Probably new screen technology. The GPU might be more power efficient too.
When I wrote my earlier message I hadn't noticed that the battery capacity increased: was 95 Watt-hour, now 99.5. That might be due in part to the Force Touch trackpad leaving a little more space for a bigger battery.
A 4.7% increase in battery capacity doesn't explain a whole hour, but it might just be a question of rounding - perhaps it was something like 8.6 hours for the old model (truncated to 8 hours as rounding up would be misleading), but the new one can get just over 9 hours on the same test.
The battery improvement also applies to the model without the GPU, so if it isn't just the bigger battery, something else in the base model must have improved. The screen seems unlikely without Phil Schiller waxing lyrical about it, but there could be minor tweaks like throttling the processor slightly earlier.
Unfortunately Monday's rumour was true. What a colossal letdown. I was rooting for a WWDC announcement of a revamped, Broadwell or even Skylake and DDR4 fitted MBP 15" to replace my 3yr old MBP. Preferably in space grey. Anything but such a lame incremental update. Very, very disappointed.
Great! I bought the 15 " MBPR mid 2014 a few weeks back for $1820 and the only noticeable thing they refreshed in the 2015 version is the Force Touch Trackpad and the MBPR is now for $1999. I am much relieved that I didn't wait for the newer model and saved $180 too that I can spend on some other accessories.
I got the 2014 in April for 2199.- instead of now 2699.-
Sure the new GPU is nice, but force touch? I don't care. And the SSD speed increase is irrelevant in everyday use. Saved 500.-, might even be able to sell the thing for a profit now, if I wanted.
Seems unlikely. If you look at the current 15" MB Pro, you can't really make it any thinner without removing various ports that Apple's not yet ready to remove from the Pro line.
No shit. Yeah, what a shame Apple couldn't pull this new processor out of their ass, since it hasn't been supplied by Intel yet. Tim Cook must go, right? For those of us aware that Broadwell for this form factor is not avaialble yet, actually planning to use this new machine for work, 2.5X SSD, 80% faster discreet graphics, faster CPU speeds, and improved battery life are pretty significant changes. There is no "shame" here.
I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed. I was certain it would be a Broadwell chipset, and so were many other astute observers. That said, it is a significant upgrade. I am in the market or soon will be. My dilemma now is that I've waited so long already...why not wait for Skylake?
I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed. I was certain it would be a Broadwell chipset, and so were many other astute observers. That said, it is a significant upgrade. I am in the market or soon will be. My dilemma now is that I've waited so long already...why not wait for Skylake?
Once they release a Skylake version they will be on the verge of some other tempting feature like 50% better battery life, wireless charging, Quadrasonic sound, Unobtanium capacitors, or who-knows-what. There's always something better coming up.
Once they release a Skylake version they will be on the verge of some other tempting feature like 50% better battery life, wireless charging, Quadrasonic sound, Unobtanium capacitors, or who-knows-what. There's always something better coming up.
It might surprise you to know that I generally agree with that thinking. I've been critical of those who scream at Apple over upgrades they expected but didn't get, claiming they "need" them. My problem here is that Haswell will be two generations old by this October. I was all over the board telling people that there was no way Apple would introduce Skylake MacBook Pros before early next year or possibly even the middle of next year. But, this was predicated on the assumption that I was all over the board telling people there was no way Apple would introduce Skylake MacBook Pros before early next year or possibly even the middle of next year. But, this was predicated on the assumption that Broadwell would be released in the recent refresh. I would say the likelihood of this being a very short upgrade cycle. I could now see Apple releasing a Skylake based MacBook Pro as early as October. Given Skylake not only has new feature capabilities, but is supposed to be a very signifcant architecture improvement, I don't know that I want to be dropping two grand on an architecture that will be two generations old within six months to a year.
I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed. I was certain it would be a Broadwell chipset, and so were many other astute observers. That said, it is a significant upgrade. I am in the market or soon will be. My dilemma now is that I've waited so long already...why not wait for Skylake?
You might still end up waiting a while. I don't think Apple would have updated the gpu and trackpad if this wasn't meant to last for a while.
I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed. I was certain it would be a Broadwell chipset, and so were many other astute observers. That said, it is a significant upgrade. I am in the market or soon will be. My dilemma now is that I've waited so long already...why not wait for Skylake?
I'm not waiting. I have the 2012 (original Retina) MBP. I follow the rule of "Everything has to double," before I will upgrade. In this case the SSD is more than 2x faster than my current one (it is about 4x faster), the GPU is about twice as fast as my GeForce 650M (Apple says it's 80% faster than a 750M so I'm extrapolating) and it has 2GB of graphics mem instead of my current 1GB, and I have 8GB of main memory and it comes with 16GB standard.
The only thing that is a let down is the CPU, but I think the GPU and SSD are the system bottlenecks anyway not the CPU.
Also, I'm worried that the Skylake MBP will be a major redesign and they will try and make it super skinny (like the new MBP) and that may effect performance. So I'm just biting the bullet and getting this one.
I'm not waiting. I have the 2012 (original Retina) MBP. I follow the rule of "Everything has to double," before I will upgrade. In this case the SSD is more than 2x faster than my current one (it is about 4x faster), the GPU is about twice as fast as my GeForce 650M (Apple says it's 80% faster than a 750M so I'm extrapolating) and it has 2GB of graphics mem instead of my current 1GB, and I have 8GB of main memory and it comes with 16GB standard.
The only thing that is a let down is the CPU, but I think the GPU and SSD are the system bottlenecks anyway not the CPU.
Also, I'm worried that the Skylake MBP will be a major redesign and they will try and make it super skinny (like the new MBP) and that may effect performance. So I'm just biting the bullet and getting this one.
It's a good strategy to wait until everything at least doubles. I think Skylake will be a redesign but they can't get rid of the fan. The Macbook Air at its thickest point is 1.7cm and the rMBP is 1.8cm. The Macbook is 1.3cm.
I expect them to use the same metal hinge design as the MB, get rid of the illuminated logo, possibly add the other colors (space grey at least), switch to USB C, possibly drop mag-safe in favor of wireless charging and USB C for backup charging. If they can get PCIe to run over USB C's alt-mode then Thunderbolt can go because they should be able to run TB devices over it. If not, I expect TB 3. They can perhaps taper the body a little into a wedge and use the stepped batteries but it wouldn't be necessary. I expect they'll use the larger and more stable keyboard keys with neater backlighting. If they haven't already, they can update the displays with the improved electronics that allow the displays to use less power. They can get rid of the screws on the bottom with a new clasp design with a lip at the front, rubber seals and they'd just have notches to prevent the plate moving back against the clasps. Hopefully they won't solder the SSD on like the MB.
Skylake will bring DDR4 optionally. Apple could use different RAM but DDR4 allows them to go beyond 16GB so they can offer the higher up model with 24-32GB. This RAM is faster too so it will help the integrated graphics and they can boost integrated video memory to 2GB. There has been a rumor about Skylake having changeable cores that can switch between CPU-type cores and the type of cores in compute chips like Larrabee. That might offer benefits for parallel computing. The Skylake IGP should be 72EUs in a 45W chips, which is 80% more than the current models. They will probably underclock them to save power but this should be comparable to the AMD.
The AMD GPU they used in the MBP is only 50-70% faster than the 750M according to their benchmarks. Blogs said 80% but Apple's page says 70%:
Although it was 70% faster than the 750M, the 750M is pretty much the same chip as the 650M, NVidia just renames them every two years now and clocks them a bit differently. The 750M is actually slower than the 650M in some tests but mostly about 5-10% faster. The 850M is about 100% faster and the 950M is the same but the power consumption is about 10W higher. Apple's 70% comes from low quality graphics in Tomb Raider too. When they go to high quality in the Batman game, it drops to 50%. The 2014 R9 M275 is 60W and is a little slower than the 750M:
It would be quite a jump to drop the TDP to the 30-40W range and increase performance by 70% in a single year. If it runs hot like the 2011 model, I'd wait until the Skylake model and just get the Skylake Iris Pro, which should have a similar perform boost and all the other benefits. October is too soon to launch them after this update but they can announce it in October and ship in December.
Thanks for the advice Marvin. Based on what you said I think I should probably wait at least for some independent testing of the GPU in the new MBP. If it is close to 2x what I have I will go ahead, but if it's only really the SSD that will be massively faster, maybe the purchase isn't worth it. Actually part of the reason I am worried about the Skylake MBPs being cut down too much is your past confidence that they will switch to purely iGPUs at some point.
I think I should probably wait at least for some independent testing of the GPU in the new MBP. If it is close to 2x what I have I will go ahead, but if it's only really the SSD that will be massively faster, maybe the purchase isn't worth it.
For computation, it's higher than the 750M - AMD supports OpenCL better so some tests come out a lot better. It's not double in the graphics performance tests. If you look at Cinebench OpenGL, it's 60FPS vs 52 on the 650M, 750M is about 60 too and the 950M gets about 80FPS. A couple of tests were close to 60% higher but most were just 25% over the 750M. The AMD GPU is based on their 2012 architecture. I don't expect it to be all that power efficient.
For compute tasks like FCPX, Da Vinci, Adobe OpenCL tasks, the AMD should provide a decent boost but not for real-time graphics and I think it'll run pretty hot.
For 3DMark 11 it ran 90% faster than Iris Pro 5200 and 44% faster than the 750M. Some other real-time results are here with the M270X on the right:
Comparing the graphics scores, they are about 25% more except the last one. Physics scores are barely 5% different but some tests are optimized better for certain GPUs. Intel says that in 3DMark 11, Skylake scores 50% higher than Broadwell. We don't have Broadwell quad-core to compare but the Broadwell GPU in the dual-core was 50% higher than Haswell.
If Skylake manages to be 50% + 50% higher than Haswell then we're looking at 1.5 x 1.5 = 2.25x 1940 3dMark 11 = 4365 vs 3682 for the AMD GPU. That would probably be best-case but say they managed 25% + 25%, it would be 3031 and this performance is all in a 45W chip total.
I also think they will gain over older Iris Pros from the higher DDR4 memory bandwidth and because it's an IGP, you get the battery savings in Bootcamp, no GPU switching, a lot less chance of what happened in 2011 happening.
Actually part of the reason I am worried about the Skylake MBPs being cut down too much is your past confidence that they will switch to purely iGPUs at some point.
If they deliver on the above performance, there's nothing to worry about with IGPs. AMD and NVidia are going to struggle advancing their GPUs. NVidia already cut back on their plans and are moving to improving memory bandwidth instead. For laptops, integrated graphics are the way to go.
A Skylake MBP with 45W GT4e Iris Pro, DDR4 RAM, wireless charging and data, 5K display output would be a pretty amazing laptop. If Intel comes through with 3D NAND to deliver 1TB for $250, that would be even better. I guess they could solder the SSD in if they had that kind of NAND but I still prefer removable storage. 2GB/s speeds are amazing, the OS is booting up in 6 seconds.
Again, thanks for the info and links. I went to my local Apple Store today and they had some, but stock was so tight they said they weren't putting any out on display, based on the logic that they looked the same as the old ones anyway (of which they had a couple left). Which was no good for me because I was going to try and find a way to benchmark the GPU! But from your links it looks like some other people have already done it. Maybe I need to readjust my thinking on what integrated GPUs are capable of (future ones at least).
Edit: Wow, the Anand article with it's GPU-Z screenshot is the most damning. There had been rumours of a new AMD mobile product called STRATOS XT and I was hoping Apple had got hold of that, and when people benchmarked it, everyone would be plesantly surprised.
But no, it's an old GCN 1.0 chip. So not only is the CPU architecture a few years old, the GPU architecture is as well. This is more proof to me that Apple are planning on dropping the dGPU in the next gen, they deliberately didn't use the best available dGPU this time in order to make sure the future iGPU is a significant step up.
Wow, the Anand article with it's GPU-Z screenshot is the most damning. There had been rumours of a new AMD mobile product called STRATOS XT and I was hoping Apple had got hold of that, and when people benchmarked it, everyone would be plesantly surprised.
But no, it's an old GCN 1.0 chip. So not only is the CPU architecture a few years old, the GPU architecture is as well. This is more proof to me that Apple are planning on dropping the dGPU in the next gen, they deliberately didn't use the best available dGPU this time in order to make sure the future iGPU is a significant step up.
Some of the M300 will be the Strato XT. The following site lists the M380X as Strato XT but M37xx as Cape Verde:
I don't think that there's many options Apple could have gone with in the 30-45W range that would have performed better. An underclocked 950M might have run a bit cooler though.
I think Apple likes to throw AMD a lifeline. They are not in very good shape. Last quarter they made another $180m loss and before that $403m loss 2014, $83m loss 2013, $1.18b loss 2012. Shareholder equity has been falling and it now sits at just $17m. Just one more quarter loss and they have negative equity (more debt than assets).
They say they depend on 5 customers for most of their revenue and their business would be materially harmed if any of them stopped buying. I wouldn't think Apple is one of them because they only use AMD GPUs every so often in very low volume products. The top iMacs, Mac Pros and top MBP use them and this must be no more than about 250-500k units per quarter. Say on average the GPU price is $150 (the mobile ones will cost a small amount), that's $75m tops out of $1b quarterly revenue. They must be talking about their server customers.
I wonder what would happen if they went bankrupt because the next-gen consoles use their hardware for both CPU and GPU. They are probably among their biggest customers just now with about 35m units over the past 1.5 years.
NVidia could just buy them out. Their market cap is $1.77b. NVidia has $5.7b in current assets. That way NVidia has an x86 CPU they can use. They would still sell separate chips but they'd have something to compete on the low-end. Like in the 12" Macbook with no Thunderbolt, they can have an AMD CPU and an NVidia GPU together on one chip. These can be used in hybrid devices too where AMD and NVidia would both be cut out in favor of Intel.
sorry apple, but in 2015 every desktop should have at least fusion drive by default (ok, maybe entry mac mini with spinner is excusable).. and spinner in 2000 usd machine? that is PURE GREED.. whera are all those speeches about best user experience? with outdated spinners? really?
I'm not waiting. I have the 2012 (original Retina) MBP. I follow the rule of "Everything has to double," before I will upgrade. In this case the SSD is more than 2x faster than my current one (it is about 4x faster), the GPU is about twice as fast as my GeForce 650M (Apple says it's 80% faster than a 750M so I'm extrapolating) and it has 2GB of graphics mem instead of my current 1GB, and I have 8GB of main memory and it comes with 16GB standard.
The only thing that is a let down is the CPU, but I think the GPU and SSD are the system bottlenecks anyway not the CPU.
Also, I'm worried that the Skylake MBP will be a major redesign and they will try and make it super skinny (like the new MBP) and that may effect performance. So I'm just biting the bullet and getting this one.
That's part of my thinking, too. There are some other real-life factors I have to consider before buying as well. Part of it relates to what my job requires and the hardware they provide (right now it's inadequate). Both of those factors could be different within a few months.
I'm also upgrading from a pre-retina display 2009 pro with a 500GB HDD. 4GB RAM. The upgrade from that machine to this one will be ridiculous. The SSD alone is probably a 10 fold increase in speed. Add to that up to 4x as much Ram, a much faster/efficicent processor, etc...and I doubt I'll be disappointed.
Comments
It really is a buyer be aware situation. This new MBP is certainly a nice upgrade in many ways but don't expect it to be on the market long.
Interesting timing there, maybe a chip or two for the Mac Pro.
Re battery improvement...
Quote:
Probably new screen technology. The GPU might be more power efficient too.
When I wrote my earlier message I hadn't noticed that the battery capacity increased: was 95 Watt-hour, now 99.5. That might be due in part to the Force Touch trackpad leaving a little more space for a bigger battery.
A 4.7% increase in battery capacity doesn't explain a whole hour, but it might just be a question of rounding - perhaps it was something like 8.6 hours for the old model (truncated to 8 hours as rounding up would be misleading), but the new one can get just over 9 hours on the same test.
The battery improvement also applies to the model without the GPU, so if it isn't just the bigger battery, something else in the base model must have improved. The screen seems unlikely without Phil Schiller waxing lyrical about it, but there could be minor tweaks like throttling the processor slightly earlier.
Great! I bought the 15 " MBPR mid 2014 a few weeks back for $1820 and the only noticeable thing they refreshed in the 2015 version is the Force Touch Trackpad and the MBPR is now for $1999. I am much relieved that I didn't wait for the newer model and saved $180 too that I can spend on some other accessories.
I got the 2014 in April for 2199.- instead of now 2699.-
Sure the new GPU is nice, but force touch? I don't care. And the SSD speed increase is irrelevant in everyday use. Saved 500.-, might even be able to sell the thing for a profit now, if I wanted.
Seems unlikely. If you look at the current 15" MB Pro, you can't really make it any thinner without removing various ports that Apple's not yet ready to remove from the Pro line.
No shit. Yeah, what a shame Apple couldn't pull this new processor out of their ass, since it hasn't been supplied by Intel yet. Tim Cook must go, right? For those of us aware that Broadwell for this form factor is not avaialble yet, actually planning to use this new machine for work, 2.5X SSD, 80% faster discreet graphics, faster CPU speeds, and improved battery life are pretty significant changes. There is no "shame" here.
I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed. I was certain it would be a Broadwell chipset, and so were many other astute observers. That said, it is a significant upgrade. I am in the market or soon will be. My dilemma now is that I've waited so long already...why not wait for Skylake?
I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed. I was certain it would be a Broadwell chipset, and so were many other astute observers. That said, it is a significant upgrade. I am in the market or soon will be. My dilemma now is that I've waited so long already...why not wait for Skylake?
Once they release a Skylake version they will be on the verge of some other tempting feature like 50% better battery life, wireless charging, Quadrasonic sound, Unobtanium capacitors, or who-knows-what. There's always something better coming up.
It might surprise you to know that I generally agree with that thinking. I've been critical of those who scream at Apple over upgrades they expected but didn't get, claiming they "need" them. My problem here is that Haswell will be two generations old by this October. I was all over the board telling people that there was no way Apple would introduce Skylake MacBook Pros before early next year or possibly even the middle of next year. But, this was predicated on the assumption that I was all over the board telling people there was no way Apple would introduce Skylake MacBook Pros before early next year or possibly even the middle of next year. But, this was predicated on the assumption that Broadwell would be released in the recent refresh. I would say the likelihood of this being a very short upgrade cycle. I could now see Apple releasing a Skylake based MacBook Pro as early as October. Given Skylake not only has new feature capabilities, but is supposed to be a very signifcant architecture improvement, I don't know that I want to be dropping two grand on an architecture that will be two generations old within six months to a year.
Thunderbolt digital video output
Support for up to 5120x2880 resolution at 60Hz on a single external display (model with AMD Radeon R9 M370X only)
Or am I jumping to conclusions?
Maybe 5K retina cinema displays at WWDC? Or am i dreaming to much?
I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed. I was certain it would be a Broadwell chipset, and so were many other astute observers. That said, it is a significant upgrade. I am in the market or soon will be. My dilemma now is that I've waited so long already...why not wait for Skylake?
You might still end up waiting a while. I don't think Apple would have updated the gpu and trackpad if this wasn't meant to last for a while.
I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed. I was certain it would be a Broadwell chipset, and so were many other astute observers. That said, it is a significant upgrade. I am in the market or soon will be. My dilemma now is that I've waited so long already...why not wait for Skylake?
I'm not waiting. I have the 2012 (original Retina) MBP. I follow the rule of "Everything has to double," before I will upgrade. In this case the SSD is more than 2x faster than my current one (it is about 4x faster), the GPU is about twice as fast as my GeForce 650M (Apple says it's 80% faster than a 750M so I'm extrapolating) and it has 2GB of graphics mem instead of my current 1GB, and I have 8GB of main memory and it comes with 16GB standard.
The only thing that is a let down is the CPU, but I think the GPU and SSD are the system bottlenecks anyway not the CPU.
Also, I'm worried that the Skylake MBP will be a major redesign and they will try and make it super skinny (like the new MBP) and that may effect performance. So I'm just biting the bullet and getting this one.
They could bring them out at WWDC but I suspect they'll leave those for the Mac event in October.
It's a good strategy to wait until everything at least doubles. I think Skylake will be a redesign but they can't get rid of the fan. The Macbook Air at its thickest point is 1.7cm and the rMBP is 1.8cm. The Macbook is 1.3cm.
I expect them to use the same metal hinge design as the MB, get rid of the illuminated logo, possibly add the other colors (space grey at least), switch to USB C, possibly drop mag-safe in favor of wireless charging and USB C for backup charging. If they can get PCIe to run over USB C's alt-mode then Thunderbolt can go because they should be able to run TB devices over it. If not, I expect TB 3. They can perhaps taper the body a little into a wedge and use the stepped batteries but it wouldn't be necessary. I expect they'll use the larger and more stable keyboard keys with neater backlighting. If they haven't already, they can update the displays with the improved electronics that allow the displays to use less power. They can get rid of the screws on the bottom with a new clasp design with a lip at the front, rubber seals and they'd just have notches to prevent the plate moving back against the clasps. Hopefully they won't solder the SSD on like the MB.
Skylake will bring DDR4 optionally. Apple could use different RAM but DDR4 allows them to go beyond 16GB so they can offer the higher up model with 24-32GB. This RAM is faster too so it will help the integrated graphics and they can boost integrated video memory to 2GB. There has been a rumor about Skylake having changeable cores that can switch between CPU-type cores and the type of cores in compute chips like Larrabee. That might offer benefits for parallel computing. The Skylake IGP should be 72EUs in a 45W chips, which is 80% more than the current models. They will probably underclock them to save power but this should be comparable to the AMD.
The AMD GPU they used in the MBP is only 50-70% faster than the 750M according to their benchmarks. Blogs said 80% but Apple's page says 70%:
https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/performance-retina/
Although it was 70% faster than the 750M, the 750M is pretty much the same chip as the 650M, NVidia just renames them every two years now and clocks them a bit differently. The 750M is actually slower than the 650M in some tests but mostly about 5-10% faster. The 850M is about 100% faster and the 950M is the same but the power consumption is about 10W higher. Apple's 70% comes from low quality graphics in Tomb Raider too. When they go to high quality in the Batman game, it drops to 50%. The 2014 R9 M275 is 60W and is a little slower than the 750M:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R9-M275.124666.0.html
It would be quite a jump to drop the TDP to the 30-40W range and increase performance by 70% in a single year. If it runs hot like the 2011 model, I'd wait until the Skylake model and just get the Skylake Iris Pro, which should have a similar perform boost and all the other benefits. October is too soon to launch them after this update but they can announce it in October and ship in December.
Thanks for the advice Marvin. Based on what you said I think I should probably wait at least for some independent testing of the GPU in the new MBP. If it is close to 2x what I have I will go ahead, but if it's only really the SSD that will be massively faster, maybe the purchase isn't worth it. Actually part of the reason I am worried about the Skylake MBPs being cut down too much is your past confidence that they will switch to purely iGPUs at some point.
There's a few tests here:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1884846
http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/36u07m/retina_macbook_pro_2015_15_gpu_benchmark/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9276/2015-15inch-retina-macbook-pros-dgpu-r9-m370x-is-cape-verde
For computation, it's higher than the 750M - AMD supports OpenCL better so some tests come out a lot better. It's not double in the graphics performance tests. If you look at Cinebench OpenGL, it's 60FPS vs 52 on the 650M, 750M is about 60 too and the 950M gets about 80FPS. A couple of tests were close to 60% higher but most were just 25% over the 750M. The AMD GPU is based on their 2012 architecture. I don't expect it to be all that power efficient.
For compute tasks like FCPX, Da Vinci, Adobe OpenCL tasks, the AMD should provide a decent boost but not for real-time graphics and I think it'll run pretty hot.
For 3DMark 11 it ran 90% faster than Iris Pro 5200 and 44% faster than the 750M. Some other real-time results are here with the M270X on the right:
Comparing the graphics scores, they are about 25% more except the last one. Physics scores are barely 5% different but some tests are optimized better for certain GPUs. Intel says that in 3DMark 11, Skylake scores 50% higher than Broadwell. We don't have Broadwell quad-core to compare but the Broadwell GPU in the dual-core was 50% higher than Haswell.
If Skylake manages to be 50% + 50% higher than Haswell then we're looking at 1.5 x 1.5 = 2.25x 1940 3dMark 11 = 4365 vs 3682 for the AMD GPU. That would probably be best-case but say they managed 25% + 25%, it would be 3031 and this performance is all in a 45W chip total.
I also think they will gain over older Iris Pros from the higher DDR4 memory bandwidth and because it's an IGP, you get the battery savings in Bootcamp, no GPU switching, a lot less chance of what happened in 2011 happening.
If they deliver on the above performance, there's nothing to worry about with IGPs. AMD and NVidia are going to struggle advancing their GPUs. NVidia already cut back on their plans and are moving to improving memory bandwidth instead. For laptops, integrated graphics are the way to go.
A Skylake MBP with 45W GT4e Iris Pro, DDR4 RAM, wireless charging and data, 5K display output would be a pretty amazing laptop. If Intel comes through with 3D NAND to deliver 1TB for $250, that would be even better. I guess they could solder the SSD in if they had that kind of NAND but I still prefer removable storage. 2GB/s speeds are amazing, the OS is booting up in 6 seconds.
Again, thanks for the info and links. I went to my local Apple Store today and they had some, but stock was so tight they said they weren't putting any out on display, based on the logic that they looked the same as the old ones anyway (of which they had a couple left). Which was no good for me because I was going to try and find a way to benchmark the GPU! But from your links it looks like some other people have already done it. Maybe I need to readjust my thinking on what integrated GPUs are capable of (future ones at least).
Edit: Wow, the Anand article with it's GPU-Z screenshot is the most damning. There had been rumours of a new AMD mobile product called STRATOS XT and I was hoping Apple had got hold of that, and when people benchmarked it, everyone would be plesantly surprised.
But no, it's an old GCN 1.0 chip. So not only is the CPU architecture a few years old, the GPU architecture is as well. This is more proof to me that Apple are planning on dropping the dGPU in the next gen, they deliberately didn't use the best available dGPU this time in order to make sure the future iGPU is a significant step up.
Some of the M300 will be the Strato XT. The following site lists the M380X as Strato XT but M37xx as Cape Verde:
http://videocardz.com/amd/radeon-rx-m300
The M280X is 70-80W so more suitable for the likes of an iMac. The score for the Strato XT was way too high for a chip that could go in a laptop:
https://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx31&did=23640094
That's almost 3x higher than the 70-80W M280X:
https://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx31&did=23638977
That's closer to the M290X (100W) in the 5K iMac:
https://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx31&did=22946961
I don't think that there's many options Apple could have gone with in the 30-45W range that would have performed better. An underclocked 950M might have run a bit cooler though.
I think Apple likes to throw AMD a lifeline. They are not in very good shape. Last quarter they made another $180m loss and before that $403m loss 2014, $83m loss 2013, $1.18b loss 2012. Shareholder equity has been falling and it now sits at just $17m. Just one more quarter loss and they have negative equity (more debt than assets).
They say they depend on 5 customers for most of their revenue and their business would be materially harmed if any of them stopped buying. I wouldn't think Apple is one of them because they only use AMD GPUs every so often in very low volume products. The top iMacs, Mac Pros and top MBP use them and this must be no more than about 250-500k units per quarter. Say on average the GPU price is $150 (the mobile ones will cost a small amount), that's $75m tops out of $1b quarterly revenue. They must be talking about their server customers.
I wonder what would happen if they went bankrupt because the next-gen consoles use their hardware for both CPU and GPU. They are probably among their biggest customers just now with about 35m units over the past 1.5 years.
NVidia could just buy them out. Their market cap is $1.77b. NVidia has $5.7b in current assets. That way NVidia has an x86 CPU they can use. They would still sell separate chips but they'd have something to compete on the low-end. Like in the 12" Macbook with no Thunderbolt, they can have an AMD CPU and an NVidia GPU together on one chip. These can be used in hybrid devices too where AMD and NVidia would both be cut out in favor of Intel.
sorry apple, but in 2015 every desktop should have at least fusion drive by default (ok, maybe entry mac mini with spinner is excusable).. and spinner in 2000 usd machine? that is PURE GREED.. whera are all those speeches about best user experience? with outdated spinners? really?
I'm not waiting. I have the 2012 (original Retina) MBP. I follow the rule of "Everything has to double," before I will upgrade. In this case the SSD is more than 2x faster than my current one (it is about 4x faster), the GPU is about twice as fast as my GeForce 650M (Apple says it's 80% faster than a 750M so I'm extrapolating) and it has 2GB of graphics mem instead of my current 1GB, and I have 8GB of main memory and it comes with 16GB standard.
The only thing that is a let down is the CPU, but I think the GPU and SSD are the system bottlenecks anyway not the CPU.
Also, I'm worried that the Skylake MBP will be a major redesign and they will try and make it super skinny (like the new MBP) and that may effect performance. So I'm just biting the bullet and getting this one.
That's part of my thinking, too. There are some other real-life factors I have to consider before buying as well. Part of it relates to what my job requires and the hardware they provide (right now it's inadequate). Both of those factors could be different within a few months.
I'm also upgrading from a pre-retina display 2009 pro with a 500GB HDD. 4GB RAM. The upgrade from that machine to this one will be ridiculous. The SSD alone is probably a 10 fold increase in speed. Add to that up to 4x as much Ram, a much faster/efficicent processor, etc...and I doubt I'll be disappointed.