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Acorn

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Jan 2, 2009
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I have noticed several brands including brands like Razor have started integrating quad core 8th generation cpus in their 13 inch laptops. The spec is 1.8 ghz quad core to 3.5 turbo. Will we ever see 13 inch mac with quad core in it. I was looking into a new computer but the new Macbook pros are Not 8th generation Nor are they quad core. It looks as if I may have to go to a windows machine if I want quad core in a smaller laptop. IT sucks but my next computer WILL be quad core wether apple decides to actually move on or not.
 
Maybe the 2019's 13" will have quad core because I don't see them happening this year.
 
Comes up a lot, and is covered a lot...

Currently MBPs (13") use 28w CPU's, which are more powerful and can sustain load longer https://ark.intel.com/products/97528/Intel-Core-i5-7267U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz

The quad-core models you are seeing are lower spec 15w versions, which apart from being quad-core, are weaker all around https://ark.intel.com/products/124967/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz

Basically, the currently available quad-cores are designed to offer lower spec, ultra-portable laptops more performance at that specific size. And are not designed for a professional grade computer. Intel have not released any suitable quad-cores as of present.

If however you're desperate just for a quad-core, then go and buy one of the one's available. Note it will make no difference to anything performance wise however.
 
Comes up a lot, and is covered a lot...

Currently MBPs (13") use 28w CPU's, which are more powerful and can sustain load longer https://ark.intel.com/products/97528/Intel-Core-i5-7267U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz

The quad-core models you are seeing are lower spec 15w versions, which apart from being quad-core, are weaker all around https://ark.intel.com/products/124967/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz

Basically, the currently available quad-cores are designed to offer lower spec, ultra-portable laptops more performance at that specific size. And are not designed for a professional grade computer. Intel have not released any suitable quad-cores as of present.

If however you're desperate just for a quad-core, then go and buy one of the one's available. Note it will make no difference to anything performance wise however.
Word, I dont think id even know I had a quad vs dual core for my usage.
 
Comes up a lot, and is covered a lot...

Currently MBPs (13") use 28w CPU's, which are more powerful and can sustain load longer https://ark.intel.com/products/97528/Intel-Core-i5-7267U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz

The quad-core models you are seeing are lower spec 15w versions, which apart from being quad-core, are weaker all around https://ark.intel.com/products/124967/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz

Basically, the currently available quad-cores are designed to offer lower spec, ultra-portable laptops more performance at that specific size. And are not designed for a professional grade computer. Intel have not released any suitable quad-cores as of present.

If however you're desperate just for a quad-core, then go and buy one of the one's available. Note it will make no difference to anything performance wise however.


You cite sources in an effort to sound like you know what you're talking about to further the agenda of excusing apple... but you're just... wrong.

That 8250U part is a 10w-25w part simultaneously replacing ULV and standard wattage chips. Totally perfect for a 13" quad core MacBook Pro.

Apple is (still) late to the party and is (still) selling outdated laptops at a premium. Stop excusing their behavior.
 
You cite sources in an effort to sound like you know what you're talking about to further the agenda of excusing apple... but you're just... wrong.

That 8250U part is a 10w-25w part simultaneously replacing ULV and standard wattage chips. Totally perfect for a 13" quad core MacBook Pro.

Apple is (still) late to the party and is (still) selling outdated laptops at a premium. Stop excusing their behavior.

Not true...

The 8250U uses Intel 620 graphics.. Apple uses Iris so unless they want to make the change then the quad core Intel chips are non starter
 
You cite sources in an effort to sound like you know what you're talking about to further the agenda of excusing apple... but you're just... wrong.

That 8250U part is a 10w-25w part simultaneously replacing ULV and standard wattage chips. Totally perfect for a 13" quad core MacBook Pro.

Apple is (still) late to the party and is (still) selling outdated laptops at a premium. Stop excusing their behavior.

Lol, he says without citing anything... Didn't realise I was excusing anyone, just basic facts isn't it? How are they also outdated, they're using last years chips are they not? It's not as if 2018 chips have been fully released and are readily available for people to use.

Heck let's also say I'm excusing everyone, I'm even excusing Intel for not releasing the chips, damn you Intel and your outdated technology! I think you misunderstand the term 'excuse' with basic reality.
 
Lol, he says without citing anything... Didn't realise I was excusing anyone, just basic facts isn't it? How are they also outdated, they're using last years chips are they not? It's not as if 2018 chips have been fully released and are readily available for people to use.

Heck let's also say I'm excusing everyone, I'm even excusing Intel for not releasing the chips, damn you Intel and your outdated technology! I think you misunderstand the term 'excuse' with basic reality.

You want sources? Intel ARK specifies the 8250U as a 10-25w chip. TDP-up and TDP-down. https://ark.intel.com/products/124967/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz

Fine, maybe excuse was the wrong word... but ramble upon topics you really don't know much about? There it is ;)
 
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You want sources? Intel ARK specifies the 8250U as a 10-25w chip. TDP-up and TDP-down. https://ark.intel.com/products/124967/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz

Fine, maybe excuse was the wrong word... but ramble upon topics you really don't know much about? There it is ;)

Spoken like someone without a clue, apple have always tried to get at least somewhat decent igpu's in their 13 inch pro's (2010 they kept the old core 2 duos with NVIDIA 320M iGPU rather than move to the new core i series due to the shockingly rubbish HD3000 graphics in them) and the 620 graphics don't cut it.

They may well use 15W parts in the nTB MBP, but the touch bar are far more likely to get coffee lake dual core with AMD Graphics built on die, that are supposedly in the pipeline. As far as I can tell the increased core count precludes any AMD graphics additions due to size and power draw so a quad 15w nTB is possible, dual 28w with amd graphics for the touchbar 13, and Hex core i7's in the 15 inch with an AMD dGPU seem most likely to me.
 
Same place as quad core intel CPUs with iris graphics I guess...
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Apple is (still) late to the party and is (still) selling outdated laptops at a premium. Stop excusing their behavior.

Whose late to the party is intel, not Apple. Apple is still waiting for mobile parts with higher-end Iris GPU and L4 Cache. The new 15W quad-cores are nothing more than down clocked Kaby Lake with half GPU performance of the last gen dual-core CPUs that Apple is using. So upgrading the CPU would mean significantly cutting down the GPU performance.

Its an unfortunate situation for Apple since no matter what they do, they will receive negative publicity. In a certain fashion, they kind of drove themselves into a corner with their insistence to use higher-end CPU products, since those are the last to be released.
 
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You want sources? Intel ARK specifies the 8250U as a 10-25w chip. TDP-up and TDP-down. https://ark.intel.com/products/124967/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz

Fine, maybe excuse was the wrong word... but ramble upon topics you really don't know much about? There it is ;)

So you want them to put a 1.6Ghz CPU in there and hack it to run turbo-boost speed constantly? Is that what my clueless brain is looking at? And you're telling me you'd be fine with this CPU purely because it's a quad-core right?

I see what you've done, you've read 10-25w and presumed that means you can run it at 25w and so it is a 25w CPU which is suitable for MBP's. But you know, carry on attacking people as a form of backing up an argument if you think that works well for you :rolleyes:
 
I see what you've done, you've read 10-25w and presumed that means you can run it at 25w and so it is a 25w CPU which is suitable for MBP's. But you know, carry on attacking people as a form of backing up an argument if you think that works well for you :rolleyes:

He is not necessarily wrong though. 15W or 25W, the Kaby Lake R is really significantly faster than the dual-core 28W KL that Apple currently uses, tests are clear about that. The only drawback is GPU performance and I am sure that is the only thing holding Apple back from using it.
 
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So you want them to put a 1.6Ghz CPU in there and hack it to run turbo-boost speed constantly? Is that what my clueless brain is looking at? And you're telling me you'd be fine with this CPU purely because it's a quad-core right?

I see what you've done, you've read 10-25w and presumed that means you can run it at 25w and so it is a 25w CPU which is suitable for MBP's. But you know, carry on attacking people as a form of backing up an argument if you think that works well for you :rolleyes:

Exactly, he's right. Did you look at any benchmarks of one of the many notebooks out there using these chips? They're a little faster both in single- and dual-core benchmarks, and crush the old 28W chips in multi threaded workloads. The TDP is more like a guideline these days, and the "base" frequency is more like the minimum it should run all cores at when the cooling is really bad.
 
Exactly, he's right. Did you look at any benchmarks of one of the many notebooks out there using these chips? They're a little faster both in single- and dual-core benchmarks, and crush the old 28W chips in multi threaded workloads. The TDP is more like a guideline these days, and the "base" frequency is more like the minimum it should run all cores at when the cooling is really bad.

Fair enough, didn't realise those chips were anywhere close to performance of older ones. I'd just worry that in reality it would run at lower base clock speeds and rarely hit peak performance (Benchmark vs. real world use). Still need more CPU's to populate a product line and I'm still not convinced it'd be a night/day upgrade that people would expect however. Currently more a bonus for lower end machines than an upgrade for higher end one's.

Thanks for explaining that without attacks.
 
Fair enough, didn't realise those chips were anywhere close to performance of older ones. I'd just worry that in reality it would run at lower base clock speeds and rarely hit peak performance (Benchmark vs. real world use). Still need more CPU's to populate a product line and I'm still not convinced it'd be a night/day upgrade that people would expect however. Currently more a bonus for lower end machines than an upgrade for higher end one's.

Thanks for explaining that without attacks.

The good thing is that we already have tons of data due to these chips being available since last September, and the numbers look very promising. Even in the notebooks where they simply swapped the chip without adapting the cooling at all, the performance was always at least the same in single threaded applications, and still much better in multi threaded ones. The chips do indeed run hotter and need a little bit more headroom to reach their maximum turbo frequency, but even if they don't, they're still faster.

But you're right, there are a lot of CPUs still missing from the line-up, namely the H-series for the 15" MacBook Pros as well es the 28W U-series chips. However, Intel has a habit of announcing chips and shipping them just weeks later, so that doesn't mean the update has to be too long away.

Oh, and no need to thank me for not attacking you - this should be the standard, I'd say. ;) But you know, it's a topic we all care about, so discussions can get a bit heated at times.
 
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To summarize what everybody is already saying, No Iris Chips, no dice.

Also, quite simply, apple releases updates yearly. Processors are not the only thing worth updating in a laptop you know.
 
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To summarize what everybody is already saying, No Iris Chips, no dice.

Also, quite simply, apple releases updates yearly. Processors are not the only thing worth updating in a laptop you know.

I disagree on both points. I already stated countless times that there are other options, like combining an integrated Vega chipset with a 15W 8th gen Kaby Lake R. Or even going AMD all together. Even skipping on GT3e und using GT2 iGPUs would be a better choice than not updating at all. The UHD620 is absolutely fast enough for pretty much all general tasks, and there are very few applications which actually can take advantage of the GT3e vs GT2 performance difference.

Also, since when does Apple update their Macs yearly? If you look at the release schedule of the MacBook Pro for the last few years alone, we're already seeing times between updates from 221 to 527 days.

Also, without a redesign, Apple usually doesn't change much more than the CPU and GPU. And why should they bother? All the other parts are still up to date and very competitive.
 
Also, quite simply, apple releases updates yearly. Processors are not the only thing worth updating in a laptop you know.

They used to update the laptops twice per year, back in the day when Intel's schedule was still regular. These days, sure, they don't update the laptops too often, but simply because there is nothing to update them with.
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Even skipping on GT3e und using GT2 iGPUs would be a better choice than not updating at all. The UHD620 is absolutely fast enough for pretty much all general tasks, and there are very few applications which actually can take advantage of the GT3e vs GT2 performance difference.

You think so? Imagine the headlines "New MacBook Pro 30% slower then the old one" :D
 
I already stated countless times that there are other options, like combining an integrated Vega chipset with a 15W 8th gen Kaby Lake R.

You make it sound like its a trivial thing to do. Intel has this fancy interconnect tech to pull it off on small surface. Its not something Apple can magically pull out of their pockets.
 
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You make it sound like its a trivial thing to do. Intel has this fancy interconnect tech to pull it off on small surface. Its not something Apple can magically pull out of their pockets.

Oh, they already did exactly this with the GeForce GT 9400M and GT 320M. They can do it on board, they don't need the questionable packaging technology Intel is using.

You think so? Imagine the headlines "New MacBook Pro 30% slower then the old one" :D

Wouldn't be the first time. The 2014 Mac Mini is significantly slower than the 2012 Mac Mini. Also, it would be much faster in most task the MacBook Pro is aimed at -- photo and video editing, graphic design, music production and so on.
 
If however you're desperate just for a quad-core, then go and buy one of the one's available. Note it will make no difference to anything performance wise however.

The quad-cores score 40% better on benchmarks that previous dual-core equivalents. So to you 40% more processing power = "no difference to anything" ?
 
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Oh, they already did exactly this with the GeForce GT 9400M and GT 320M. They can do it on board, they don't need the questionable packaging technology Intel is using.

That is a very different thing and has nothing to do with Apple per se. Those are stock integrated GPUs made by Nvidia — and they were integrated into the chipset, not onto the CPU package.
 
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