Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Who would be interested in a quad core 13"?

E

Eric-PTEK

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 3, 2009
450
2
I carry my 13" late 2014 2.8ghz i7 MB Pro Retina 13" for photography.

Size is very important. Camera bag, not a lot of space to setup and review, lots of times in the driver seat of the car with the seat back and steering wheel up.

It has served me pretty well but have 2 of the new 50MP Canon's coming in a week and doing testing with the 50mp images its too slow for building previews, like 2.5 times slower.

So I decided to move to a quad core. Bought a new MB Pro 15" 2.5ghz Quad Core...speed is fine but its just too big. Weight and while the extra screen real estate is nice its just too big everywhere else.

I realize this may be more of a niche market but I wish they did a quad core in the 13". I'd give up battery life to be able to do it.

Anyone else?
 
  • Like
Reactions: JamesPDX and mlts22
Eric-PTEK said:
I carry my 13" late 2014 2.8ghz i7 MB Pro Retina 13" for photography.

Size is very important. Camera bag, not a lot of space to setup and review, lots of times in the driver seat of the car with the seat back and steering wheel up.

It has served me pretty well but have 2 of the new 50MP Canon's coming in a week and doing testing with the 50mp images its too slow for building previews, like 2.5 times slower.

So I decided to move to a quad core. Bought a new MB Pro 15" 2.5ghz Quad Core...speed is fine but its just too big. Weight and while the extra screen real estate is nice its just too big everywhere else.

I realize this may be more of a niche market but I wish they did a quad core in the 13". I'd give up battery life to be able to do it.

Anyone else?
Click to expand...
Not gonna happen until they can bring the TDP of the quad core CPUs down to that of the dual core ones.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Queen6
With every Tick, Intel puts about twice as many transistors onto the die. The reason they haven't yet gone to quad-core in the U-series is because most of the additional transistors are allocated to improving GPU performance. Quite a few are also allocated for improving I/O bandwidth. I think there is a good chance that we'll see quad-core Cannonlake-U processors, probably in 2017.
 
I'd buy a quad core 13-inch if it was possible too... I don't need first class graphics, but sometimes I need some horsepower .... dual core is doing good for daily use, but not for certain situations... 15 is not an option for the size....
 
I understand your points but a Quadcore 13inch probably won't have a decent battery life.
I have a 13inch but i start to think my next one should be a 15inch, not because i need a quadcore but because of the screen real estate and tbh coming from windows all macbooks are super light and slim.

I think it would be super great to have 2 documents next to each other on a laptop screen.

When i think about photographers i dont understand why you use the 13inch? i mean especially you should need the larger screen? dont you?
 
The Question is, do people really want a Macbook with shorter battery life?
I dont own an iphone but the constant complains about battery life are a bit ridiculous.
And at the same time people want a quadcore 13inch macbook with 6-8 hours battery life? instead of 12h?

I think there is a chance for a quadcore 13inch, just because apple has to differentiate the Macbook PRO and the Macbook Retina when they phase out the Macbook Air but this will only happen when they redesign the Pro with skylake.
And with the redesign apple will be able to use the new slim keyboard/trackpad + battery cells but they would have to keep some thickness for the battery of a quadcore processor.

So will apple make the Pro thick enough for a quadcore? who knows...
 
I reckon it'll happen one day, it will have to when dual core just isn't cutting it any more.

Incidentally the future of CPU architecture is multi core, you'll see this more nowadays than increased clock speeds, with Moore's law starting to take a backseat.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mlts22
First I do not understand what the big deal is with discrete graphics on a laptop. I do see that LR6 does support GPU acceleration but no documentation on how GPU performance offsets CPU performance. Building 1:1 previews is what I need performance wise, now there discrete graphics and a dual core might provide the same performance as a quad core.

I see no difference at all between the MBr15 with AMD and the 13 I'm typing on right now as far as responsiveness, in Lightroom, etc.

From looking around it seems no one makes the laptop I am looking for, Apple or otherwise.

Getting a 4K screen would make the move to a 15 easier, there is enough value in the screen to outweigh the size but after looking at the Dell XPS its bigger, heavier, and has less battery life.

There are plenty of 13" 3200x1800 laptops but the screen quality on a lot of those as far as color accuracy is poor.
 
SE43 said:
I reckon it'll happen one day, it will have to when dual core just isn't cutting it any more.

Incidentally the future of CPU architecture is multi core, you'll see this more nowadays than increased clock speeds, with Moore's law starting to take a backseat.
Click to expand...
Moore's law states, that the number of transistors in a square inch will double roughly every two years. This is still fairly accurate.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mlts22
laurihoefs said:
Moore's law states, that the number of transistors in a square inch will double roughly every two years. This is still fairly accurate.
Click to expand...

I am fully aware what Moore's law states, and presently yes, Moore's law is still fairly accurate, but it will not be very long before it is near impossible to shrink transistors beyond a certain point.

My point being eventually Moore's law will come to an end, maybe not right now but definitely in the not so distant future.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mlts22
SE43 said:
I am fully aware what Moore's law states, and presently yes, Moore's law is still fairly accurate, but it will not be very long before it is near impossible to shrink transistors beyond a certain point.

My point being eventually Moore's law will come to an end, maybe not right now but definitely in the not so distant future.
Click to expand...

I remember seeing predictions of the demise of Moore's law popping up every now and then for a couple of decades. So far the industry has been able to invent and innovate quickly enough to keep up with the law.

But what does it mean, if at some point in the near future the transistor budget does not grow as quickly, as it has in the past? You said earlier:
SE43 said:
Incidentally the future of CPU architecture is multi core, you'll see this more nowadays than increased clock speeds, with Moore's law starting to take a backseat.
Click to expand...
Not being able to increase the transistor count, and thus complexity, increasing clock speed might actually be the way to increase performance. Instead of more cores and larger caches, we might start seeing higher clock speeds again. Or, we might just as well start seeing larger or even layered chips.

I quess we'll just have to wait and see which predictions will eventually be most accurate.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mlts22
No brainer. Yes. Bring me MoooEEEWWWERRRRR PooowWWWWERRRRR please! More cpus. More gpus. moe moe moe betterer! :)

TLDR: yes please.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mlts22
Considering how poorly I've observed Lightroom (even Lr 6) keep 4 cores busy when rendering previews, it's likely that the switch from a 28W CPU at a (single core Turbo Boost) clock speed of 3.3GHz to a 48W CPU (i.e. nearly double the TDP) at 3.7Ghz is what's getting you an improvement, not the extra 2 cores/4 threads.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mlts22
I would love a Quad core in a 13in, I would also love a dGPU in the 13in. But, its probably not going to happen any time soon.

The reason being that Apple's computers are a balance of performance vs battery vs design. Meaning that the 4core would draw more power lowering the battery life. I don't see apple giving a quad core option then having to advertise "New Model with 1-2 hours less battery life" lol. This is one of the big reasons I wish they would bring back the 17in. Not only would it be amazing to have a 17in retina display. But, it would the batteries would be larger giving more possibilities for even fast CPU's and GPU's
 
I'd buy it, just because I do heavy virtualization, and the VMs could go play on two cores while the machine's OS and applications I'm using directly have the other two.

I like the 13" form factor. Big enough to be a desktop replacement, small enough to take lots of places, such as a campervan where space is at a premium.
 
Cuniac said:
I would love a Quad core in a 13in, I would also love a dGPU in the 13in. But, its probably not going to happen any time soon.
Click to expand...
Apple will never again put a discrete GPU into a 13" laptop. The vector of progress in integrated circuits has always been and remains ever increasing integration. The mid-2015 15" MBP may be the last Apple laptop to ever get a discrete GPU. Or there might be one more. The days of mobile discrete GPUs are just about over.
 
Apple will provide a quad core 13 inch rMBP when intel supply quad core u class processors (15-28w processors rather than 47w H class quad cores found in the 15 inch rMBP) to go in them, that won't be with skylake so it'll be canonlake at the earliest.
 
Once Skylake is here its Quads should not consume any more battery life than dual cores. An additional core needs virtually no power off and even very little in the lower power states. The reason the quads are worse in battery life is mostly that the dual cores already have a fully integrated SoC and the quads do not. With Skylake's focus on platform power that should mean very good things for quad core battery efficiency under low load.

But Samuelsan2001 is right, if Intel does not release any 28W quad cores, there is just no chance. In theory TDP is adjustable and quad cores in 28W is easily doable with slightly lowered clock rates, but there is always the issue with Intel positioning quad cores differently with i7 moniker and higher prices. They should really release a 28W i7 quad and leave the i5 dual. But just because they could do it, does not mean they will do it. So far all publish roadmap spec rumors say there won't be such a quad core.

With 64MB eDRAM and DDR4 there will at least be a decent upgrade to GPU performance.
 
I would definitely be interested in a quad core 13. I'm trying to sell my late 2013 13' rMBP and mid 2012 cMBP to buy the refreshed 15" with the dGPU but I'd put that on hold if Apple were to announce a quad core 13.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back