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It seems that all Skylake CPUs suitable for new MacBook Pros won't ship until early 2016. I was hoping for a new MBP this fall, but it seems that my old MacBook

by skrause 11y ago

It seems that all Skylake CPUs suitable for new MacBook Pros won't ship until early 2016. I was hoping for a new MBP this fall, but it seems that my old MacBook Air has to do it's job a little longer.

reitzensteinm 11y ago
I'm really looking forward to a benchmark of the GT4 graphics; I'm a game developer, and it might just be the first time I can work on a laptop with integrated graphics. Of course, it'll still be a rare and power hungry configuration, so it's not like I'll suddenly be using a Macbook, but it's a nice progression.
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  I'm still hoping for external GPUs to catch on. A decent CPU and adequate graphics is usually all I need in a laptop while traveling, but it would be nice to be able to plug in a more beefy GPU at home to play games and drive more monitors at higher resolutions.
  - reitzensteinm 11y ago
    Well, Thunderbolt 3 now explicitly supports them (previously Intel wouldn't certify for what appeared to be non-technical reasons), so it might actually catch on. I don't expect it to be cheap; but even if the chassis is a few hundred dollars, if you can reuse them for three generations of GPU and laptop, it's probably worth it. http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9331/TB19_575px.png http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9331/TB19_575px.png http://www.anandtech.com/show/9331/intel-announces-thunderbolt-3 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9331/intel-announces-thunderbo...
    - justincormack 11y ago
      So far they have largely been built into monitors (by Sony) which gives different obsolescence profile.
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  according to some bench even the i5 6500 gpu is as good as my dedicated (but old) readeon hd 6670 - which would put it in the "good enough to run crysis 2 with some compromises" territory even this GPU would make for a great value proposition in a midrange macbook pro
- bd 11y ago
  I'm a game developer, and it might just be the first time I can work on a laptop with integrated graphics. Please don't :). New iGPUs may be catching up to old dGPUs, but meanwhile new dGPUs are just skyrocketing in power far beyond them. I made this chart to easily see relative performance of most common notebook GPUs: http://alteredqualia.com/texts/notebooks/nvidia-gpus.png http://alteredqualia.com/texts/notebooks/nvidia-gpus.png Or if you are interested in both desktop and notebook GPUs relative performances: http://alteredqualia.com/tools/gpus/ http://alteredqualia.com/tools/gpus/ What Intel does is great for rising minimal specs you can expect in notebook graphics, but you can do much better than that, even cheap modern dGPUs wipe out the best iGPUs. You can extrapolate Skylake Iris Pro from Intel marketing claims vs older Iris Pros, it's going to be better but not Earth-shatteringly better. And this gap is just going to get wider in 2016, with HBM2 and 16 nm node sizes finally coming to GPUs (both to Nvidia with Pascal and AMD with Arctic Islands).
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    Even if you're developing a high-end crazy graphics game in UT4 on your desktop with SLIed GTX 980s, it's still useful to be able to work on it from a laptop at more than 2 FPS.
    - reitzensteinm 11y ago
      That's exactly my situation. Going to 720p requires half the fill rate of 1080p. Turn off some postprocessing and antialiasing and you might get double the performance again. So if you're at 1/4 peak performance, you're still running a smooth game albeit not quite at full detail. If you're at 1/16 peak performance... things aren't looking too good by the time you get your game smooth.
    - bd 11y ago
      And that was exactly my point :) In case it wasn't clear from the context, I was suggesting getting a notebook with a discrete GPU instead of integrated GPU (that's what iGPU/dGPU stand for, not a desktop GPU). If you are game developer / graphics programmer / game player / designer / photo or video editor / VR enthusiast / anybody who cares about graphics, I would advise to get at least GTX 960M (if you have budget or size constrains, this should get you roughly to PS4/Xbox One levels, so relatively safe for this gen), but preferably GTX 970M (best price/power and you can still get slim notebook). GTX 970M will get you about average GPU performance overall, including desktops (these days I get ~50-percentile rank in 3dmark firestrike with my GTX 970M notebook, so average GPU in September 2015 is at least as fast or faster, at least for that cohort of people).
- Symmetry 11y ago
  On Linux Intel has been doing pretty well making high performance (meaning as good as Windows) open source drivers for their integrated graphics which makes the GT4 sort of appealing to me.
p1esk 11y ago
What do you expect from Skylake based MBP that can't be done with the current MBP?
- jychang 11y ago
  Well, the current 15 inch MBP is running 2 years old Haswell processors, so it's simply a bad buy when Skylake MBPs are coming out in a few months. Additionally, Skylake brings DDR4 memory, Thunderbolt 3.0 (Thunderbolt over USB), and better performance/battery life. There's also possible wireless charging support, and the Skylake integrated GPU possibly has double the speed of the Haswell Iris chips.
- skrause 11y ago
  - USB Type-C - The ability to run external 5K monitors. Since I usually keep a laptop for at least four years, it would be unwise for me to now buy a laptop that can't do both of those technologies which I really want to have.
  - p1esk 11y ago
    I have a Haswell MBP. I don't remember a time when I had to plug a USB device into it. The only device I can think of is a flash drive, but the last time I used one was more than 2 years ago. Which USB devices do you use with your laptop? Regarding 5k displays, currently I'm still not ready to buy even a 4k version, mostly because I'm waiting for higher frequencies (via G-Sync or FreeSync, both of which require a discrete card, and it's not at all clear if those will be supported in the next MBP). 5k monitors currently cost 4 times as much as 4k. Really hard to justify buying one anytime soon. If Apple does not release Skylake MBP in October, I would recommend buying the current one, rather than suffering the horrible resolution of MBA for another 6 months.
- toyg 11y ago
  32gb of ram, 5k monitors, Thunderbolt/USB 3, etc etc etc...

by skrause 11y ago

reitzensteinm 11y ago

I'm really looking forward to a benchmark of the GT4 graphics; I'm a game developer, and it might just be the first time I can work on a laptop with integrated graphics. Of course, it'll still be a rare and power hungry configuration, so it's not like I'll suddenly be using a Macbook, but it's a nice progression.

lewisl9029 11y ago
I'm still hoping for external GPUs to catch on. A decent CPU and adequate graphics is usually all I need in a laptop while traveling, but it would be nice to be able to plug in a more beefy GPU at home to play games and drive more monitors at higher resolutions.
- reitzensteinm 11y ago
  Well, Thunderbolt 3 now explicitly supports them (previously Intel wouldn't certify for what appeared to be non-technical reasons), so it might actually catch on. I don't expect it to be cheap; but even if the chassis is a few hundred dollars, if you can reuse them for three generations of GPU and laptop, it's probably worth it. http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9331/TB19_575px.png http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9331/TB19_575px.png http://www.anandtech.com/show/9331/intel-announces-thunderbolt-3 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9331/intel-announces-thunderbo...
  - justincormack 11y ago
    So far they have largely been built into monitors (by Sony) which gives different obsolescence profile.
LoSboccacc 11y ago
according to some bench even the i5 6500 gpu is as good as my dedicated (but old) readeon hd 6670 - which would put it in the "good enough to run crysis 2 with some compromises" territory even this GPU would make for a great value proposition in a midrange macbook pro
bd 11y ago
I'm a game developer, and it might just be the first time I can work on a laptop with integrated graphics. Please don't :). New iGPUs may be catching up to old dGPUs, but meanwhile new dGPUs are just skyrocketing in power far beyond them. I made this chart to easily see relative performance of most common notebook GPUs: http://alteredqualia.com/texts/notebooks/nvidia-gpus.png http://alteredqualia.com/texts/notebooks/nvidia-gpus.png Or if you are interested in both desktop and notebook GPUs relative performances: http://alteredqualia.com/tools/gpus/ http://alteredqualia.com/tools/gpus/ What Intel does is great for rising minimal specs you can expect in notebook graphics, but you can do much better than that, even cheap modern dGPUs wipe out the best iGPUs. You can extrapolate Skylake Iris Pro from Intel marketing claims vs older Iris Pros, it's going to be better but not Earth-shatteringly better. And this gap is just going to get wider in 2016, with HBM2 and 16 nm node sizes finally coming to GPUs (both to Nvidia with Pascal and AMD with Arctic Islands).
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  Even if you're developing a high-end crazy graphics game in UT4 on your desktop with SLIed GTX 980s, it's still useful to be able to work on it from a laptop at more than 2 FPS.
  - reitzensteinm 11y ago
    That's exactly my situation. Going to 720p requires half the fill rate of 1080p. Turn off some postprocessing and antialiasing and you might get double the performance again. So if you're at 1/4 peak performance, you're still running a smooth game albeit not quite at full detail. If you're at 1/16 peak performance... things aren't looking too good by the time you get your game smooth.
  - bd 11y ago
    And that was exactly my point :) In case it wasn't clear from the context, I was suggesting getting a notebook with a discrete GPU instead of integrated GPU (that's what iGPU/dGPU stand for, not a desktop GPU). If you are game developer / graphics programmer / game player / designer / photo or video editor / VR enthusiast / anybody who cares about graphics, I would advise to get at least GTX 960M (if you have budget or size constrains, this should get you roughly to PS4/Xbox One levels, so relatively safe for this gen), but preferably GTX 970M (best price/power and you can still get slim notebook). GTX 970M will get you about average GPU performance overall, including desktops (these days I get ~50-percentile rank in 3dmark firestrike with my GTX 970M notebook, so average GPU in September 2015 is at least as fast or faster, at least for that cohort of people).
Symmetry 11y ago
On Linux Intel has been doing pretty well making high performance (meaning as good as Windows) open source drivers for their integrated graphics which makes the GT4 sort of appealing to me.

p1esk 11y ago

What do you expect from Skylake based MBP that can't be done with the current MBP?

jychang 11y ago
Well, the current 15 inch MBP is running 2 years old Haswell processors, so it's simply a bad buy when Skylake MBPs are coming out in a few months. Additionally, Skylake brings DDR4 memory, Thunderbolt 3.0 (Thunderbolt over USB), and better performance/battery life. There's also possible wireless charging support, and the Skylake integrated GPU possibly has double the speed of the Haswell Iris chips.
skrause 11y ago
- USB Type-C - The ability to run external 5K monitors. Since I usually keep a laptop for at least four years, it would be unwise for me to now buy a laptop that can't do both of those technologies which I really want to have.
- p1esk 11y ago
  I have a Haswell MBP. I don't remember a time when I had to plug a USB device into it. The only device I can think of is a flash drive, but the last time I used one was more than 2 years ago. Which USB devices do you use with your laptop? Regarding 5k displays, currently I'm still not ready to buy even a 4k version, mostly because I'm waiting for higher frequencies (via G-Sync or FreeSync, both of which require a discrete card, and it's not at all clear if those will be supported in the next MBP). 5k monitors currently cost 4 times as much as 4k. Really hard to justify buying one anytime soon. If Apple does not release Skylake MBP in October, I would recommend buying the current one, rather than suffering the horrible resolution of MBA for another 6 months.
toyg 11y ago
32gb of ram, 5k monitors, Thunderbolt/USB 3, etc etc etc...