If these CPUs disappoint you, well you better hope for an ARM transition because Intel isn’t releasing anything better for a while.
I'm not sure why people pretend that AMD doesn't exist and ARM is the only solution.
AMD's 4800U is a 15W 8 core / 16 thread chip with excellent performance that easily beats out Intel's 25W 6 core / 12 thread 10710U. [graph removed]
What laptops use a 25-28W (or lower if the performance is better) AMD mobile CPU? What is the battery life? I can’t find anything talking about battery life tests and the Ryzen 4000 series. I’m not saying they don’t exist but are they being used by companies like HP, Lenovo and Dell? Customers who need a large and reliable quantity of CPUs to create a flagship. A flagship AMD CPU in the 1.5-1.7 cm (0.60” - 0.67”) thickness range and weighing about 1.4 kg (3 pounds) would be ideal as a comparison to the 13” MacBook Pro.
AMD might get there but they are just starting out being competitive in the mobile space for the first time. That makes it hard for a company needing millions of CPUs per quarter to design for AMD.
Edit: And I should mention that the Intel Core i7-10710U is a 14 nm part and only supports Intel UHD graphics which is not as strong as the Iris Plus. Not really a one to one comparison.
If these CPUs disappoint you, well you better hope for an ARM transition because Intel isn’t releasing anything better for a while.
I'm not sure why people pretend that AMD doesn't exist and ARM is the only solution.
AMD's 4800U is a 15W 8 core / 16 thread chip with excellent performance that easily beats out Intel's 25W 6 core / 12 thread 10710U. [graph removed]
What laptops use a 25-28W (or lower if the performance is better) AMD mobile CPU? What is the battery life? I can’t find anything talking about battery life tests and the Ryzen 4000 series. I’m not saying they don’t exist but are they being used by companies like HP, Lenovo and Dell? Customers who need a large and reliable quantity of CPUs to create a flagship. A flagship AMD CPU in the 1.5-1.7 cm (0.60” - 0.67”) thickness range and weighing about 1.4 kg (3 pounds) would be ideal as a comparison to the 13” MacBook Pro.
AMD might get there but they are just starting out being competitive in the mobile space for the first time. That makes it hard for a company needing millions of CPUs per quarter to design for AMD.
Edit: And I should mention that the Intel Core i7-10710U is a 14 nm part and only supports Intel UHD graphics which is not as strong as the Iris Plus. Not really a one to one comparison.
asus use those cpu for a 14 inch laptop, yes that's a gaming laptop with 12h00 of battery life. (it's a 35w part) :
Dell and HP are still Intel shills. Just like in the pentium 4 era, they are going to support Intel no matter what.
Ok, so a 78Wh battery on a 1080p (~157 ppl) 120 Hz display. Peak brightness of 300 nits (260 nits actual). Not exactly a MacBook Pro retina display; though 120 Hz is nice. Apple is claiming 10 hours for their 2560‑by‑1600 (227 ppi) Retina Display on a 58 Wh battery. It is very tough to compare such different specs and get any idea of real battery performance. I’m betting we get some good info from Anandtech soon after these are available.
I still haven’t seen any real reviews of a Ryzen 7 4800U laptop. It appears this chip is not actually available yet in any shipping product. Once it is out we can find out what the real performance comparison looks like. But assuming Apple should have designed an AMD Ryzen mobile chip in place of an Intel CPU seems a little unrealistic given the lack of any real hardware even in low volumes. Apple needs to source many 100s of thousands of these CPUs per quarter. AMD might get there but it is still very early for their mobile processors.
Wov! no 14",no WiFi 6. Minor spec-bump upgrade. Nothing to be excited about. Base model looses 2 TB ports, no 10th gen processor option; Could have released at the same time as Macbook Air. Will wait for the next upgrade with 14",ARM,WiFi 6.
If these CPUs disappoint you, well you better hope for an ARM transition because Intel isn’t releasing anything better for a while.
I'm not sure why people pretend that AMD doesn't exist and ARM is the only solution.
AMD's 4800U is a 15W 8 core / 16 thread chip with excellent performance that easily beats out Intel's 25W 6 core / 12 thread 10710U. [graph removed]
What laptops use a 25-28W (or lower if the performance is better) AMD mobile CPU? What is the battery life? I can’t find anything talking about battery life tests and the Ryzen 4000 series. I’m not saying they don’t exist but are they being used by companies like HP, Lenovo and Dell? Customers who need a large and reliable quantity of CPUs to create a flagship. A flagship AMD CPU in the 1.5-1.7 cm (0.60” - 0.67”) thickness range and weighing about 1.4 kg (3 pounds) would be ideal as a comparison to the 13” MacBook Pro.
AMD might get there but they are just starting out being competitive in the mobile space for the first time. That makes it hard for a company needing millions of CPUs per quarter to design for AMD.
Edit: And I should mention that the Intel Core i7-10710U is a 14 nm part and only supports Intel UHD graphics which is not as strong as the Iris Plus. Not really a one to one comparison.
15 W Ryzen 4000 series chips are just coming to market now from Lenovo, Acer, HP, etc.
The benchmarks are from this Lenovo:
Comparing the AMD and Intel versions of the same laptop:
Slightly better battery life and far better performance from AMD.
As well, the 10710U is a 6 core / 12 thread part. In terms of CPU performance, it can best Ice Lake for single core and multi core applications.
If these CPUs disappoint you, well you better hope for an ARM transition because Intel isn’t releasing anything better for a while.
I'm not sure why people pretend that AMD doesn't exist and ARM is the only solution.
AMD's 4800U is a 15W 8 core / 16 thread chip with excellent performance that easily beats out Intel's 25W 6 core / 12 thread 10710U. [graph removed]
What laptops use a 25-28W (or lower if the performance is better) AMD mobile CPU? What is the battery life? I can’t find anything talking about battery life tests and the Ryzen 4000 series. I’m not saying they don’t exist but are they being used by companies like HP, Lenovo and Dell? Customers who need a large and reliable quantity of CPUs to create a flagship. A flagship AMD CPU in the 1.5-1.7 cm (0.60” - 0.67”) thickness range and weighing about 1.4 kg (3 pounds) would be ideal as a comparison to the 13” MacBook Pro.
AMD might get there but they are just starting out being competitive in the mobile space for the first time. That makes it hard for a company needing millions of CPUs per quarter to design for AMD.
Edit: And I should mention that the Intel Core i7-10710U is a 14 nm part and only supports Intel UHD graphics which is not as strong as the Iris Plus. Not really a one to one comparison.
15 W Ryzen 4000 series chips are just coming to market now from Lenovo, Acer, HP, etc.
The benchmarks are from this Lenovo:
Comparing the AMD and Intel versions of the same laptop:
Slightly better battery life and far better performance from AMD.
As well, the 10710U is a 6 core / 12 thread part. In terms of CPU performance, it can best Ice Lake for single core and multi core applications.
If these CPUs disappoint you, well you better hope for an ARM transition because Intel isn’t releasing anything better for a while.
I'm not sure why people pretend that AMD doesn't exist and ARM is the only solution.
AMD's 4800U is a 15W 8 core / 16 thread chip with excellent performance that easily beats out Intel's 25W 6 core / 12 thread 10710U. [graph removed]
What laptops use a 25-28W (or lower if the performance is better) AMD mobile CPU? What is the battery life? I can’t find anything talking about battery life tests and the Ryzen 4000 series. I’m not saying they don’t exist but are they being used by companies like HP, Lenovo and Dell? Customers who need a large and reliable quantity of CPUs to create a flagship. A flagship AMD CPU in the 1.5-1.7 cm (0.60” - 0.67”) thickness range and weighing about 1.4 kg (3 pounds) would be ideal as a comparison to the 13” MacBook Pro.
AMD might get there but they are just starting out being competitive in the mobile space for the first time. That makes it hard for a company needing millions of CPUs per quarter to design for AMD.
Edit: And I should mention that the Intel Core i7-10710U is a 14 nm part and only supports Intel UHD graphics which is not as strong as the Iris Plus. Not really a one to one comparison.
15 W Ryzen 4000 series chips are just coming to market now from Lenovo, Acer, HP, etc.
The benchmarks are from this Lenovo:
Comparing the AMD and Intel versions of the same laptop:
Slightly better battery life and far better performance from AMD.
As well, the 10710U is a 6 core / 12 thread part. In terms of CPU performance, it can best Ice Lake for single core and multi core applications.
The recent odd choices and ‘silent’ product refreshes makes it pretty obvious to me that the pandemic is having a large impact on the supply chain - shortages and price increases of components. Apple is making compromises while trying to move their products forward - at least in some incremental way. The majority of appleinsider readers are savvy and technical and demand more than the average computer buyer. But more memory and a better keyboard is Good Enough for the rest of the world. What Apple really intended will likely come later in 2020.
If these CPUs disappoint you, well you better hope for an ARM transition because Intel isn’t releasing anything better for a while.
I'm not sure why people pretend that AMD doesn't exist and ARM is the only solution.
AMD's 4800U is a 15W 8 core / 16 thread chip with excellent performance that easily beats out Intel's 25W 6 core / 12 thread 10710U. [graph removed]
What laptops use a 25-28W (or lower if the performance is better) AMD mobile CPU? What is the battery life? I can’t find anything talking about battery life tests and the Ryzen 4000 series. I’m not saying they don’t exist but are they being used by companies like HP, Lenovo and Dell? Customers who need a large and reliable quantity of CPUs to create a flagship. A flagship AMD CPU in the 1.5-1.7 cm (0.60” - 0.67”) thickness range and weighing about 1.4 kg (3 pounds) would be ideal as a comparison to the 13” MacBook Pro.
AMD might get there but they are just starting out being competitive in the mobile space for the first time. That makes it hard for a company needing millions of CPUs per quarter to design for AMD.
Edit: And I should mention that the Intel Core i7-10710U is a 14 nm part and only supports Intel UHD graphics which is not as strong as the Iris Plus. Not really a one to one comparison.
15 W Ryzen 4000 series chips are just coming to market now from Lenovo, Acer, HP, etc.
The benchmarks are from this Lenovo:
Comparing the AMD and Intel versions of the same laptop:
Slightly better battery life and far better performance from AMD.
As well, the 10710U is a 6 core / 12 thread part. In terms of CPU performance, it can best Ice Lake for single core and multi core applications.
But I thought, according to most people on this form, Apple's keyboard was flawless? Don't start to tell me it was just a PR thing.... At least Apple acknowledged the issue and fixed it... just a shame it took so long.
Like the vast majority of recent Macook Pro users, I’ve had zero issues with my butterfly keyboard (the last 15-inch model). I’m certainly not saying nobody did, but according to stats collected from literally dozens of Apple Stores and published on this very website, the “incident” rate was very well-publicized but in fact was only slighter higher that the previous design.
To be fair, the first-gen butterfly had the highest level of issues, but it went down significantly after that, and the final iteration was on par with pre-butterfly incident odds.
You have to love the inconsistency of some people. They complain when Apple doesn’t update a Mac product. “Oh Apple, why can’t you at least do a spec bump.” Apple releases something less than a complete redesign but more than a spec bump and you get “What a Horrible, Terrible, No good for nothing, disappointing, mess of a Laptop.”
So which is it? Should Apple do spec bump updates when they don’t have a complete redesign ready or not?
The top of the line 13” MacBook Pro now have a new keyboard which the complainers where saying was an absolute necessity. That the old keyboard was completely unusable. They also have up to 32 GB of LPDDR4 RAM. Again, stated as an absolute requirement for any software development usage just a few months ago. You also get double the SSD storage bump for the same prices from yesterday. And most of all, the new 13” MacBook Pro now has the very latest 4-core 10th Generation Core i5 or i7. These CPUs are so new they aren’t even listed in Intel’s standard inventory app. They are absolutely the fastest 28W CPUs Intel makes. If these CPUs disappoint you, well you better hope for an ARM transition because Intel isn’t releasing anything better for a while.
Intel is releasing their next generation Tiger Lake processors for laptops this summer. Not only the integrated GPU in that processor is based on Intel's new Xe GPU architecture. They announced that there will be laptops for sale this Fall that will utilize that CPU, so we'll see. The iGPU itself is suppose to be a huge increase in performance compared to the iGPU in the 10th generation mobile processors.
roundaboutnow said: Isn't it possible to make the function keys display permanently in Touch Bar when using Protools?
Yes. After I typed that I remembered the reason I carry a keyboard is for the number pad, for navigating memory locations.
Still, for reasons I don't completely understand, I have trouble with virtual keys. I quit using my iPad and picked up an old MBAir to use in its place because I found typing on the iPad so awkward. I seem to have the same problem with the F keys on the Touch Bar. I constantly miss the key and wind up with either the wrong selection or no selection at all.
That may be just me though, and not necessarily an argument against the Touch Bar. Personally I'm indifferent towards it. It doesn't particularly bother me that it's there, but I wouldn't miss it f it went away.
But I thought, according to most people on this form, Apple's keyboard was flawless? Don't start to tell me it was just a PR thing.... At least Apple acknowledged the issue and fixed it... just a shame it took so long.
What shame? A single uneasy key qualified for Top case replacement, no question. New top case = new battery, and like-a-new look.
Really disappointed not seeing the 16" being upgraded to the 10th gen processors, ATI, or a better GPU. The 13" is a weird product. To me it seems you're better off buying the Air, because a "Pro" machine with integrated graphics doesn't really seem appealing at all.
Here we go with the what does Pro mean shit. Ever think that not everyone needs a dGPU? Even "pros"? If they did, they could always use an eGPU at their desk if they happened to need more GPU performance and also have a nice light travel laptop at the same time.
Maybe it's the work I do, but I've never understood that reasoning. The whole point of buying a laptop instead of a desktop computer is to be able to work wherever I happen to be. The demands of my work do not magically become lighter just because I'm away from my primary work station. What I need the computer to do stays the same whether I'm in the studio or on a client site. To me, buying a machine that only performs well when "docked" seems self-defeating.
What you're describing is an ideal scenario, but one that's not always possible. Even with a high performance notebook/laptop as my primary development machine, I've always had a "docked" setup for development that included two large (24" minimum) high resolution monitors mounted on repositionable arms, a full sized keyboard placed at an ergonomic position, and a separate trackball (and sometimes an additional mouse). Over the last several years the "optimal" setup includes a standing desk as well. This is the optimal setup, but because I travel quite a bit and must be as productive as possible when traveling, I can still still use the laptop in a less-then-optimal standalone configuration, sometimes with an iPad as a secondary display.
There's no way I'd ever be able to drag my optimal setup on the road, much less on a plane on a 19 hour flight. There's also no way that I can refuse to accept anything less than the optimal setup to be productive. So yeah, maybe you can get by with one setup that fits all of your needs, but for a lot of folks whose jobs are dependent on making the best of the situation and being productive under varying circumstances, it's essential that we adapt our tools to provide the best productivity under each situation we have to deal with. This requirement includes augmenting our docked setups with everything we can get to take advantage of the opportunities that being docked allow us to use. Using only the built-in capabilities of a notebook/laptop when "docked" would squander productivity for a lot of workers. The cost of additional hardware is minuscule compared to the opportunity cost of less-than-optimal human resources, especially engineers and designers.
That's a perfectly reasonable argument, but isn't what macxpress was saying.
You, like me, would buy whatever hardware gets you closest to to what you need to work well in the field. It may not be as good as what you have at your desk, but it's as good as is possible in a portable format.
What macxpress said is that it doesn't matter that the machine being discussed has poor graphics performance because you can always plug in an eGPU. The conclusion was that it's worth sacrificing performance to get a smaller machine. I disagree.
No one living in the Mac Pro world gives a shit about the spec porn of some Windows gaming machine that’s also incidentally not as highly customer rated (see Amazon).
Right. As Apple users we've come to expect that having the kind of construction quality and inter-device integration Apple offers means also having to accept paying higher prices for equivalent performance because Apple enjoys higher margins that its competitors and having to wait for some newer technologies until Apple decides to offer them (or announce that they never will, like Blu-Ray back when it was relevant).
Apple users don't bother comparing specs because it's a futile exercise. We get what we get. Some of what we get is cutting edge, some of it is outdated. There's no point comparing to Windows alternatives unless one is willing to switch.
You have to love the inconsistency of some people. They complain when Apple doesn’t update a Mac product. “Oh Apple, why can’t you at least do a spec bump.” Apple releases something less than a complete redesign but more than a spec bump and you get “What a Horrible, Terrible, No good for nothing, disappointing, mess of a Laptop.”
So which is it? Should Apple do spec bump updates when they don’t have a complete redesign ready or not?
The top of the line 13” MacBook Pro now have a new keyboard which the complainers where saying was an absolute necessity. That the old keyboard was completely unusable. They also have up to 32 GB of LPDDR4 RAM. Again, stated as an absolute requirement for any software development usage just a few months ago. You also get double the SSD storage bump for the same prices from yesterday. And most of all, the new 13” MacBook Pro now has the very latest 4-core 10th Generation Core i5 or i7. These CPUs are so new they aren’t even listed in Intel’s standard inventory app. They are absolutely the fastest 28W CPUs Intel makes. If these CPUs disappoint you, well you better hope for an ARM transition because Intel isn’t releasing anything better for a while.
Intel is releasing their next generation Tiger Lake processors for laptops this summer. Not only the integrated GPU in that processor is based on Intel's new Xe GPU architecture. They announced that there will be laptops for sale this Fall that will utilize that CPU, so we'll see. The iGPU itself is suppose to be a huge increase in performance compared to the iGPU in the 10th generation mobile processors.
It might only make it out to products a little later than that.
Leave it to Apple to half-do something. Why still have 8th-gen chips in 2 of the 3 base configs? Why not have 10th-gen chips in all the new configs? 8th-gen is slowly fading off the horizon, yet you have to spend $1800 just to get an i5 10th-gen chip? One can buy a Dell laptop with a 10th-gen i5 for $500. It's hardly "premium" (by PC/Windows standards, anyways).
A 10th-gen i5-based MBP13 with 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM for $1299 would have been a natural upgrade.
Check this review from Dave Lee.. He explains the price difference if Apple had chosen the 10th gen chip.
Really disappointed not seeing the 16" being upgraded to the 10th gen processors, ATI, or a better GPU. The 13" is a weird product. To me it seems you're better off buying the Air, because a "Pro" machine with integrated graphics doesn't really seem appealing at all.
Here we go with the what does Pro mean shit. Ever think that not everyone needs a dGPU? Even "pros"? If they did, they could always use an eGPU at their desk if they happened to need more GPU performance and also have a nice light travel laptop at the same time.
Maybe it's the work I do, but I've never understood that reasoning. The whole point of buying a laptop instead of a desktop computer is to be able to work wherever I happen to be. The demands of my work do not magically become lighter just because I'm away from my primary work station. What I need the computer to do stays the same whether I'm in the studio or on a client site. To me, buying a machine that only performs well when "docked" seems self-defeating.
What you're describing is an ideal scenario, but one that's not always possible. Even with a high performance notebook/laptop as my primary development machine, I've always had a "docked" setup for development that included two large (24" minimum) high resolution monitors mounted on repositionable arms, a full sized keyboard placed at an ergonomic position, and a separate trackball (and sometimes an additional mouse). Over the last several years the "optimal" setup includes a standing desk as well. This is the optimal setup, but because I travel quite a bit and must be as productive as possible when traveling, I can still still use the laptop in a less-then-optimal standalone configuration, sometimes with an iPad as a secondary display.
There's no way I'd ever be able to drag my optimal setup on the road, much less on a plane on a 19 hour flight. There's also no way that I can refuse to accept anything less than the optimal setup to be productive. So yeah, maybe you can get by with one setup that fits all of your needs, but for a lot of folks whose jobs are dependent on making the best of the situation and being productive under varying circumstances, it's essential that we adapt our tools to provide the best productivity under each situation we have to deal with. This requirement includes augmenting our docked setups with everything we can get to take advantage of the opportunities that being docked allow us to use. Using only the built-in capabilities of a notebook/laptop when "docked" would squander productivity for a lot of workers. The cost of additional hardware is minuscule compared to the opportunity cost of less-than-optimal human resources, especially engineers and designers.
That's a perfectly reasonable argument, but isn't what macxpress was saying.
You, like me, would buy whatever hardware gets you closest to to what you need to work well in the field. It may not be as good as what you have at your desk, but it's as good as is possible in a portable format.
What macxpress said is that it doesn't matter that the machine being discussed has poor graphics performance because you can always plug in an eGPU. The conclusion was that it's worth sacrificing performance to get a smaller machine. I disagree.
That’s cool, it’s a personal thing. When I was traveling a lot the couple of pounds difference in weight, size, and bulk of a smaller computer made a huge difference to ease of travel. If I were buying (or specifying) a Mac today for doing system architectural design, software development, and documentation and had to travel around the globe regularly, I’d get a loaded MacBook Air and an eGPU, external keyboard, trackball, and a couple of monitors for the office. Even the Air is a challenge to use on a plane unless you’re in business class (on long haul flights), so I’d also bring an iPad to catch up on non-coding tasks like documentation and code reviews and listen to music while onboard.
Of course it depends on what kind of work you do and whether a slimmed down, travel friendly-computer can still satisfy your productivity needs on the road. I have no doubt that the equipment scenario that fits my needs wouldn’t work for a lot of folks. As an aside, more and more companies I deal with no longer allow employees to travel with a machine that contains any development collateral. Employees who travel, say to attend professional development seminars or work on global standards bodies, must pull a “travel computer” from the pool to take with them instead. The travel computer has vpn and remote access back to the home campus but contains no IP at all on its local storage. If this is the case, it’s an easy decision. For the in-between case I deal with, the travel-friendly computer that can be augmented with additional hardware while at home fits my needs.
Comments
Dell and HP are still Intel shills. Just like in the pentium 4 era, they are going to support Intel no matter what.
I still haven’t seen any real reviews of a Ryzen 7 4800U laptop. It appears this chip is not actually available yet in any shipping product. Once it is out we can find out what the real performance comparison looks like. But assuming Apple should have designed an AMD Ryzen mobile chip in place of an Intel CPU seems a little unrealistic given the lack of any real hardware even in low volumes. Apple needs to source many 100s of thousands of these CPUs per quarter. AMD might get there but it is still very early for their mobile processors.
been hearing this for over 30 years, yet people keep buying them.
How to use function keys on MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
The benchmarks are from this Lenovo:
Comparing the AMD and Intel versions of the same laptop:
Slightly better battery life and far better performance from AMD.
As well, the 10710U is a 6 core / 12 thread part. In terms of CPU performance, it can best Ice Lake for single core and multi core applications.
To be fair, the first-gen butterfly had the highest level of issues, but it went down significantly after that, and the final iteration was on par with pre-butterfly incident odds.
Yes. After I typed that I remembered the reason I carry a keyboard is for the number pad, for navigating memory locations.
Still, for reasons I don't completely understand, I have trouble with virtual keys. I quit using my iPad and picked up an old MBAir to use in its place because I found typing on the iPad so awkward. I seem to have the same problem with the F keys on the Touch Bar. I constantly miss the key and wind up with either the wrong selection or no selection at all.
That may be just me though, and not necessarily an argument against the Touch Bar. Personally I'm indifferent towards it. It doesn't particularly bother me that it's there, but I wouldn't miss it f it went away.
That's a perfectly reasonable argument, but isn't what macxpress was saying.
You, like me, would buy whatever hardware gets you closest to to what you need to work well in the field. It may not be as good as what you have at your desk, but it's as good as is possible in a portable format.
What macxpress said is that it doesn't matter that the machine being discussed has poor graphics performance because you can always plug in an eGPU. The conclusion was that it's worth sacrificing performance to get a smaller machine. I disagree.
The person you quoted was responding to me. Are you suggesting that I was complaining? If so, would you please explain how?
Apple users don't bother comparing specs because it's a futile exercise. We get what we get. Some of what we get is cutting edge, some of it is outdated. There's no point comparing to Windows alternatives unless one is willing to switch.
Here's Lenovo's ThinkPad roadmap for 2020: