Apple Refreshes MBP Retina 15", 5K iMac price drop [Graphics & Compute comparison UPDATE]

[blu4]

The 5K iMac has a fantastic price and for the first time I don't think it's overpriced. I mean, you get:

 

-A beautiful AIO unit

-5K display

-i7

-16GB RAM

 

inb4: Not a fanboi.

[MrSuperb]

as an apple fan I would say they need to ...

 

... make 8GB Ram standard in the Macbook Airs ...

... make 256GB SSDs standard in the 13" Macbook Pros ...

... make 512GB SSDs standard in the 15" Macbook Pros ...

 

... and keep the same price in the US (and drop the Europe price premium)

 

 

(and/or use M.2 SSDs that are user-replacable)

[Mew]

Hm... would love to upgrade to a MacBook Pro but I cannot give up the lovely battery life of my Air. Don't get me wrong 9 hrs is pretty good but 12 hrs is even better.

 

12 hours holy balls. I can only dream of getting more than 4 hours on my ulv haswell ultrabook. The battery that Dell uses is horrendous.... within 2-3 months of owning it, the battery capacity was down to 60% partly due to using Dell's fast charging technology. Switching it back to regular charging increased the battery health to 75% and has stayed there for a year. 

[Mew]

as an apple fan I would say they need to ...

 

... make 8GB Ram standard in the Macbook Airs ...

... make 256GB SSDs standard in the 13" Macbook Pros ...

... make 512GB SSDs standard in the 15" Macbook Pros ...

 

... and keep the same price in the US (and drop the Europe price premium)

 

 

(and/or use M.2 SSDs that are user-replacable)

 

Why use M.2 ssds when the ssds they use are faster than pretty much anything you can buy? If you need more capacity, you can get a cheap usb3 drive for cheap or buy a cheap ssd and put it in an enclosure. 

[MrSuperb]

Why use M.2 ssds when the ssds they use are faster than pretty much anything you can buy? If you need more capacity, you can get a cheap usb3 drive for cheap or buy a cheap ssd and put it in an enclosure. 

 

because M.2 is a standard, which we will see more and more.

also it already is cheaper to buy an aftermarket SM951, than upgrading at Apple directly.

 

 

edit: The SM951 is pretty much the same SSD Apple currently uses

[Nineshadow]

I agree, so thats what I picked a couple weeks ago. Love it so far. Very expensive (perhaps too much for my blood) but it was a gift so

 

Going to have this thing forever(4+ years) probably. Its a rMBP 13" w/16GB of memory, the i5-5257U (base), 256GB ssd (that ssd is so fast...)

 

 

using windows mainly for now, OSX is an absolute memory hog. Apple should work on fixing that. Im glad i got 16GB of memory though.

 

iris pro isnt too bad either... Thought it was gonna be worse than it is. I believe its about equivalent to a GT 620m. Not really going to be a gaming laptop, but it will run some light games. 

This is soooo much better than the $300 junk AMD e-450 laptop that  weighed 7 pounds and had terrible battery life and a terrible screen. I even put an ssd in that piece of junk to make it usable because it was soooo slow. Even with the ssd it lagged behind (that cpu is about equivalent to an iPhone 5 LOL). This laptop is sooooo much better. But anything would have been an upgrade for me haha

Well...you are comparing a $300 laptop to a $2000 one after all.

[MrSuperb]

using windows mainly for now, OSX is an absolute memory hog. Apple should work on fixing that. Im glad i got 16GB of memory though.

 

OS X uses as much memory as it can grab, that doesn't mean it won't free it when some programm needs it.

memory management wise OS X is pretty damn good

[simson0606]

it's nice to see that 16gb is the stock memory config. although i'm not too sure about the amd gpu... last time they did that they had major overheating issues (maybe the 300 series is more efficient?)

[randomhkkid]

Do Apple offer any upgrade/swap program? Would love to trade in my late 2013 rmbp to this eventhough not much difference in specs but every extra gpu power can benefit me greatly with my work. The GT750M is barely anymore powerful than the iris pro gpu.

Unfortunately they don't, though macs hold incredible resale value so check eBay for a rough estimate of what you can get for yours.

 

With 'audio by Beats' *shudders*

Beats audio on the newer Envy lines are actually very impressive, they're like the MBP Retina's speakers plus a surprising amount of bass response.

 

because M.2 is a standard, which we will see more and more.

also it already is cheaper to buy an aftermarket SM951, than upgrading at Apple directly.

 

 

edit: The SM951 is pretty much the same SSD Apple currently uses

The problem with removable SSD's is the increase in space that the connector and form factor would require. Apple uses NAND packages soldered directly to the motherboard to increase usable space for batteries and the like. Hence the HUGE ~100Whr battery this thing has. Oops, was thinking of the macbook line. Thanks MrSuperb.

[MrSuperb]

The problem with removable SSD's is the increase in space that the connector and form factor would require. Apple uses NAND packages soldered directly to the motherboard to increase usable space for batteries and the like. Hence the HUGE ~100Whr battery this thing has.

 

only the 'new Macbook' has the NAND soldered onto the motherboard.

 

Air's and Pro's use propriatery connectors/modules

 

from ifixit.com

[MrSuperb]

in fact the modules are pretty much the same size:

[Norman_the_Owl]

Apple has always used Nvidia discrete graphics on their computers (except for the Firepros in the Mac Pros), seems weird to jump to AMD.

This needs to be reworded, they've always used Nvidia in their laptops.

Their desktops have almost always been AMD, with a few exceptions early on

[AlexGoesHigh]

in fact the modules are pretty much the same size

Snip

That's the most scummy thing i have ever seen, literally the connector is the only difference, one thing is making proprietary design but this is terrible i even make the assumption that's m.2 but using a different connector like usb a and usb b

[BernardoSLR]

This needs to be reworded, they've always used Nvidia in their laptops.

Their desktops have almost always been AMD, with a few exceptions early on

Also false... Macbook with X1600 Radeon is one that I remember, and I'm pretty sure there were more in the past. Still, a dumb choice going for AMD at this moment... At least, in my opinion.

[handymanshandle]

I would have liked to have seen that Apple wait until Intel released the Broadwell update for the regular mobile chips. Granted the overall performance won't be too terribly different from Haswell mobile and Broadwell mobile at least waiting for Broadwell mobile would have meant that the laptop could have nice battery life. Oh well, Skylake will be a little bit better but Cannonlake will most likely bring the more noticeable improvements. As it would seem mobile APU's will still be behind for awhile still.

[Norman_the_Owl]

Also false... Macbook with X1600 Radeon is one that I remember, and I'm pretty sure there were more in the past. Still, a dumb choice going for AMD at this moment... At least, in my opinion.

That was so long ago it was ATI, not even AMD

[MrSuperb]

I would have liked to have seen that Apple wait until Intel released the Broadwell update for the regular mobile chips. Granted the overall performance won't be too terribly different from Haswell mobile and Broadwell mobile at least waiting for Broadwell mobile would have meant that the laptop could have nice battery life.

The brings the question if Intel will even release mobile broadwell quad cores or if they just skip them and realease the skylake variant.

[RedRound2]

12 hours holy balls. I can only dream of getting more than 4 hours on my ulv haswell ultrabook. The battery that Dell uses is horrendous.... within 2-3 months of owning it, the battery capacity was down to 60% partly due to using Dell's fast charging technology. Switching it back to regular charging increased the battery health to 75% and has stayed there for a year. 

 

12 hours is for the old one. The new 2015 refresh, according to cnet goes upto 18 hours of video playback

[cesrai]

there is no mobile broawell quad core yet

My Air has one, so ?

[Trik'Stari]

12 hours is for the old one. The new 2015 refresh, according to cnet goes upto 18 hours of video playback

............if you're going to be sitting for 12-18 hours watching video....why not just plug it in?

[MrSuperb]

My Air has one, so ?

 

nope. your air has a dual core. Intel hasn't released any mobile broadwell quad core cpus

[MrSuperb]

............if you're going to be sitting for 12-18 hours watching video....why not just plug it in?

 

maybe because you are on  an ultra long flight or other journey and couldn't afford the business class ticket ..?

[Trik'Stari]

maybe because you are on  an ultra long flight or other journey and couldn't afford the business class ticket ..?

Good point.

 

Then again, If I'm going to be on a plain for 12-18 hours I'm probably going to be sleeping for as much of it as possible, and or contemplating suicide (I hate flying)

[randomhkkid]

Updated original post with information from Anandtech about the M370X as well as graphics and compute performance in light of the new info.

 

 

Good point.

 

Then again, If I'm going to be on a plain for 12-18 hours I'm probably going to be sleeping for as much of it as possible, and or contemplating suicide (I hate flying)

 

Surely with flight time that long it's an international flight, all the carriers I know have power sockets even in economy class. Then again I don't live in the US.

[cesrai]

nope. your air has a dual core. Intel hasn't released any mobile broadwell quad core cpus

Oh I forget about HT.