Is the MacBook Pro 2018 REALLY Bad?

[Emily Young]

Apple’s reputation for… Less than stellar thermal performance certainly precedes it. But is that really all there is to the 2018 Core i9-equipped MacBook Pro?

 

 

Buy a 2018 MacBook Pro from Apple: http://geni.us/TSBx

 

Buy an ASUS G703G:
On Amazon: http://geni.us/i7BRu
On Newegg: http://geni.us/Va9s

[Hunter259]

To think that throttling isn't even new to this machine. I got a 2013 recently for a good price and under combined loads the CPU and GPU would throttle due to the heat. I replaced the thermal paste and under volted the CPU and now temps are below 90 under sustained load. Expect the CPU was still throttling which also cause GPU clock rates to drop. How come? Apple designed the VRM to flip the CPU's PROCHOT register when the VRM got too hot which put the CPU into thermal throttle mode. Just putting your hand on the VRM pad thing they had on it would instantly bring performance back. I have to put thermal pads in small strips over the entire area just to gain my full combined performance. They never dropped under base clocks which is likely why no one has ever reported this as a major issue likely due to the thought that the high temps were the sole cause of the throttling.

[GDRRiley]

wait why does linus keep mentioning programming in relation to needing powerful hardware? 90%+ of coding could be done on a core 2 duo and you wouldn't know.

[patrick3027]

This was surprisingy insightful, thanks for the great video.

 

For people who absolutely want a MacBook, what would you recommand? Spare some money and get the one with the most low-end processor?

[mrchow19910319]

people who buy apple's macbook pro, programmers, photographers , will keep buying. 

 

I think the price at this point is just too steep, and when it comes to thermal throttling, I dont think that is an issue. 

[mrchow19910319]

6 minutes ago, patrick3027 said:

This was surprisingy insightful, thanks for the great video.

 

For people who absolutely want a MacBook, what would you recommand? Spare some money and get the one with the most low-end processor?

I think at least for ONCE, you gotta have the latest and greatest machine if you want a Mac. 

macOS works wonders when compares to windows. 

 

but after that, I think there is no need to chase the latest model anymore. 

save yourself some big money either GO REFURB, or GO LAST GEN. 

 

Also the latest hardware + the latest software always give you more trouble, always.

My 2017 had a few OS related issue and a hardware issue as well. 

My old 2012 macbook pro (the one with a CD drive) did not fail in any way during 6 years of usage. 

Sold it for 600 bucks. 

 

I think for me a macbook air is probably all I need. 

But I got a 2017 machine with 16GB of ram. 

 

So, it is really up to you. But dont buy now, wait for the September release. 

 

Edit: however, if you make money out of this machine or your boss pay for it, ask for the top of the line model. You won't regret it. A lot of programmers use 15 inch 32GB 512GB machine. But bare in mind that those people make some serious money doing their work.

Edited August 26, 2018 by mrchow19910319

[Streetguru]

1 hour ago, GabenJr said:

 

@LinusSebastian

Any chance you guys can compare the 2017 and 2018 VRM? I haven't seen anyone do it, and I want to know if apple even bothered to upgrade the VRM for the higher power draw CPUs.

[Salzstangl]

In 2015 I had a macbook-pro for ~2300$ (back then). For work it felt much much better working at home on my windows-notebook (~1900$ one year older).

 

Have fun if you pay an apple-tax of 50% for getting screwed over intentionally all the time. No quality will save you if the manufacturer wants your device to fail.

Btw the windows-notebook still runs modern games even with flawed gpu-cooler

[DrMacintosh]

I mean, it wouldn't be my first choice. I think I'd rather go with the i7 model tbh. 

[Emily Young]

30 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

I mean, it wouldn't be my first choice. I think I'd rather go with the i7 model tbh. 

Basically this. From my point of view, the cooling on the 15" MBP is adequate for 35W parts, while the i9 is a 45W. It can be TDP-downed to 35W, which is what Apple is doing with the macOS patch.

[AS162]

Here's the problem with the data recovery connector. The T2 always on encryption is handled by a Secure Enclave Processor in the T2 (will be henceforth referred to as SEP). That SEP has a crypto engine which contains a "UID key" (exactly like the one on iOS devices) that never leaves that T2 and is only accessible to the crypto engine. Apple does not want to backdoor SEP by having a connector like that (since it'd affect iOS devices as well) so they just make the data inaccessible without the T2 working. It sucks I know, but they're implementing more of the iOS security scheme by the days. Anti downgrade is already enabled by default but can be disabled on Macs (in contrast to iOS devices) and it's only a matter of time before anti downgrade is mandatory, all data is permanently tied to a CPU, and other things Apple will do to be more restrictive.

 

 

All info was obtained from here: https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

 

Sections that have the info:

 

System Security: Secure boot chain, Secure Enclave, and System Software Authorization

 

Encryption and Data Protection: Hardware security features

[Guest]

Sorry Linus, no flame wars on the forum. 

[Hunter259]

39 minutes ago, GabenJr said:

Basically this. From my point of view, the cooling on the 15" MBP is adequate for 35W parts, while the i9 is a 45W. It can be TDP-downed to 35W, which is what Apple is doing with the macOS patch.

But the old Pro's also used 45W parts? They were configurable down to 35 but they also tended to sit well above base clock under load. It's possible that the higher thermal density is the cause of the higher difficulty in cooling the chips since it appears that everyone is having issues when they didn't before.

[Streetguru]

9 minutes ago, Hunter259 said:

But the old Pro's also used 45W parts? They were configurable down to 35 but they also tended to sit well above base clock under load. It's possible that the higher thermal density is the cause of the higher difficulty in cooling the chips since it appears that everyone is having issues when they didn't before.

Intel's TDPs are lies.

The chip has 2 extra cores, and they couldn't even properly cool 4 core CPUs. Adding 50% more power the mix requires at minimum a 50% better cooler.

But then apple might have to make the whole thing 5mm thicker and we can't have that.

[Emily Young]

10 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Intel's TDPs are lies.

The chip has 2 extra cores, and they couldn't even properly cool 4 core CPUs. Adding 50% more power the mix requires at minimum a 50% better cooler.

But then apple might have to make the whole thing 5mm thicker and we can't have that.

Once again, basically this. Even if the TDP were actually identical, power density and delivery is not. And for that matter, much has been made of the VRMs and their cooling being insufficient as well, which combines to give us the gift of water-boiling CPU temperatures.

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, GabenJr said:

Once again, basically this. Even if the TDP were actually identical, power density and delivery is not. And for that matter, much has been made of the VRMs and their cooling being insufficient as well, which combines to give us the gift of water-boiling CPU temperatures.

So do you know if the VRM is the same as with the 4 core model? I'm sure Rossman would be very happy to hear that.

[Emily Young]

39 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

So do you know if the VRM is the same as with the 4 core model? I'm sure Rossman would be very happy to hear that.

During the course of shooting I hadn’t taken a close look since the throttling issue was clearly a thermal one. I may get a chance to look at it a little more closely in the coming days, depending on whether or not it’s needed for other projects. Our older MacBook is permanently in use as a workstation right now though.

[D13H4RD]

2 hours ago, Streetguru said:

Intel's TDPs are lies.

The chip has 2 extra cores, and they couldn't even properly cool 4 core CPUs. Adding 50% more power the mix requires at minimum a 50% better cooler.

But then apple might have to make the whole thing 5mm thicker and we can't have that.

Well, it's more that they are following their definition of TDP by the book. 

 

On ARK, Intel's definition of TDP is the amount of heat in watts generated by the CPU when running a realistically heavy workload at base clocks (no overclocking or turbo) that the cooler has to dissipate. 

 

The quirk is that Kaby Lake all the way back to Sandy Bridge, even when stressed, the CPU would remain under the rated TDP. Coffee Lake's aggressive clocks and increased core count potentially coupled with a micro architecture that has not changed all that much probably resulted in this 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Prescott days eh? Reminds me of how the North Bridge heatsink mount of my AOpen board completely failed over several years of use. That Pentium 4 HT chip ran hot with included Intel heatsink so maybe that's why the North Bridge mount failed. 

People who had an AOpen board with Prescott CPUs would be familiar with this darn thing making the case speaker beep at you whenever the chip ran over 60, which was pretty often. 

 

[SeraphicWings]

9 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

I mean, it wouldn't be my first choice. I think I'd rather go with the i7 model tbh. 

i9 is stupid, i9 on a *laptop* is beyond retarded and pure marketing bullshit. Apple is not the only one who did this

Makes me feel more comfortable buying a 2017 version used

[D13H4RD]

1 hour ago, SeraphicWings said:

i9 is stupid, i9 on a *laptop* is beyond retarded and pure marketing bullshit. Apple is not the only one who did this

Makes me feel more comfortable buying a 2017 version used

It depends on the laptop

 

Mega desktop replacements can handle it even when overclocked, albeit at very high temperatures and at very high power consumption.

 

But on a thin and light? Nah. You're better off with the 8750H.

[Sauron]

15 hours ago, Hunter259 said:

To think that throttling isn't even new to this machine. I got a 2013 recently for a good price and under combined loads the CPU and GPU would throttle due to the heat. I replaced the thermal paste and under volted the CPU and now temps are below 90 under sustained load. Expect the CPU was still throttling which also cause GPU clock rates to drop. How come? Apple designed the VRM to flip the CPU's PROCHOT register when the VRM got too hot which put the CPU into thermal throttle mode. Just putting your hand on the VRM pad thing they had on it would instantly bring performance back. I have to put thermal pads in small strips over the entire area just to gain my full combined performance. They never dropped under base clocks which is likely why no one has ever reported this as a major issue likely due to the thought that the high temps were the sole cause of the throttling.

Oh yeah, it's just that this time it was so bad at launch that even the most rabid apple fans had t acknowledge it was a problem.

3 hours ago, SeraphicWings said:

i9 is stupid, i9 on a *laptop* is beyond retarded and pure marketing bullshit. Apple is not the only one who did this

Makes me feel more comfortable buying a 2017 version used

It's just fine if you put it in a machine with adequate cooling. A macbook pro does not fit that description. There are laptops with desktop cpus in them for that matter.

11 hours ago, GabenJr said:

Once again, basically this. Even if the TDP were actually identical, power density and delivery is not. And for that matter, much has been made of the VRMs and their cooling being insufficient as well, which combines to give us the gift of water-boiling CPU temperatures.

What's even worse is that overloaded VRMs cause voltage fluctuations which aren't exactly healthy for the cpu...

[drunkship]

Hello everyone,

 

  I'm new to the forum and I feel that I will get great feedback here.

 

At my Job I have two options of laptops either there top of the line Surface Book 2 or top of the line MacBook pro 2018.

 

This is what I'll be using it for,

-Adobe Products

  - Dreamweaver (Heavily)

  - Premier (slightly Heavily)

  - Photoshop (moderate)

-LabVIEW (on mac of course on parallels)

-Coding (moderate)

-lots of multitasking programs 

-No Gaming

-

 

I'm leaning towards the MacBook Pro but would love some feedback on maybe why the surface book might be a better choice. 

[AS162]

@drunkship The thing with the MacBook Pro is that you can't upgrade it too much and the keyboard is spotty. The Surface Book 2 would serve you better for most things you said, but the hard part is that coding part. Coding is best done on UNIX based platforms, so on a PC, unless you want to Hackintosh, a Linux based platform is the best choice for coding, but Adobe products don't work on Linux. I'd say stick to the Surface Book 2. Now is a Mac still an excellent choice? Absolutely. But here's the thing: if you want to use a Mac for that professional work, wait for the Mac Pro next year. Hope I was able to help. 

[RH6194]

There have been many reports and tests done with the 8950 H i9 to the point that the heat issues have discouraged me from opting for this configuration.

 

However what is of much more interest to me are similar test results using the same configuration - except substituting the 8750 H i7 and the 8850 H i7. While these processors are a bit slower they still have adequate power for the work I do...and if the temps are lower, having a reduced risk of heat warping and potential data loss is worth the reduction in processing speed.

 

Are these i7 machines safer to use? Is there empirical data to support your position?