Intel shows off 4th-gen Core processors bound for Apple's MacBook lineup

2»

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 28
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,524moderator
    Do we still get a good performance upgrade, or was it sacrificed for energy savings?

    It's both really as they can scale it as they need it. There is a good graphics demo of Haswell here:


    [VIDEO]


    They are running Unigine Heaven benchmark on chips targeted at Ultrabooks. You can see the Ivy Bridge HD 4000 choking quite badly. It gets under 15 FPS. You can see it runs very smoothly on the other one though and is easily real-time (25-30 FPS). They then show it running at 7W and it still gets a higher FPS than Ivy Bridge running at 17W.

    Machines like the MBA will still throttle down when they get too hot but it shouldn't have nearly as bad an effect on what you're doing. For all of the low-end models like the Mini, 13" MBP etc, if they can sustain Heaven running in real-time for that demo in 17W, their power envelopes should allow double the sustained performance of Ivy Bridge. This does mean the CPU might not go up much but given that they can ramp the GPU down so low, they can sustain higher clocks on the CPU side. I'm still not expecting more than 15% improvement on the CPU.
    Touch on laptops is nothing more than a useless random list on the "feature sheet" that people are learning to ignore

    I see it as more of a bridging mechanism. It seems to me that tablets will be the new ultrabooks for a lot of people so allowing developers to incorporate touch features without having to switch fully to a less productive platform. I don't expect the features to be used much in a laptop form factor in much the same way portait orientation in a desktop display doesn't get used much but it's nicer to have the feature than not. If you put the same spec laptop with touch next to one without, the only difference is that the touch one has an extra feature.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 22 of 28

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by LighteningKid View Post


    Do we still get a good performance upgrade, or was it sacrificed for energy savings?



     


    I'm on an early 2011 (1st-gen Thunderbolt) MBP with what was then the top-of-the-line CPU (2.3ghz Quad i7), slow by today's standards and yet this thing screams. However, my battery life is anemic (which may have something to do with the fact that at least 2/3rds of my time spend on this machine involves running W7 on Parallels with two instances of Apache and MySQL running, one each in the host and guest OSes). With all this stuff going on, I get roughly two hours of battery (although I can sometimes coax three). Even with my guest OS and MySQL shut down I generally don't get more than 4 hours of battery. This on a laptop advertised to get eight.


     


    I'd be thrilled if I could get another hour or two of battery life at the expense of a few extra CPU cycles per second.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 23 of 28
    evilutionevilution Posts: 1,399member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


     


    "MacBook Air ripoff" is the official definition.



    Exactly that. Why Apple haven't jumped all over these for copying i'll never know.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 24 of 28
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    evilution wrote: »
    Exactly that. Why Apple haven't jumped all over these for copying i'll never know.

    I'm not sure what Apple could sue for. The use of CULV processors and eschewing of the ODD has made them more inline with the MBA look and feel but I don't see how any of that is protectable. All the ones I've seen look different enough to me and not an attempt at a Chinese knockoff.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 25 of 28
    vorsosvorsos Posts: 302member


    I can't speak for Apple, but these are Air clones in appearance only. They still don't compete on build quality; my SO's metal Macbook has dents that would shatter most Ultrabooks. To say nothing of usability; find a trackpad that is reviewed higher than Apple's.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 26 of 28
    v5vv5v Posts: 1,357member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post



    If that's the way it works out then there would be no objection. However, what has happened in the past was that something that was optional at first eventually became nearly required in order to get your work done. Remember when the mouse was optional on PCs and the same statement could be made ("You don't have to use it if you don't want")?


     


    Understood. Of course, over the period of time that the mouse went from "optional" to "essential" the UI, software design and OS all evolved significantly, so that using a mouse was no longer a real inconvenience, and all major apps continue, to this day, to provide keyboard shortcuts for most functions.


     


    I would expect touch on laptops to follow the same path. Just another alternative for now, used mostly in collaborative settings, perhaps becoming more commonplace only if/when the UI evolves in a way that makes it genuinely useful.


     


    I don't think it's really a big deal personally, but I occasionally run across situations when I think it would be helpful to be able to perform some basic operations by touching the screen. Mostly they occur when two or more people are looking at something together, and someone is pointing at the screen already. If they could push a button or zoom in or go back -- simple things like that -- it would be handy, that's all.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 27 of 28
    Ok they require a touch screen on ultru books, well something Steve jobs refused to support, a computer that has real keyboard touch screen, I would prefer this to be in future but the modern laptops, (apple) are better than a touch screen interface.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 28 of 28
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Rogifan View Post



    I think Sony would object to Intel saying they invented the "Ultrabook". image all Intel invented was the stupid name. Then PC OEM's said lets make a laptop that looks like a MBA/MBP, slap a premium price on it, give it this new name and it will get all the buzz in the media. image




    I didn't expect anyone to remember Sony's ultra portables. They were quite expensive relative to their performance, which is partly why fewer people know about them. Computing requirements haven't scaled equally with hardware, so it's left a decent niche for this kind of product. Asus released an IPS option in theirs. I don't think Apple will do that for a while, as they won't want to cost themselves sales of the rMBPs.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
Sign In or Register to comment.