What advantages might exist for the 9th gen processors over the 10th?

[Tozovac]

I’m constantly bouncing back & forth between a 13” 10th-gen or a 16” 9th-gen. Both 16gig and 1TB. I would leap with the 16” if I weren’t so (potentially unnecessarily) hung up on the 16” having the 9th gen and also not wifi-6.

I don’t do 3D, I don’t do VR, but I do multi-track recording and sub-10-minute iMove type videos, so clearly either would work for me given that I’m getting by with my 2013 i7 MBA. But I’m thinking future-proofing since I’d target another 6-7 years of use.

I’d love to know of any compelling reasons why, perhaps, the 9th-gen should be favored over the 10th. For instance, I chose the MBA in 2014 over the MBP because, at the time, I valued battery life and cost over extra performance. I was fine with the low-res screen given my usage scenarios, above, and since I was going thru a major home renovation and watching spending. I’ve been completely satisfied with my choice. Now for some reason I’m getting hung up on the processor & WiFi situation.

Maybe unnecessarily? Maybe while overlooking some reasons why the 9th gen processors have certain advantages over the 10th? I can’t find any.

Thank you and please feel free to point me to another thread where this may already be covered (I found none) and I’ll try to delete this thread or rename it or point to an existing thread.

Just to reiterate, I’m looking *specifically* for any distinct advantages over the 9th gen by the 10th gen and am not looking for any shopping-help comparison videos between 8th/9th/10th, etc. For instance, the 10th may out-perform the 9th in battery life and performance but the 9th has an ____________ interesting advantage to consider.

 

[UBS28]

The 9th gen are cheaper. That is the advantage they have. Basically all laptops that use the Intel 10th chips are more expensive.

That is probably why Apple also kept the older 13" MBP because else the entire 13" MBP line up would have received a price hike and consumers would not like that.

 

[LinkRS]

Howdy Tozovac,

The reason there is currently no 10th Generation in the 16" MacBook Pro, is because they weren't available at the time it was designed. When Apple refreshes the 16", it will likely get 10th Gen too (Comet Lake not Icy Lake). The current Icy Lake 10th Gen CPUs, are lower performance than the class of CPUs used in the 16" MacBook Pro. Intel just recently announced the CPUs that would be used in the bigger MacBooks, and they are called Comet Lake. They are really just tweaked versions of the original 9th Gen (which themselves are tweaked 8th Gen) called Coffee Lake.

You shouldn't be hung up on that reason to choose between the 13" and 16". The 13" doesn't have same screen resolution, speakers, or cooling system of the 16." There is no scenario where the 13" with 10th Gen will outperform even the base config of the 16' MacBook Pro with 9th Gen.

So decide based on the whole package, not on the CPU alone Good luck!

Rich S.

 

[UBS28]

Howdy Tozovac,

The reason there is currently no 10th Generation in the 16" MacBook Pro, is because they weren't available at the time it was designed. When Apple refreshes the 16", it will likely get 10th Gen too (Comet Lake not Icy Lake). The current Icy Lake 10th Gen CPUs, are lower performance than the class of CPUs used in the 16" MacBook Pro. Intel just recently announced the CPUs that would be used in the bigger MacBooks, and they are called Comet Lake. They are really just tweaked versions of the original 9th Gen (which themselves are tweaked 8th Gen) called Coffee Lake.

You shouldn't be hung up on that reason to choose between the 13" and 16". The 13" doesn't have same screen resolution, speakers, or cooling system of the 16." There is no scenario where the 13" with 10th Gen will outperform even the base config of the 16' MacBook Pro with 9th Gen.

So decide based on the whole package, not on the CPU alone Good luck!

Rich S.

That is not true. The 13" with 10th gen outperforms the 16" with anything that is single-core by about 15%. The SSD on the 13" is also faster and so is the RAM.

And in a portable situation, the integrated graphics are used. In this case, the 13" has the better GPU actually.

 

[LinkRS]

That is not true. The 13" with 10th gen outperforms the 16" with anything that is single-core by about 15%. The SSD on the 13" is also faster and so is the RAM.

And in a portable situation, the integrated graphics are used. In this case, the 13" has the better GPU actually.

Howdy UBS28,

On paper you would be correct, the raw synthetic performance of Intel's Sunny Cove Architecture (https://www.anandtech.com/show/14514/examining-intels-ice-lake-microarchitecture-and-sunny-cove/3) is faster than the Coffee Lake Architecture. IF the 18% IPC improvement was consistent, the Sunny Cove can run 18% slower, and show the same speed (or be 18% faster at the same speed). So, some napkin math... the fastest CTO Sunny Cove is effectively 2.77 GHz compared to the 2.6 GHz Coffee Lake in the 16" MBP. So, you would still think it is faster, however.... that is where Turbo Boost and thermals come into play. The Intel Core iX series gets its performance form ramping up its clock speed, which is entirely dependent upon the thermal and voltage environments. The smaller MBP's cooling system just doesn't work as well as the 16", which prevents the CPUs from being able to stretch its proverbial legs and turbo up. That is demonstrated by the advertised max Turbo Boost speeds of the respective CPUs. Plus, the most obvious reason, if the 13" MBP was faster than the 16", who would buy the larger system? Apple simply wouldn't want the lower cost model to outperform the flagship MBP.

The RAM is indeed clocked faster on the smaller MBP, but that is not something most people would notice just using the system. The one place where the 2020 13" MBP does shine, is in its Intel GPU. The iGPU in the Ice Lake CPU is much faster than the older Intel GPUs in the 9th Gen CPUs. However, this is not really relavant, as if you need performance in the 16" MBP, you use the Radeon GPU, which is vastly superior to the Intel GPU. So, the overall system performance will be better for the 16" MBP over the 13"

Here are some more articles:

Tested: The new 13-inch MacBook Pro delivers a big graphics upgrade

Apple's new $1,799 laptop features a tenth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, faster memory, and new graphics that boost its performance.

www.macworld.com

13-inch MacBook Pro (mid 2020) review: $1799 model delivers modest CPU and big graphics boost

Apple latest pro laptop has enough to satisfy professional users who need every ounce of speed.

www.macworld.com

How to choose between the new 13-inch MacBook Pro versus the 16-inch MacBook Pro | AppleInsider

Don't pull the trigger on buying a fully-loaded 13-inch MacBook Pro just yet. At the higher end, there are cases where a 16-inch MacBook Pro will be a much better value.

appleinsider.com

Thanks!

Rich S.

 

[jgorman]

That is not true. The 13" with 10th gen outperforms the 16" with anything that is single-core by about 15%. The SSD on the 13" is also faster and so is the RAM.

And in a portable situation, the integrated graphics are used. In this case, the 13" has the better GPU actually.

Actually, the 16-inch's 9th-gen i9 CPU scores slightly higher in both Cinebench R15's single-core test and Cinebench R20's single-core test than the 13-inch's 10th-gen i5 CPU. The 16-inch's CPU is a 45W part.

Also, all the reviews I have seen show the 16-inch's SSD is a little faster in sequential read/write operations.

 

[jabbr]

I've been really impressed by the 10th gen 13" so far. I'm running the internal display along side a 1440p monitor and it's a super responsive and surprisingly quiet setup.

I can use many moderately heavy plugins on a few tracks in Logic before the fans are even audible, something which is apparently not possible on the 16" due to the the high wattage of the dGPU (will that ever be fixed??). From my understanding single-core performance and RAM speed are pretty important for audio processing and the 13" outperforms the 16" in both of those. I guess this all depends on a given mixing situation, but it's something to consider.

 

[ctjack]

Apple has a great history, where you can precisely track down historic moment:
1) Let's say MBP 2012 13 inch is our starting point. That is what i have now.
2) Macbook air 13 inch 2015 is on par performance wise with 3 year older MBP 13 2012 Retina.
3) MBP 13 2015 is on par with i3 MBA 2020. Even 2019 Air was almost identical to MBP 13 2015.
So historically we can observe that MBA can keep up with MBP 13 inch after 3-5 years.

Also the same analogy goes to MBP 13 inch vs MBP 15/16 inch.
MBP 13 2018 $1799 and MBP 13 2019 base outperformed MBP 15 2015 and is on par with MBP 15 2016.
So it took 3-4 years to outperform/achieve the performance level of 15 inch.

By projecting this logic to the current line we will have the following:
1) It will take 3-4 years for MBP 13 to catch up with MBP 16. So MBP 13 inch of 2023-2024 will be on par with the current MBP 16 inch 2019.

Just to reiterate, I’m looking *specifically* for any distinct advantages over the 9th gen by the 10th gen and am not looking for any shopping-help comparison videos between 8th/9th/10th, etc. For instance, the 10th may out-perform the 9th in battery life and performance but the 9th has an ____________ interesting advantage to consider.

9th gen in MBP has 6 or 8 cores which are allowed to consume twice of the 10th gen power limit. While 10th gen for U-series has maximum of 4 cores.
MBP 13 10th gen chips - is the story of inventing new super cool engine for another generation of Toyota Prius.
MBP 16 - is like engine in F150 or Suburban.

 

[leman]

I’d love to know of any compelling reasons why, perhaps, the 9th-gen should be favored over the 10th.

As mentioned above: price. That is the only reason

That is not true. The 13" with 10th gen outperforms the 16" with anything that is single-core by about 15%. The SSD on the 13" is also faster and so is the RAM.

Based on benchmarks, the Sunny Cove is about 3-4% more efficient at the same clock rate. Since the 16" CPU has higher clocks (and more cores) it wins in both single-core and multi-core scenario. There only situation where the 13" would be faster is if your workload benefits from AVX-512.

All in all, Intel's state of the art is severely disappointing. They still struggle to move beyond Skylake and their new architecture does not impress either. Close not high enough, chips run too hot, IPC improvements basically non-existent. At last they finally managed to support LPDDR4X.

In the meantime AMD has a real winner with their Zen 2.

 

[LinkRS]

I've been really impressed by the 10th gen 13" so far. I'm running the internal display along side a 1440p monitor and it's a super responsive and surprisingly quiet setup.

I can use many moderately heavy plugins on a few tracks in Logic before the fans are even audible, something which is apparently not possible on the 16" due to the the high wattage of the dGPU (will that ever be fixed??). From my understanding single-core performance and RAM speed are pretty important for audio processing and the 13" outperforms the 16" in both of those. I guess this all depends on a given mixing situation, but it's something to consider.

Howdy jabbr,

If Apple offered the 13" with a discrete GPU, I would have went with the 2020 13" without hesitation. My favorite MacBook of all time was the original poly-carbonate MacBook, I really like the footprint of the smaller size. The 2020 MacBook Pro (IMHO) is a great system, it is just not as fast as its larger sibling. If clockspeeds on CPUs were fixed, meaning that they stay at the same clockspeed no matter what, you would probably see the top-end 2020 13" MacBook Pro give the 16" a run for its-money in single-threaded tasks. However, Intel Core iX CPUs do not run this way, the clockspeed (particularly in the mobile versions) is constantly adjusting due to the thermal and voltage environments and work load. As the work load increases, the CPU will throttle up to meet the demand until it either hits its max Turbo Boost, or the thermal and voltage environment hits its threshold. In the smaller 13" MacBook Pro, this happens much sooner than it does with the larger 16", which means that even in situations where the Sunny Cove would be able to to more work per clock, it is unable to because it hits the limits before it gets there. That is why so many folks like the Cinebench benchmarks, as it puts a load over time so that you can see the "real" performance difference, rather than the synthetic one you get from GeekBench.

With all of that said... If you are on the iGPU for the new 10th Gen CPU and and disable the dGPU in the 16" (turn off graphic switching, mainly to get better battery life), the smaller MacBook will perform better. However macOS will normally switch to the dGPU automatically when performance is needed. For normal non-gaming and non-compute based workloads, the performance of both iGPUs is about the same.

Good luck!

Rich S.

 

[Tozovac]

However, Intel Core iX CPUs do not run this way, the clockspeed (particularly in the mobile versions) is constantly adjusting due to the thermal and voltage environments and work load. As the work load increases, the CPU will throttle up to meet the demand until it either hits its max Turbo Boost, or the thermal and voltage environment hits its threshold.

I’m enjoying and appreciating your posts, I’m learning a lot. Thank you.

With so many thermal considerations (everyone wants a small, tidy, but powerful laptop, and that heat has to be absorbed somewhere), I’m surprised I see so few (i.e., none) discussions about how to actively cool the laptop during times of known work overload. I.e., place the laptop on a laptop cooling fan/device or even raise it above the desk via coasters or blocks and run a desk fan over it. I’ve seen a co-worker rest his laptop on a plastic-wrapped icepack at times when his aging laptop (corporations are stretching the length of time that laptops are used rather than replace as frequently as 10 years ago it seems, at least in my case) was getting hot and running the fan constantly and slowing down (until the ice’s cooling effects kicked in and it was back to business as usual).

Veering from my topic but that’s ok because some good info is being shared here, does anyone actively employ cooling techniques, even if raising the laptop above the desk surface or lap, to get better convection cooling, if not use fans or actual laptop coolers? Just curious.

 

[Infinite Vortex]

If you're going to only compare the CPU/GPU combo (yes, GPU is important as thee's no discrete graphics in the 13") then basically just turn to Geekbench. There's not really much more you need to look at other than benchmarks. That said, there are lot of other factors that go into what is a "right" system such as size, screen size, cooling solution, portability, blah blah blah, that come into it. As the 16" cooling solution is far superior to the 13" you can probably give the 16" a 10% plus a generational handicap and it may well still exceed the 13" in performance. Also the TPUs are different.

 

[leman]

If Apple offered the 13" with a discrete GPU, I would have went with the 2020 13" without hesitation.

The Ice Lake Iris Plus G7 is actually not half bad, it performs on par with the entry-level dedicated GPUs anyway. I think we came a long way in the iGPU department. Just few years ago, integrated GPUs were only good for driving a display, and the days one can even do some casual gaming without having to sacrifice too much. I mean, we've been playing Civ VI and Divinity Original Sin 2 on the Iris Plus 650 and it worked relatively well, even on the macOS side of things.

 

[iRun26.2]

The only thing I will ask of my Intel-GPU is for it to drive my 4K monitor at 60Hz.

 

[leman]

Veering from my topic but that’s ok because some good info is being shared here, does anyone actively employ cooling techniques, even if raising the laptop above the desk surface or lap, to get better convection cooling, if not use fans or actual laptop coolers? Just curious.

Active cooling pad might help a bit with selected models, but the big question is — what is it that interests you? These laptops are designed in a particular way, which is — let the CPU draw as much power as it safely can, if it wants. What this means that using additional cooling won't necessarily make the laptop "cooler" — it will just allow it to run on higher power (unless you hit the clock limits first, of course).

Ultimately, additional cooling is useful if you want to get those few % extra performance. In fact, t is most useful when playing games and you machine starts limiting the graphical performance due to the heat (there is a reason why cooling pads are marketed at games first and foremost). If you want a "cool" running computer, for whatever reason, your best bet is disabling turbo boost and/or artificially limiting the clock speed. If you are concerned about longevity — don't. Nothing you do here will have any meaningful impact. Your computer is much more likely to fail because of some micro-imperfection that crept in during manufacturing than because of heat.

 

[Tozovac]

What this means that using additional cooling won't necessarily make the laptop "cooler" — it will just allow it to run on higher power (unless you hit the clock limits first, of course).

Yes that's what I intended. Why not employ active cooling beyond that supplied by the laptop itself in order to sustain higher performance so it will still run "hot" but within limits that performance isn't noticeably temporarily slowed.

Ultimately, additional cooling is useful if you want to get those few % extra performance. In fact, t is most useful when playing games and you machine starts limiting the graphical performance due to the heat (there is a reason why cooling pads are marketed at games first and foremost).

Thanks, that answers my question. I meant to ask explicitly whether anyone used a cooler *occasionally* during times of peak load or during special tasks that might benefit from adding active cooling, as a response to better live with loud jet engine cooling should someone find that noise to be unacceptable....and I didn’t mean to suggest to ask whether someone ran their laptop near a fan constantly. After all, if you had to add so much extra cooling hardware constantly then why buy a portable laptop.

 

[leman]

I meant to ask explicitly whether anyone used a cooler *occasionally* during times of peak load or during special tasks that might benefit from adding active cooling,

I've used a cheap cooling stand with a 2018 15" MBP for gaming, and it did make a noticeable difference. I don't remember it doing anything for CPU-heavy workloads though. With my 16" machine, I didn't try the cooler since the 16" performs rather well in games as it is.