Intel releases Core i7 'Clarksfield' mobile processors - Page 2

I know what they mean...

The battery life posted is the BEST case scenario. When using simple single threaded tasks like web surfing (which doesn't require 4 cores, or even 3ghz) it's even worse than the 69 minutes. The 2ghz in brackets is the CPU model, not the speed it's running during the entire test. My MacBook CD 2ghz CPU is, right now, running at 998mhz, not 2ghz for example.

CPU throttling has been around since 'Cool 'n Quiet' (AMD). Perhaps even before then.

Ya, but you're talking about buying individual Mobos from a store, some of which are specialized/ tailored for gaming...

Apple's building these things in production runs of 10's of thousands, where huge economies of scale come into play.

That's true, although the differential is still the same... my point is that it has nothing to do with memory controllers on-die.

I can see i5 or Clarksfield in the iMac, but not in the MBP any time soon. That's my personal opinion.

At no point in this thread have I ever said I wanted the 2Ghz "extreme" Clarksfield chip that you've pointed out as having poor battery life (which operates at a 55W TDP).

I've been repeatedly mentioning the MID-RANGE Clarksfield (which is 1.73Ghz, has a 45W TDP, and is almost half the price!). And I can almost guarantee you, Snow Leopard will use those cores much more efficiently than Windows, which was used in those posted benchmarks.

The price of all the other tech (apart from the processors) is always going to be debatable (which I personally don't think is going to change much). Look at the transition from the old aluminum enclosures to the snazzy new unibody enclosures... the unibody design probably required significant R&D, time and investment, but sold for about as much as the previous model.

Though you're ignoring the other important point I was trying to make when I talked about moving the memory controllers on-die. Overall TDP, and how it could work in a MBP (below)...

Yeah don't forget the iMacs!

Oh boy, I have my finger crossed for this new i7 chip in the MBP & iMac as I need to replace both my old 17' MBP and G5 iMac :-) they are both a little long in the tooth

All of these machines are gaming laptops. Meaning they have 1 or even 2 very high end GPUs. I wouldn't take much from their battery life numbers. Put a GPU typically used in a MBP in there and you will see a huge difference.

Well, if you have a 26" iMac all-in-one surely they could actually use some desktop parts in there. It doesn't have to be so gawddammned thin. It is heavy anyways because of the screen, glass and aluminium. Making it thinner, why oh why.

Mobile gaming is still somewhat of a niche market. I looked at mobile gaming PC laptops, all-in-ones, and for gaming, a desktop with value-for-money desktop parts and my 21" screen and I'm good to go. That or an Xbox360.

Besides blowing cash on Clarksfield laptops for the CPU is just stupid, I think, the GPU IS WHAT REALLY MATTERS. A Core2Duo Penryn at 2.6ghz or so is more than enough. You need a good GPU to get smooth framerates. Intel has surged forward but it is the new masters of the reality distortion field.

And yeah. Battery life.

As a poster mentioned. Given the same GPU Clarksfield isn't going to magically give you tens of extra frames per second.

And yeah, ugly plastic PC laptops. Hard for me to go back to plastic laptops now with holes and ports all over the place. For gaming anyway, blowing cash on gaming laptops is just money down the toilet. My PC tower isn't pretty or quiet or cool but it is powerful and gets the job done.

Just waiting for the ATI 4870 1GB to drop in price (now that ATI Evergreen is out) and Boom! 1920x1080 gaming is rocking.

Not that there are fantastic PC titles nowadays, so many console ports WITH NO BL**DY ANTIALIASING. RAPE. eg. Wolfenstein (not bad actually), Batman (Nvidia AA only - WTFing ripoff) and Dead Space (luckily it was a great game)... Prototype with AA kept crashing on me (rubbish game, in my view). Need for Speed Shift - look up black screen crash on PC ~ what a wonderful job they did with the PC version of that... You have to run the game in Win98 compatibility mode if you get the black screen crash.

That's why thank goodness there's AMD.

Sorry mate, I think there is a 0.001% chance the iMac this year will have Clarksfield. Arrandale next year, 2 core (and possibly, just maybe, 4 core)... is more likely. In the current profit model for Apple I don't think Clarksfield will make sense.

The iMac if it is refreshed this year will be higher spec CPU but still Core2Duo, maybe some GPU updates, new enclosure, price drop, maybe 28" screen, that's all I can think off.

IMHO. I could be wrong though. Apple has been weird this year with Steve's somewhat-so somewhat-not-so-direct involvement. Global iPhone 3GS shortage, for example, is still quite bad.

But the power management must be very bad on those laptops because it is at idle and the GPU should be throttled down. Though you do have a point, some discrete powerful GPUs do not throttle down enough at idle, they still use battery quite a bit.

I am confused by the terrible battery life. Is it CPU or GPU or Windows/ laptop hardware power management issues?

That's right ! Changing the GPU from NVIDIA to Intel will drop the game perfomance
in two or three times! Integrated graphics sucks! Apple, don't go back to the past!

If the iMacs are going to be quad-core then Snow Leopard came just in time. Sweet!

There's not even a need for the 4870, as my humble and ancient 512Mb 8800GT with Q6600 (stock speeds) runs most games (Dead Space, COD4, BioShock, Resident Evil 5, Arkham Asylum, Sims III, TF2, Mass Effect, etc.) at 1080p just fine (all settings maxed out for those games). Only a few titles are too demanding and require slightly lower quality settings at 1080p (Far Cry 2, Crysis, GTV IV, etc.).

I can't wait to upgrade to something like the upcoming GTX300s though. Then there will be no game that I can't max out.

Do we even expect a MBP refresh any time soon?

The whole MBP line was refreshed in June.

I'm not ignoring it, I agree with it - but like most posters I don't go through the forum pointing out what I agree with. I disagreed with the idea that on-chip memory controllers lower the price of Motherboards.

Yea... Dead Space, Arkham is fine. TF2 as well since it is the delightful Source engine. Need For Speed: Shift, Wolfenstein, FarCry2 needs a decent 1GB card to be able to play at max settings at 1080p. FarCry2 because DX10 has some nice graphics, really nice... NFS:Shift and Wolfenstein because they are somewhat dodgy console ports.

The 8800GT is one of the best heritage of Nvidia's tech. Still alive as rebranded 9 series, rebranded to GTS 200 something-or-other... ... Nvidia 2008 and the 8 series... Some of the best stuff Nvidia has come up with, and since then nothing really up to that mark. Look how huge the GTX280, 260, etc are. Nvidia still not down to 40nm... and it's almost October 2009.

The GTX280 etc (non G80~ based) line appears to have missed the mark because the GTX300 is supposed to be totally new again.

The GTX300s... We'll have to see what Nvidia shoots back with. ATI's 5000 series is set to do some damage. Of course, Nvidia should never be counted out.

BTW I find though since I am playing on a 21" 16:9 screen on my desk now I am more sensitive to frame rates. I'm willing to drop USD $150 (not a penny more... I think) for some killer 1080p 16XAF 8XAA stuff. I might have to wait to middle of 2010 :-0 ... With so many PC titles console ports nowadays, antialiasing is hard to come by (the games don't support it and it is hard to "force" it through PC GPU drivers) so maybe I can kiss goodbye to antialiasing... won't need that feature on PC GPUs.

Ah, gamer and GPU talk. Seems so out of place on a Mac forum.

Those numbers are misleading because, excluding the Asus, those other notebooks are using desktop parts in a really thick notebook chassis. Look at the specs and SKUs on the processors - they're desktop processor SKUs. Plus Xeon in a notebook? There is no mobile Xeon processor.

You have to compare apples to apples (pun intended)

I agree. One thing people have to consider is before the i7 even gets in a Mac, NVIDIA or ATI is going to have to develop a custom chipset for Apple AFTER getting licensed to do so by Intel. That alone is going to take 6 months at a minimum to happen. All that's out now is Intel chipsets with either integrated Intel graphics or no graphics at all. The only thing we'll see Arrandale in I think is the low-end Macbook, the Mac Mini, and the MacBook Air. Everything else should get a Clarksfield eventually as it came out first. Clarksfield doesn't make a lot of sense given the target market of those devices, so that's why I think we'll see Arrandale there.

Also the new Core i5 and i7 processors wouldn't take share away from Mac Pros because they use Xeons. Mac Pros are a different class of hardware from normal desktops. I think a higher-end i7 could appear in a low-end Mac Pro revision though to lower the cost of entry on the Mac Pro.

However, for people that don't need that class of machine, that entry-level cost is a major factor right now. We're looking at refreshing our PowerMac G5s, and management is leaning to switching to PCs because we can get Core i7 workstations cheaper than even the lowest cost Mac Pro. They also point to the new i7s showing better performance than the current Mac Pro Xeons as a reason to switch. More value for the dollar, especially in this economy. Apple isn't doing much to help my case to prevent a switch unfortunately.

Performance wise there is little difference.

The licensing issue between Intel and Nvidia is really more about the memory controller, and Nvidia's rights to manufacture it. Apple can still combine an i7 Clarksfield with whatever discrete GPU they want, now... not 6 months from now.

And besides the memory controller issue... who wants to wait around for Larrabee, the integrated graphics coming in Arrandale? Intel's graphics technology is horribly slow, and far behind the competition. Any of the discrete mobile GPU's from Nvidia will blow Larrabee away. Sure, Larrabee will be energy efficient, because it lacks performance... say goodbye to playing newer games with it, or hardware accelerating intensive graphics apps.

With the advent of OpenCL, I'd rather have a fast discrete GPU. Apple's eventually going to re-write portions of their pro apps in OpenCL, to unleash all the cores/ power hidden in those GPUs.

Not to mention that they went to all this effort for this thing called Grand Central Dispatch that really needs more than 2 cores to shine. Moving at least the 17" MBP to the i7 makes sense and probably the entire line up. Then leave the white macbook and mini on Core 2 Duo.

My exact thoughts as well.

Some people are forgetting that when the first C2D MPB's came out, they got a speed bump only six or seven months later with higher RAM capacity.

There's no mobile Xeon, but there is quite a nice hyperthreaded quad core that uses only 60W and is priced in line with the chips Apple currently uses. That's not low enough for notebook use, but it's only a few watts higher than the current top end iMac needs to power its Core 2 Duo and supporting chipset.

This is an awkward point for a company like Apple that relies entirely on mobile processors because the desktop chips are clocking almost 50% higher at the same price point. Not only that, but the Intel roadmap shows the next chips on deck are low cost dual core ones so even next spring there will be no mobile chip in the same ball park as the desktop chips.

With a gap like that you'd think Apple would be doing something about it and they are. They're trying to convince the world that nobody needs performance, that being "green" is all that matters now. Well I replaced one of the most power hungry Macs ever made with the model that uses the least electricity and couldn't see any difference on my electric bill. Being green isn't saving me any significant amount of money so I'm back to wishing I had a big tower I could fill with hard drives. Too bad everyone except Apple makes one I could afford.

That's a big ass laptop!

The memory controller issue doesn't make any sense here with the i7 Clarksfield because it is embedded in the processor. The Intel Graphics controller is still part of the chipset for mobile i7:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3647&p=2

With Apple's recent trend of outsourcing chipset design to NVIDIA, they would have to wait for NVIDIA to design the chipsets with the embedded 9600GT or GT1xx or GT2xx series mobile processors - unless they switch back to ATI again and go with discrete graphics. Clearly Apple has a reason for using embedded NVIDIA chipsets; my guess is it has to do with power consumption and the overall thickness of the mainboard stack in a mobile device. They could go with actual discrete graphics, but that would increase the thickness of their offerings which is not an option for Apple given their design goals.

Arrandale is irrelevant at this point because its not due out till January so we wouldn't see any products that use them till Summer 2010 at the earliest. Clarksfield should be making its appearance by then in Apple products which will be a good thing.

Ummm... that's what I'm saying (or have said previously in this thread).

Another poster mentioned that the licensing issue was going to take 6 months to resolve before we see Intel i7 and Nvidia based laptops (I don't think he fully understood the issue). That's why I said it was a licensing issue over the memory controller... but Apple can still combine a Clarksfield i7 with whatever DISCRETE graphics they want.

Though I think you need to read up on the current MacBook Pro. It already has a discrete Nvidia GPU in it... so I don't think Apple's worried from a design perspective.

And as I said before, I don't want to wait for Arrandale.

Just got one of Dell's promo emails, went to the site to check it out and build one for price comparison. They just added core i7 to their laptop offerings. Studio XPS 16, 4 gig ram, WLED 1080p screen, discreet radeon 4670 1 Gig starting at 1299.00. I'd say that's VERY WELL under 2k. It's damn hard to justify a macbook pro at twice the price for a laptop that will be obsolete in 3 years or so.

There are discreet graphics...

I'm not going to engage the bulk of your argument (I don't even necessarily disagree), but I would like to point out that "being green" has to do with the cumulative impact of a great many users, and not you personally shaving a few cents off your power bill.

I agree. The laptop market's becoming increasingly competitive, with more and more people buying notebooks instead of desktops. Apple's going to be hard-pressed to add something more powerful to their mobile line-up, to offer their "Pro" market... like the above product, and at a price closer to par (though I don't mind paying a little "Apple tax" for a stylish form factor). I think a mid-range i7 Clarksfield and a faster discrete gpu are the way to go.

Yeah, I don't mind paying an Apple tax for OSX and a better designed product, but 100% premium? This "pro" thing is a little much. The thing doesn't cook dinner, do my laundry and give me a massage - it's just a tool. I'll keep buying iPhones and iMacs (still a little too steep, but worth it to me), but you won't see any mac laptops or mac pros in my grubby paws except unless my employer is buyin.

I hope you don't intend to do any gaming because the XPS is fantastic on the CPU side but you'd want a Radeon 4870 1GB or 4890 1GB to go with that... Or the new 5870 1GB.

But yeah, if for desktop use only and gaming it is hard to justify a Macbook Pro.

OH WAIT. YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT A LAPTOP. I stand corrected

The 4670 is a bit on the weaker side still though, I wouldn't mind, for gaming, a Core2Quad laptop with a slightly better 1GB ATI discrete card. The mobile version of the 4770 for example...

But of course if you're not using it a lot for gaming then the it's a different story.

Anyways... Interesting.

But for day to day "life" and "work" stuff, living with Windows all the time, especially Vista, is a blo*dy nightmare. Windows 7, not so bad, but nothing, nothing compared to Leopard or Snow Leopard. Nothing comes close.

Currently I think maybe only the 28" iMac will have the Clarksfield...


That is a big a** monstrosity alright. OMFG.

You DO realize that some of us do more than play games with our macs? Clarksfield would be a useful thing for some of those things.