I have a late 2015 iMac fully loaded and a mid 2017 MBP 15 inch fully loaded. On Geekbench, the GPU scores of the MBP are about half of the iMac for OpenCL and 1/8 the speed for Metal. For CPU, both i7 (imac=6700; MBP=7700), the MBP is scored 945 on single-core and 3619 multi-core when the iMac late 2015 scored 1020/4074. I would think a machine that's 1.5-2years newer would be a lot faster, not 1/2 as fast. Both are running the same programs in the background and on the latest 10.15.7. Any ideas? Thanks.
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Why Mid 2017 MBP slower than Late 2015 iMac?
- Thread starter legaleye3000
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Thanks for all of the replies. So if I was looking to get a new machine and it’s between the latest iMac and latest MBP, the iMac will always be faster? Thanks.
It depends on the iMac you are considering and the specs. The iMac has product levels offering anywhere between 2 CPU cores and 10 cores, 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB, and integrated graphics only up through powerful desktop class GPUs. If you are talking about a fully specced out iMac versus a fully specced out MacBook Pro, then the iMac will have a clear and unquestionable advantage. Depending on the situation, the iMac Pro may be worth considering as well.
I was looking to consolidate from an iMac and mbp to just a mbp that is docked and hooked up to 2 monitors. When I need to travel, I just u hook and go. However, if there’s a considerable speed disadvantage in doing this, maybe I’ll just stay with the 2 machines...
Pound for pound, an iMac will be faster than a MacBook Pro. That being said, a MBP with an 8-core CPU and 8 GB GPU will still do very well if you favor portability over performance.
As others have said here: desktop chips.
I think a lot of people don't realise that a laptop chip- even one with the same number as a desktop chip, is nothing like as performant.
Laptop chips are constrained by voltage/power, space, heat dissipation so they have a reduced performance.
Similarly graphics chips.
Furthermore, the trend has been to produce chips with more cores so multi-tasking is better, rather than having blistering fast high speed.
It's a bit like saying, your top speed is reduced on the freeway from 200 down to 150 but you have more lanes in town that are free so don't get held up in traffic jams so often. How often does driving over 150 matter to you? How often do you have open roads to do it (probably never?)
In other words, practically, the latest machines work better in every day tasks the way you use them every day (and they have way faster memory and Ram too) but they don't perform as well in what is essentially a computer drag race.
If you are playing a game and want 60fps, you will see a difference but would you buy a MBP for that?
But Apple have a fairly conservative attitude to chips. There are probably several reasons but they rarely use the latest and like to make sure what they use have really solid drivers.
I know people do but when you look at how well the Play Station and X-box do that so cheaply, I've never understood why.
If you are doing really intensive tasks that need high clock speed you may see a difference. Applying a sharpening filter for instance may take a few seconds longer on a big file. Video editing.
Otherwise, forget it and enjoy your machine because you probably won't notice the difference and you're going to have a pretty smooth performance pretty much all the time unless you are unlucky for some reason.
I think a lot of people don't realise that a laptop chip- even one with the same number as a desktop chip, is nothing like as performant.
Laptop chips are constrained by voltage/power, space, heat dissipation so they have a reduced performance.
Similarly graphics chips.
Furthermore, the trend has been to produce chips with more cores so multi-tasking is better, rather than having blistering fast high speed.
It's a bit like saying, your top speed is reduced on the freeway from 200 down to 150 but you have more lanes in town that are free so don't get held up in traffic jams so often. How often does driving over 150 matter to you? How often do you have open roads to do it (probably never?)
In other words, practically, the latest machines work better in every day tasks the way you use them every day (and they have way faster memory and Ram too) but they don't perform as well in what is essentially a computer drag race.
If you are playing a game and want 60fps, you will see a difference but would you buy a MBP for that?
But Apple have a fairly conservative attitude to chips. There are probably several reasons but they rarely use the latest and like to make sure what they use have really solid drivers.
I know people do but when you look at how well the Play Station and X-box do that so cheaply, I've never understood why.
If you are doing really intensive tasks that need high clock speed you may see a difference. Applying a sharpening filter for instance may take a few seconds longer on a big file. Video editing.
Otherwise, forget it and enjoy your machine because you probably won't notice the difference and you're going to have a pretty smooth performance pretty much all the time unless you are unlucky for some reason.
They have to do this because of the design and aesthetics of the rest of the hardware. Sleek looks come at the cost of cooling capability.
Because every respective console has identical hardware so it's much easier to optimize the software to take advantage of it. On PC, it's not as simple because of the literal billions of possible combinations, from the big spender who has an i9 10900K and RTX 3090 SLI to the beginner rocking a used Dell Optiplex with an i5 2500 with a GTX 750 they bought on Craigslist.