Unusually fast performance? - (integrated graphics on my new MacBook Pro)

Paddylaz

Hi guys,

I picked up my new 15" MacBook Pro (no touchbar) today. My 2013 model sadly died on me.

I THOUGHT that I was obviously making a little bit of a downgrade in terms of GPU because I'm going from a Geforce GT650m down to this Iris Pro.

I just ran the Open CL test on Geekbench and I got a score of 26,700. This is an order of magnitude higher than the 13,000 or so I got with my 650m discrete gpu on my last Mac.

Obviously I'm not complaining......but am I missing something here?? Why the jump??

Thanks!

Marvin

Paddylaz said:

Hi guys,

I picked up my new 15" MacBook Pro (no touchbar) today. My 2013 model sadly died on me.

I THOUGHT that I was obviously making a little bit of a downgrade in terms of GPU because I'm going from a Geforce GT650m down to this Iris Pro.

I just ran the Open CL test on Geekbench and I got a score of 26,700. This is an order of magnitude higher than the 13,000 or so I got with my 650m discrete gpu on my last Mac.

Obviously I'm not complaining......but am I missing something here?? Why the jump??

Thanks!

NVidia GPUs aren't very good with OpenCL performance, they work better with CUDA, NVidia's proprietary computing software, likely by design. The laptop model you bought is actually a 2015 model, Apple is just selling the same one:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i7-2.2-15-iris-only-mid-2015-retina-display-specs.html

These can be bought used for a lot less now:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Laptop-256GB-MJLQ2LL-A-May-2015-Silver-16GB-RAM-/263092191422 ($1200)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Laptop-256GB-MJLQ2LL-A-May-2015-Silver-/232415223134 ($1289)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MacBook-Pro-Retina-15-Mid-2015-2-2GHz-i7-16GB-256GB-MJLQ2LL-A-Fully-Functional-/391840932884 ($1335)

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FJLQ2LL/A/refurbished-154-inch-macbook-pro-22ghz-quad-core-intel-i7-with-retina-display ($1699)

The Iris Pro 5200 is slightly slower than the 650M but better for compute as Intel supports OpenCL better. If you look at the LuxMark scores on the following page, the Iris Pro does much better but everything else is roughly the same or slightly lower:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-5200.90965.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html

If you went for the base model, the refurb of the 2016 touchbar model has a GPU that is roughly 2x faster than the Iris Pro 5200 and 2GB dedicated memory where the Iris Pro shares it with the system memory:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FLH32LL/A/Refurbished-154-inch-Macbook-Pro-26GHz-Quad-core-Intel-Core-i7-with-Retina-display-Space-Gray

and ~$200 more gets 30% faster GPU again with 512GB SSD:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FLH42LL/A/Refurbished-154-inch-Macbook-Pro-27GHz-Quad-core-Intel-Core-i7-with-Retina-display-Space-Gray

The 2015 model has a much larger battery though so in more processor intensive use cases, you would get better battery life with the older model.

tipoo

The Iris Pro was not a slouch in its day, in graphics it came between the 650M and 750M, but was even better at OpenCL for the same wattage class. 

Actually the 750M one that had it as an upgrade from the Iris Pro wasn't even that much of an upgrade. Even the later M370X wasn't a groundbreaking jump from the integrated Iris Pro. 


Now however, Pascal seems to enjoy a nearly 2x perf/watt advantage over the Iris 650 with a chip like the MX150.