.

 

[Serban]

If Skylake really is as good as rumored then I think you're right. A less hot and thinner&lighter version of a rMBP would be sweet. The rMBP to me is already really thin but it could lose some weight.

thinner with less hot don't work together well. if they will remain at the same thickness,yes it will less hot for sure, but if they don't leave it as it is, will be around same level

 

[Serban]

People said both of these comments in practically the exact same manner last year, before the last update. It turns out, apple still did put the dGPU in there. The difference at the time, between the Nvidia 750M and Intel Iris Pro, was not that great; in some cases the 750M performing worse - yet they still kept both of those in the same computer. I suspect they will continue to do this as time goes on, at least for the next few years. Even in the current version, the gap is not very wide, but for some programs you will want the dGPU. Not all performance is equal.

they already remove the dgpu in the 21.5" imac...so it is obvious even in a bigger chassis that Apple tends to get rid of the dgpu

 

[nicovh]

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens. There are bound to be some leaks/news about the rMBP soon (I hope)

 

[SesameWasher]

thinner with less hot don't work together well. if they will remain at the same thickness,yes it will less hot for sure, but if they don't leave it as it is, will be around same level

Depends on Skylake, how cool it can be.
MacBook Pro probably weren't meant for long-term high-intensive tasks, but I believe it's well capable to do.

 

[koyoot]

Desktop GPU's are already dying. Imagine a situation where you have AMD Zen APU with Haswell-EP levels of performance in single threaded performance, coupled with 8GB HBM2 as EDRAM shared with GPU with 2048 GCN cores. And it would get even higher core count with smaller nodes.

The market in future will be APU's of all sorts(Intel, AMD) and High-end server and workstation market, with premium prices. Thats how OEMs(Intel, AMD, Nvidia) are going to mitigate the impact of declining market of dGPUs, and increasing the manufacturing costs on smaller nodes. Yes, we will still see GPUs, especially in form of GPU clusters(external) to which you can connect your computer(Nvlink, Mezzanine form factor here comes to play). But not as often as we see them today.

Thats just not the vision designers have for idea of Internet of Things.

 

[SesameWasher]

Desktop GPU's are already dying. Imagine a situation where you have AMD Zen APU with Haswell-EP levels of performance in single threaded performance, coupled with 8GB HBM2 as EDRAM shared with GPU with 2048 GCN cores. And it would get even higher core count with smaller nodes.

The market in future will be APU's of all sorts(Intel, AMD) and High-end server and workstation market, with premium prices. Thats how OEMs(Intel, AMD, Nvidia) are going to mitigate the impact of declining market of dGPUs, and increasing the manufacturing costs on smaller nodes. Yes, we will still see GPUs, especially in form of GPU clusters(external) to which you can connect your computer(Nvlink, Mezzanine form factor here comes to play). But not as often as we see them today.

Thats just not the vision designers have for idea of Internet of Things.

I don't trust APU but I agree that GPU will eventually goes inside of a CPU for mainstream. For the dGPU cards we probably will see it more often on gaming computers.

 

[Vanilla35]

they already remove the dgpu in the 21.5" imac...so it is obvious even in a bigger chassis that Apple tends to get rid of the dgpu

Different market for that computer. And by different market I don't mean different because one is a laptop and the other a desktop. One is a mainstream product, and one is a pro product. The difference in size (iMac being bigger - desktop processor, etc) is an obvious difference, but not the differentiator I'm referring to.

But as I said, I do think that will happen in soon enough in the rMBP as well, just not immediately. Just my opinion though; I could easily be wrong.

 

[SesameWasher]

Different market for that computer. And by different market I don't mean different because one is a laptop and the other a desktop. One is a mainstream product, and one is a pro product. The difference in size (iMac being bigger - desktop processor, etc) is an obvious difference, but not the differentiator I'm referring to.

But as I said, I do think that will happen in soon enough in the rMBP as well, just not immediately. Just my opinion though; I could easily be wrong.

Speaking of 21.5" iMac, it's probably not going to fast as MacBook Pro 15"
lol

 

[koyoot]

Maybe APU is not the best name for them, SoC is much better, especially when you will get 8 GB of HBM2 on that Chip, that will eradicate in essence the need for RAM in the system, other than that memory. At least for something like 1080p resolution gaming .

Compute is other part of the world. Here we will see like I've said earlier: SoC's connected through TB3 or any other connecting solution to external GPU cluster. RAM, and Fast SSD's will bring only improvement here for getting enough data written and read for feeding the GPUs, because the compute power of GPU's at the end of 14/16 nm era will be like 16-18 TFLOPs on single chip. That is massive.

The problem is: were not there yet. Other side of it is this, possibly HD580 is already good enough for 15 inch Retina resolution.

 

[jamescharley22]

The thread was pretty long so I haven't read the whole thing. Am I the only one kinda wishing the new MacBook Pros would get Intel's Xeon Mobile chips to bring DDR4 ECC RAM?

 

[Asmoday]

Im really hoping for egpu's to become mainstream real quick. Egpu over TB3, plug it in at home, but keep portabillity for on the go.

 

[SesameWasher]

Maybe APU is not the best name for them, SoC is much better, especially when you will get 8 GB of HBM2 on that Chip, that will eradicate in essence the need for RAM in the system, other than that memory. At least for something like 1080p resolution gaming .

Compute is other part of the world. Here we will see like I've said earlier: SoC's connected through TB3 or any other connecting solution to external GPU cluster. RAM, and Fast SSD's will bring only improvement here for getting enough data written and read for feeding the GPUs, because the compute power of GPU's at the end of 14/16 nm era will be like 16-18 TFLOPs on single chip. That is massive.

The problem is: were not there yet. Other side of it is this, possibly HD580 is already good enough for 15 inch Retina resolution.

Let's hope a 16"

The thread was pretty long so I haven't read the whole thing. Am I the only one kinda wishing the new MacBook Pros would get Intel's Xeon Mobile chips to bring DDR4 ECC RAM?

I don't think Xeon will outperform the i7 even in the mobile in same era. It's advantage were for the enterprises.
Like the current desktop E3 didn't act any faster than the quad core i7

But if BGAs were the same and you know how to change a BGA chips then I guess you can do it yourself

 

[domsodidavid]

Don't forget, that the next 15/16 inch rMPB should be capable to drive an 5k external Apple display.

 

[jamescharley22]

I don't think Xeon will outperform the i7 even in the mobile in same era.

Xeon Mobile has been shown to only be an i7 with GT4e and certain features like ECC RAM enabled. Not meant to compete with desktop and server Xeon but not meant to really outshine i7s, just to brink workstation features to laptops.

 

[SesameWasher]

Seems nobody talks about the screen itself.

Well, I don't think we will got a radical DPI revolution on Macs, Apple will never do that, sharp enough it's sharp enough were their philosophy, so I guess we're gonna stays the same PPI.

For the thin edge...I don't really know but the current thin-edge laptops (XPS15) I thought it's not really pretty, other than that it's thicker edge will be stronger, but the benefits it's there so I don't know but I wouldn't think so.

Color accuracy and other things might be improved.

 

[nicovh]

Seems nobody talks about the screen itself.

Well, I don't think we will got a radical DPI revolution on Macs, Apple will never do that, sharp enough it's sharp enough were their philosophy, so I guess we're gonna stays the same PPI.

For the thin edge...I don't really know but the current thin-edge laptops (XPS15) I thought it's not really pretty, other than that it's thicker edge will be stronger, but the benefits it's there so I don't know but I wouldn't think so.

Color accuracy and other things might be improved.

I think we can expect the bezels to be around the same size as the Macbook's. We can probably expect some improvements in screen/color quality, probably not a major bump but just a little jump to update to the best they can improve it at the time

 

[jamescharley22]

Seems nobody talks about the screen itself.

Well, I don't think we will got a radical DPI revolution on Macs, Apple will never do that, sharp enough it's sharp enough were their philosophy, so I guess we're gonna stays the same PPI.

For the thin edge...I don't really know but the current thin-edge laptops (XPS15) I thought it's not really pretty, other than that it's thicker edge will be stronger, but the benefits it's there so I don't know but I wouldn't think so.

Color accuracy and other things might be improved.

I think we can expect the bezels to be around the same size as the Macbook's. We can probably expect some improvements in screen/color quality, probably not a major bump but just a little jump to update to the best they can improve it at the time

I've come to the fact that the MacBook Pro probably won't see a resolution increase, and I accept that. All I want at this point is a thinner display hence a thinner lid for an at least almost MacBook-thin profile. Also iMac with Retina 5k Display color reproduction.

 

[nicovh]

Sorry double post

 

[SesameWasher]

I think we can expect the bezels to be around the same size as the Macbook's. We can probably expect some improvements in screen/color quality, probably not a major bump but just a little jump to update to the best they can improve it at the time

Actually for Macs, the bigger the screen means less PPI.
Not work with iPhones though.
In performance benchmarks, actually 6/6s had a huge advantage over the 6+/6s+ because of its smaller screen and less PPI, the Processors can run with less stress.
Guess that's also the reason why MacBook Air didn't got a retina, which eventually gives the advantage over battery life and less stressful for processors.

 

[nicovh]

Actually for Macs, the bigger the screen means less PPI.
Not work with iPhones though.
In performance benchmarks, actually 6/6s had a huge advantage over the 6+/6s+ because of its smaller screen and less PPI, the Processors can run with less stress.
Guess that's also the reason why MacBook Air didn't got a retina, which eventually gives the advantage over battery life and less stressful for processors.

I didn't know about the iPhone thing, what kind of performance differences?

 

[SesameWasher]

Actually for Macs, the bigger the screen means less PPI.
Not work with iPhones though.
In performance benchmarks, actually 6/6s had a huge advantage over the 6+/6s+ because of its smaller screen and less PPI.

I didn't know about the iPhone thing, what kind of performance differences?

6 were little faster than the 6 plus due to its smaller resolution.

 

[MDull]

January-February event to announce the rMBP 13 inch (hopefully 14) plus others devices: rMB skylake, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, iphone 6c.

June for rMBP 15, iMac, ipads, iPhone 7 and iOS 10 / OSX "fuji"

...

What do you think?

rMBP JUNE!!!!! I can't wait that long and I won't buy an old Haswell design-- Your killing me!

 

[PKBeam]

any news on the skylake-H chips with iris pro?

 

[AirdanMR]

rMBP JUNE!!!!! I can't wait that long and I won't buy an old Haswell design-- Your killing me!

But.. but... is Intel the one killing us =(

any news on the skylake-H chips with iris pro?

The only skylake related and recent news are from a bendgate on the chip when a big cooler is used :S

http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88392/6th-Generation-Intel-Core-i7-Processors#@Mobile
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88393/6th-Generation-Intel-Core-i5-Processors#@Mobile
http://ark.intel.com/es/products/89608/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1505M-v5-8M-Cache-2_80-GHz