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Whats the next technology on horizon for possible update?

F

Freida

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Oct 22, 2010
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Hey guys,

I have the first 15" rMBP which is fine (screen sometimes flickered so logic board got replaced) but sometimes on GPU side it could use more juice. Also, would love 6 core CPU but that might be still to far off.
Anyway, what is the next possible update and what technology are we looking at?
I would love to sell my current laptop before the apple care runs out so i get good money for it so hoping there will be something before the end of 2015 :))
 
CPU: Intel’s Broadwell line is due out toward the end of the year, and likely to appear in Macs early in 2015.

GPU: Broadwell will have greatly increased iGPU power, and nVidia will be coming out with its Maxwell lineup this year. AMD is releasing new GPUs as well but I don’t know the details.

RAM: DDR4 should go mainstream this year or next

Screen: IGZO might come to Macs eventually

Probably a few other things. WiFi and SSDs just got big improvements last fall, so we’re unlikely to see major advances in those areas for a while yet. I don’t know about cameras, microphones, or speakers either.

Who knows though, maybe Apple will come out with something totally new.
 
Qaanol said:
CPU: Intel’s Broadwell line is due out toward the end of the year, and likely to appear in Macs early in 2015.

GPU: Broadwell will have greatly increased iGPU power, and nVidia will be coming out with its Maxwell lineup this year. AMD is releasing new GPUs as well but I don’t know the details.

RAM: DDR4 should go mainstream this year or next

Screen: IGZO might come to Macs eventually

Probably a few other things. WiFi and SSDs just got big improvements last fall, so we’re unlikely to see major advances in those areas for a while yet. I don’t know about cameras, microphones, or speakers either.

Who knows though, maybe Apple will come out with something totally new.
Click to expand...

Very detailed response.

I'd like to add: I see Broadwell releasing sometime around August-October, which means a potential Apple iteration of rMBP's around November-January.

iGPU (base model) will be increased a significant amount (30-60%, potentially).

dGPU (higher model) will likely be increased a noticeable amount (50% potentially), while also having much better power efficiency, for the first time in dGPU's (this will likely make the dGPU model a given again - whereas this year some chose the iGPU-only model due to worry about battery life with the 750M dGPU).

Most likely IGZO screens this year too. I'd say battery life goes up to 8-10 hours for the next model.

Probably late 2015/2016 is when they do a complete remodel (like from cMBP to rMBP); or new appearance/casing.
 
Broadwell will be ready by Q2, Q3 at the latest. Apple will refresh the rMBP lineup in Q4 2014 like they did last time. You may even see a MBA refresh a little earlier but this is all speculation on my part. I garauntee though we will see the whole laptop lineup refreshed with Broadwell before 2015, Apple is one of Intel's core customers for consumer chips.

I reckon we will see the Broadwell equivalent of whatever Haswell chips are currently available except we will see a 30% power reduction (thanks to the new 14nm lithography process) and new iGPU. No idea yet on what the iGPU will be like yet. eDRAM (L4 cache) will likely remain at 128MB.

Hopefully Apple don't ditch the dGPU and we get a Maxwell based GT 850M with 2GB GDDR5. This should offer (according to Nvidia's press releases) twice the performance per watt, in reality I would hope for 50% better FPS and hopefully a wider 256-bit bus. I use my Haswell rMBP and 750M for gaming and if the speculation from Nvidia is true then it would finally be a real killer gaming laptop, right now it does well but I am sort of left wanting a little, would be nice to jump from mid 30 FPS to around 50 FPS in most games - the larger bus is sorely needed. Will definitely upgrade if Maxwell is included.

IGZO is a possibility but don't see it as the be all and end all. Display quality will remain the same, just uses less power.

Should be a nice little refresh, nothing too major but with Intel's new chips on 14nm (down from 22nm) and Nvidia's more efficient Maxwell architecture using TSMC's new 20nm (down from 28nm) coupled perhaps at a stretch DDR4 then we could be in for a really power efficient and fast laptop.
 
And when do you think we will get 6c or 8c? To me right, when I render, I do benefit from the cores rather than anything else :)

I think at this stage I would like just faster gpu and cpu (more cores). They could reduce the screen glare even further (like the glass that was demonstrated in japan 2 years ago - forgot the name)
Also 17" would be most welcome for my usage -> in fact if they did almost bezel free design then the 17" would be pretty much the same size as the 15" now. That would be a massive deal for me.

So, broadwell is the massive improvement (unlike Haswell that was just 10-20%), right?
 
Do you guys think that quad core and/or discrete graphics will ever be offered in the 13" form factor?
 
Freida said:
And when do you think we will get 6c or 8c? To me right, when I render, I do benefit from the cores rather than anything else :)

I think at this stage I would like just faster gpu and cpu (more cores). They could reduce the screen glare even further (like the glass that was demonstrated in japan 2 years ago - forgot the name)
Also 17" would be most welcome for my usage -> in fact if they did almost bezel free design then the 17" would be pretty much the same size as the 15" now. That would be a massive deal for me.

So, broadwell is the massive improvement (unlike Haswell that was just 10-20%), right?
Click to expand...

I expect a 10-25% boost over Haswell, CPUs don't really get the "massive improvement" I think you're looking for in just one micro architecture change.

esskay said:
Do you guys think that quad core and/or discrete graphics will ever be offered in the 13" form factor?
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dGPU, no, not with the direction we're heading right now. Intel's iGPUs are getting pretty good and a dGPU that works with the 13 inch's thermal design might not be any faster then an iGPU.

Quad core, not unless Intel changes their quad core lineup significantly. Right now if you put a quad core in a 13" the clock speed would need to be so low that the CPU would be slower for almost all tasks.
 
Freida said:
So, broadwell is the massive improvement (unlike Haswell that was just 10-20%), right?
Click to expand...

Speculatively, yes.

esskay said:
Do you guys think that quad core and/or discrete graphics will ever be offered in the 13" form factor?
Click to expand...

No to the second. They used to have weak dGPU, but it'll be only iGPU from now on (as it has been for a couple years). Regarding quad core, probably in 2 years they'll get it. But yes, it will eventually
 
For when to expect Broadwell see here.

Concerning performance people expect too much. Yes Intel said 30% more efficient but that means on average. Usually (as history taught) the first batch is barely any higher in clock speed. Maybe 10% or so.
The 13" dual core will get a big graphics boost due to most likely receiving the edram treatment. The 15" will get a max battery life boost due to quad core system on chip that will bring plattform power down.
A refresh or the next gen after Broadwell will tap into the efficiency gains of 14nm. The mature 22nm vs the new 14nm will most likely be fairly close in clock speeds at least for the higher performance chips. In the past the low W TDP chips (15W Air) tend to reveive bigger boosts.

The biggest tech on the horizon (performance wise) will be new dGPUs but only the 15" may profit from it and that isn't a certainty either. Maxwell will be more efficient even on 28nm and when it shows on 20nm (whenever that is going to be) it should provide a significant upgrade over the 750M which is low clocked and barely any faster than Iris Pro.
 
dusk007 said:
The biggest tech on the horizon (performance wise) will be new dGPUs but only the 15" may profit from it and that isn't a certainty either. Maxwell will be more efficient even on 28nm and when it shows on 20nm (whenever that is going to be) it should provide a significant upgrade over the 750M which is low clocked and barely any faster than Iris Pro.
Click to expand...

I heard the 750M Maxwell (GM107) is going to be akin to the 760M in performance with 5-10 TDP lower than the current 750M. Would you say that's accurate? They brought down TDP, from the desktop 660 card, which runs at 145 TDP, to 50 TDP in the new Maxwell 750 Ti.
 
They will probably call it 850M ;) or 8somethingM.
For a still 28nm chip it is quite impressive in power consumption.
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2014/nvidia-geforce-gtx-750-ti-maxwell-im-test/9/
2MB L2 Cache seem to do a bit for efficiency. When Volta kills the power hungry GDDR5 those GPUs will become really efficient. There may yet be a future for mobile GPUs with Nvidia doing so well in improving efficiency.

I wonder when 20nm will be ready for mass production. Smartphone SoCs with it are coming up but maybe yields and output isn't good enough for GPUs yet.
 
dusk007 said:
They will probably call it 850M ;) or 8somethingM.
For a still 28nm chip it is quite impressive in power consumption.
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2014/nvidia-geforce-gtx-750-ti-maxwell-im-test/9/
2MB L2 Cache seem to do a bit for efficiency. When Volta kills the power hungry GDDR5 those GPUs will become really efficient. There may yet be a future for mobile GPUs with Nvidia doing so well in improving efficiency.

I wonder when 20nm will be ready for mass production. Smartphone SoCs with it are coming up but maybe yields and output isn't good enough for GPUs yet.
Click to expand...

Yeah the estimate is already 850M hah. I just want them to announce that this month. I don't want to wait months just to hear about the mobile. I wanna know what my future MBP is gonna have now :D

Yeah 2MB cache is a killer, thank god them went with that. I was surprised it took them so long to utilize that to begin with. I think they're doing great going towards mobile also.

I read somewhere it's definitely low yields, but I'm guessing this summer it'll be basically ready. Probably releases throughout Fall for top-end 20nm Maxwell chips
 
The one thing I'm most curious and confused about is if Apple released an updated haswell CPU based MBP (since broadwell is a ways off now) if we could see any slight improvements to the built in iGPU like in the 13" model.
 
mrweirdo said:
The one thing I'm most curious and confused about is if Apple released an updated haswell CPU based MBP (since broadwell is a ways off now) if we could see any slight improvements to the built in iGPU like in the 13" model.
Click to expand...

You are never going to buy and enjoy your machine constantly thinking about what's next. If the current model can do what you need it to do, then don't worry. If it can't, then buy something else.
 
People saying that the broadwell chipset will be in the refreshed rMBP by End of this year or Jan-March of 2015 isn't that to ambitious ?? I don't know if Apple follows the Fall release cycle for Macbook's aswell as they do for the iOS Devices but if they do, then I don't think the broadwell chipset in a rMBP is going to see the light of day till September-2015 which looks like a never ending wait atleast from here :eek:
 
augustya said:
People saying that the broadwell chipset will be in the refreshed rMBP by End of this year or Jan-March of 2015 isn't that to ambitious ?? I don't know if Apple follows the Fall release cycle for Macbook's aswell as they do for the iOS Devices but if they do, then I don't think the broadwell chipset in a rMBP is going to see the light of day till September-2015 which looks like a never ending wait atleast from here :eek:
Click to expand...

Mac laptops have recently been getting refreshes about twice a year, though some of these refreshes are miniscule. (such as only adding new BTO options) With that in mind, there's really three component updates that could generate a refresh coming in the next year:

- Intel looks like they're preparing a Haswell refresh on some of their chip lines; there may be refreshed mobile processors in here for a refresh.

- A dGPU refresh for BTO and high-end rMBPs, possibly bringing dGPUs to a couple more machines.

- Broadwell, which looks like it'd first be able to be in MBPs in the holiday season at the very earliest, but more likely Q1 '15.

Honestly, I'm expecting a minor refresh sometime between now and July, with Broadwell Macbooks flagbearing the new silicon much like Haswell pretty much first came out on MBAs, but I'd put that happening Q4 '14 or Q1 '15, optimistically. Don't expect anything big before then.
 
accountforit said:
You are never going to buy and enjoy your machine constantly thinking about what's next. If the current model can do what you need it to do, then don't worry. If it can't, then buy something else.
Click to expand...

That's why I ask as I don't really know if it can. Thinking about GPU in relating to gaming I'm not sure the current models will handle at the well. Sort of trying to decide between the 13" now or wait for 15" or future refresh. Just trying to weigh all my options since its a big purchase.

Although I will say I'm 99.9% set on the current 13". The 15" is to big for my desk and I doubt I can wait out broadwell. At least upgrading now I can still get a few bucks for my current mac that will likely pay for the ram upgrade from 8gb to 16gb.
 
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A Haswell refresh in the current rMBP sometime later this year cannot be denied though !
 
augustya said:
People saying that the broadwell chipset will be in the refreshed rMBP by End of this year or Jan-March of 2015 isn't that to ambitious ?? I don't know if Apple follows the Fall release cycle for Macbook's aswell as they do for the iOS Devices but if they do, then I don't think the broadwell chipset in a rMBP is going to see the light of day till September-2015 which looks like a never ending wait atleast from here :eek:
Click to expand...

Apple doesn't follow a strict refresh schedule for their computers, it can look like it, but really they just refresh when they have new components to use (mainly CPUs which Intel likes to release in Q3). Apple isn't going to wait until Q3 2015, by that time Skylake could be close to release. Like others have said, Apple will probably release Q4 2014 or Q1 2015 when Broadwell CPUs that work with the MBPs are out.
 
so now that the new GPUs are out, can we expect refresh soon or do you think we are still looking for 3Q2014 or later?
 
Freida said:
so now that the new GPUs are out, can we expect refresh soon or do you think we are still looking for 3Q2014 or later?
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It is likely that there will be a small refresh with just the new Maxwell GPUs nd nothing else worth speaking about sometime in the next few months. Broadwell is much further out most likely that will be January at the earliest for a MBP with Broadwell. By that time 20nm Maxwell might be out and a big refresh comes.
I guess they will line up a small refresh to fall somewhere in the middle of the last and when they expect the next big Broadwell refresh. Would make economic sense. No reason to rush and going for 6 months on 750Ms when Maxwell is so much better and the rest so far out anyway would be weird too.
I would put my money on something around May.
 
dusk007 said:
It is likely that there will be a small refresh with just the new Maxwell GPUs nd nothing else worth speaking about sometime in the next few months. Broadwell is much further out most likely that will be January at the earliest for a MBP with Broadwell. By that time 20nm Maxwell might be out and a big refresh comes.
I guess they will line up a small refresh to fall somewhere in the middle of the last and when they expect the next big Broadwell refresh. Would make economic sense. No reason to rush and going for 6 months on 750Ms when Maxwell is so much better and the rest so far out anyway would be weird too.
I would put my money on something around May.
Click to expand...

With only one rMBP SKU with a dGPU I'm not sure they'll update the GPUs right now. Maybe they'll give both 15 inches a dGPU, but with Apple trying to remove all mobile dGPUs from their lineup I don't see them running to update their dGPUs. That all said Intel has a weird timeline going here, so maybe Apple will do something out of the ordinary.
 
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