teedee

elpopo64 said:

cgWerks said:

DuhSesame said:

Well, if you want to bring an i9 to maximum performance, you got to have the size of a gaming laptop to begin with.  I don't think many realized that in the first place, that they think "If we just make it thicker, it will be no problem" -- they did not realize how much "thicker" it needs to be to achieve that performance!  And if you do get a little thicker (or you can go all the way to Unibody), sure it will be better, but still throttles significantly, in the end you're not solving problem with it.

There is no way other than thickness? But yeah, going back to the unibody would be find by me, especially for a high-end version of the 15".

elpopo64 said:
Why not, it is just one more choice. If you don't like you take the i7. For the real pro it is ok, when you needs sustained load, you are working on long computation on the desk. If you spend all that amount for the i9 version, you can also add 20-30 bucks for a good cooling pad to put under the macbook.

A lot of people do it already, mostly in the PC world and most of these pads can be carried around also in case you need. 

True... now that we know. But, this probably ticks people off who just go to the Apple Store and pick maxed out configs.

Then this guy will never have problems as it is just the casual buyer who only has the money for the top, but don't need it.

For the unibody: this model is still unibody in the construction. You may mean to go before the unibody, but still the thickness was just a bit more and (I still have them stored around my office) they are not better in the thermal part. The power was much lower.... And I do not compare with the plastic ones before.

The real solution is just better ventilation. It is only connected to thickness by the fact that you can increase fans sizes and apertures with a thicker construction. But you can do the same with an external cooling pad. The advantage of the last solution is that you increase the thickness only when you need it and maintain high portability.

I am going to order an i9 model but I would like to see some tests with a cooling pad or different cooling conditions (like the macbook not just standing flat on a wood or plastic desk), but these days you only found amateurish testers, youtubers (like the guy that put the computer in the freezer, or the one who compares the 2017-2018 by using only 2 cores and concludes the 2017 is faster), no one doing the right testing to understand the extend of the problem.

I’ve got the i9 model and my friend got the i7 higher end model. I did some quick test as I was considering refunding my i9 for an i7. The test isn’t very comprehensive as it’s for my own reference, but it gives a rough idea of i7 vs i9 CPU performance.

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Cinebench CPU Test:
i7 Turbo Boost Enabled with force Max Fan: 921
i7 Turbo Boost Disabled: 835
i9 Turbo Boost Enabled with force Max Fan: 935
i9 Turbo Boost Disabled: 945

On the i9 the thermal throttling is making it difficult to even maintain its base clock speed of 2.9Ghz due to it keep boosting to approx 3.7-4Ghz right after cooling, before severely throttling again after 1-2 seconds. I figured that if I disable Turbo Boost, I can make it maintain at 2.9Ghz as it doesn’t boost and overheat. True enough, it maintained at 2.9Ghz at approx 80 degrees celcius. In fact as seen from the above results, the i9 without turbo boost performs better than with turbo boost enabled.

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HandBrake 4K Encoding Test:
Both the MacBooks are throttling to about the same GHz range. The estimated time on both MacBooks are very similar, with the i9 having slightly better estimate time (~1-2mins out of 28mins). I did not time the entire encoding as I didn’t have the patience to wait for 28 minutes. However from my observation after performing this test several times, it shows that the i9 is very slightly faster than the i7 model.

I also performed this test with turbo boost disabled expecting better estimated time. However the estimated time remained the same...

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After these quick test, I feel more assured that the i9 does not perform worse than the i7. As a result, I will not be exchanging my i9 to i7. It seems that Apple can improve the performance of i9 by simply updating the firmware to manually lower the max turbo boost speed so that the CPU doesn’t get excessively hot and throttle. 

The only disappointing thing is that I was expecting the handbrake encoding speed to be much better. My base mid 2012 rMBP with i7 quad core has estimated encoding time of 50-60 mins. Intel’s latest hexacore CPU is only performing 2X better than a 6 year old quad core. I was expecting more...