mbp upgrade is kind of a downgrade...

basically, the graphics and battery life are taking a hit across the board.

at 15", $1800 - you are looking at a significant downgrade from last year.

last year: 128 bit nvidia 330m -> this year: 64 bit amd 6490

yes, it's slower. in fact, it's not even that much faster than the integrated chip. almost might as well have not put any graphics card in there. it's not only massively slower than the high end graphics part, it's also slower than last years $1800 model. That is bothersome.

at 13", all price points - significant graphics downgrade.

last year: nvidia 320m (integrated, motherboard) -> this year: intel sandy bridge (integrated, processor)

yes, it's slower. it's also less compatible and may have issues with games, whereas you could be sure that it would at least run with the 320m. Intel is getting better, sure, but they still aren't better than nvidia in terms of compatibility or even in a stacked fight of this years intel chip vs. last year's nvidia chip.

all models, all price points - battery life downgrade

last year: 10 hours on 13" machines, 8-9 hours on 15" and 17" machines -> this year: 7 hours on all machines



What they should have done: (ignoring the other rumors that turned out false)

-graphics switching across the board
-6400 family parts (seymore chips) in 13" machines (6430 to 6490)
-6600/6700 family parts (whistler chips) in 15" and 17" machines (6630 to 6770)
-incremental battery tech upgrade to keep at least 8 hours across the board.

other questions:

- why did the 13" machine lose 30% of it's battery life? the sandy bridge chips were supposed to draw even less power than the nvidia chips.

 

Well I could have said I told you so but who listens...that is how older machines of Apple gets high resale value, because their older models have better specs...(Joking)
Or you could just get to the next OEM subforum on notebookreviews where machines are cheap and powerful.

 

Is the amd 6750M that bad compared to the nvidia gt 330m?

 

6750M is in a different league to older 330M.

 

Hmm.. You complete ignore the fact that it got state of the art platform and CPU for the very first time? The jump from Intel Core 2 Duo and nVIDIA chipset to SandyBridge is HUGE. The Core i5 SandyBridge is preforming better than Core i7 Arrandale which is a massive improvement to the Core 2 in the first place..

Graphics performance isn't everything, at least not in a 13" notebook and did I mention that the pure fact that there is lacking another graphics card is because Intel wont let nVIDIA make chipset for their processors anymore. You can't really blame Apple for that, sure they could remove space for the battery and put in a more power hungry graphics card but then everyone would go !! Just 3-4 hours battery all of a sudden?

You get an almost identical performing graphics solution, way better platform and CPU, HD webcam and the first notebook with Thunderbolt connection on the market and did I mention the power consumption and heat created from the Intel GMA HD 3000 is way better than the 320M. Why are you complaining in the first place? You should go 15" with decent graphics or 17" if you want something else than what the 13" model is aimed at being.

 

Unless you're doing lots of encoding or something similar, CPU performance isn't really that important to majority of users either and for daily tasks performs identically to older CPUs. As for power consumption, as stated if the new chips are so much better then why did Apple drop the battery life estimates without a change in battery capacity? Also, while Thunderbolt looks extremely good on paper, I question the actual usefulness of it. Like FW, without widespread adoption (which Apple is notorious for not doing), I don't see this being useful to many people either.

 

I reorganized my post to make it more clear.

The $2200 15" (6750) is an upgrade from last year's $2200 machine (330m)

The $1800 15" (6490) is a downgrade from last year's $1800 machine (330m).

It would be nice to see improvements across price ranges. If I have $1800, why am I getting worse value for graphics horsepower and battery life compared to last year? I agree that it's not everything, but these are pretty significant aspects of a laptop.

Again, I'm not saying the faster processor and a new port (yipee) have no value, but the new machine is not universally better. The older macbook pro is going to be better for a variety of applications. It gives you extra mobility at any price and extra graphics power for all machines in the $1100-1800 range (that range is pretty significant imo).

And the real issue is that this type of budget-based trade off is not something we usually have to deal with. Apple used to just design their machine and put in the fastest parts that would fit the thermal budget.

And as far as it being intel's fault. Yes, intel started it. But, apple could have put a small dedicated gpu into the 13" (just not integrated).

Now, they are making budget choices over design choices. There is no design reason why they couldn't have included a better gpu in the 15" model, from at least the same GPU family as the more expensive machine.

Honestly, anyone who intends to play 3d games, do 3d graphics work, openCL, etc etc on their machines and has $1800 as their budget is better off with last years model. Also, if you are a mobile warrior and want an apple machine on any budget, you should go for last year's tech.

I'm not even interested in debating whether or not the new machines are better overall than the old ones. The point is that such a debate is relevant. There is no one answer for everyone. It depends on what you want to do with the machine. This is what is bothering me about the update. It's usually better for everyone. Battery life >= last years, processing power >= last years, gpu power >= last years, etc.

I'm wondering why it's not cut and dry. I can't remember a time (although it may have happened) when apple's next-gen product wasn't definitely better than the previous gen.

 

I don't even understand why the $1800 model couldn't have just had only dual core options and the the 6750M. There's no excuse. They're just trying to increase their already ridiculous profit margins, plain and simple. I wasn't planning on getting a Mac anyway, but I was excited to see what they would bring out. This is an insult to Apple's customers, imo.

 

Yeah- a dual core sandy bridge with the 6750 with maybe less gpu memory on the $1800 machine would be more in line with the type of differentiation Apple has made in the past.

If they had gone that route, then (interestingly) the CPU and GPU performance of the new model would have been better than last year's model, and still significantly less than the $2200 model.

Anyway, I'm disappointed because I was expecting so much more.

16GB OS-boot SSD, redesign without an optical drive, significantly improved graphics, battery life, and processor (because of the added space available from pulling the optical drive), improved display. That's what I wanted to see. So I was already set up for disappointment. However, I especially wasn't expecting processor speed up, graphics performance down, battery life down. That's basically what we got.

 

So how does the 6750M compare to the Nvidia 330M?

 

the 6750 is better, but it's only in the $2200 machine.

 

Yeah. There was even the option to offer the 6650M (same as 6750M, but with DDR3) in that model, and but the 6490M in the 13-inch.

Even weirder is the fact that they wasted money giving the 6490M GDDR5. I mean... Really? Was that just so they could pass the cost down to the customers or what? All that's going to do is add more heat, especially if there's only 256MB in the first place...

 

and, apple's pricing has officially gotten out of control.

I remember a time when it was expensive, but you could kind of see where the dollars went. Comparable machines cost a comparable amount of money, and then like $150 apple tax. The big thing a couple of years ago was that apple just wasn't offering machines with cheaper components, so it seemed expensive, but it was really comparable.

I have no idea how to justify their $1800 15" offering compared to other machines on the market. The apple tax is like half the cost of the machine now. It used to be something like 10%, and then you could justify that with OS X and solid support.

But it's literally about half the cost now.

 

It might be a little closer to the 330m than notebookcheck says if it's the gddr5 chip.

Still atrocious though. It's still slower, and the 330m was already a disappointing card.

Completely disappointed in apple, and would have upgraded were the offer better.

 

the battery life didnt just take a 3hrs hit. Apple performed stricter tests to give more realistic numbers. Its the same testing the did on the MBA. the battery life is actually about the same as the last one

 

No it will not, shader counts/performance matter more than RAM.

 

Yeah, both the 6490M and 6750M list GDDR5 on the specs page, which means that the 6750M is probably around 50% higher than the 330M (if not more) and a very nice upgrade. The 6490M, however, might be too weak to really be bottlenecked by the memory speed.

 

the gddr5 6490 is going to be a lot better than the ddr3 variant. if it had a 128 bit bus, then it would make less of a difference because it would be shader blocked, yeah. but, it's got a 64 bit bus. at ddr3 memory speeds, it's bandwidth is going to be low.

I'm guessing the ddr3 model has half the bandwidth of the 330m or less.

Of course the whole card is a disaster overall compared to the 330m either way.

 

As I recall, this isn't the first time that Apple released a MBP line with weaker graphics at some level

At least the $2200 version is decent.

 

But 2200 is a lot...I think you can get a high end gaming laptop for that kind of cash...

 

I can't think of any other time. (ati/amd) x1600 -> 8600 -> 9600 -> 330m -> (amd) 6490/6750

This is also the first time we have two different GPU families in one line of the macbook pro. In fact, it's also the first time we have two differently labeled GPUs in one line of the macbook pro. They used to just differentiate by adding more graphics memory.

And yes, $2200 is a huge amount of money for this. It's getting to the point where the apple tax is literally half the cost of the machine. Insane.

 

The good thing is,
You can buy mbp from bestbuy and take advantage of 18 months no interest.

So, you buy this new MBP and use it about 7-10 months, then resell it.
The lose will be around 100-200

So, basically you pay 100-200 to rent a newest technology and keep you in line
Bestbuy doesn't have too many option

 

remember that the battery tests are listed as more vigorous for real world usage... while an old 13" that said 10 hours might pull 6 to 8... this one says 7. We'll have to wait for real world tests to see if its better or worse really.

 

i love all the speculation - definitely makes things alil exciting when waiting on benchmarks and comparisons to last year models, etc. till then, i guess let's speculate!

 

Was considering a $1500 Sony 13" but I'm now considering the 13" mac book pro.

How does the graphics compare (intel's built-in vs. 330m on the Sony) and more importantly, the core i5 2.3ghz on the macbook pro vs. the Core i5-520m on the Sony?

Looking at wikipedia, it seems that the 13" Mac Book Pro's Core i5 is actually a ULV processor? Isn't that a huge performance difference when it comes to say, Adobe CS5 related tasks?

[correction] - was reading the desktop CPUs instead of the mobile ones...seems that this is a full-fledged Core i5 -the 2410m - and should easily beat out the 520m. http://www.9to5mac.com/53346/low-end-macbook-pros-intel-core-i5-2410m-processor

 

I honest might rather buy a sony right now, the low resolution screen and integrated gpu is a huge turn off. Or i might actually consider the macbook air

 

maybe.

or maybe the 10 hour one will pull 9 or 10 hours, and the new one still does 7. seems just as likely.

I guess we can just wait and see, but even if the battery life is less than 30% worse, I just have to wonder "why?".

Somewhat a disaster of a release imo.

 

...So if you wanted an Apple notebook for less than $1500 that is well suited for GPU specific tasks, your best candidate in this scenario is the 13" Macbook Air. Good job Apple. /s

 

I was gonna upgrade to the high spec'd MBP 15 anyway.. but something is telling me to wait

Side note- If I was to sell my MBP 13 as is in my sig.. how much would anyone pay?

 

The Intel IGP is around half as fast as the GT 330M.

 

your being very optimistic... got any benchmarks? I seriously doubt ti could get that fast... maybe if your running something at 640x480.

 

As bad as this is for people who waited, I am actually happy because now my 2010 MBP is worth more.

Resale value went from $875ish to $650 a week ago then now its back up because everyone hates these updates...

 

Um, what? I'm saying that the 330M is much faster.

 

you said its twice as fast.. I'm saying I think its actually much more than twice as fast... I think the Intel HD 3000 is actually slower than half the speed.

 

Well it seems that most Apple buyers don't care about the specs anyway, they buy it because it is an Apple.
You can complain about it, but Apple won't bother because it will sell.
I myself expected too much from this upgrade, like many others on this forum. I was considering a switch to Apple, but justifying a MBP 13 got actually tougher now.

 

Oh. The HD 3000 is a bit faster than the 310M, sometimes even beating the HD 5450 and the 320M IGP.

Intel HD Graphics 3000 - Notebookcheck.net Tech
Review Intel HD Graphics 3000 graphics solution - Notebookcheck.net Reviews
The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Note, however, that the clocks on the dual-core CPUs will be slightly different. (650-1100 for the 2.3GHz i5, 650-1300 for the 2.7GHz i7)

 

45 watt quad in Macbook = liquid metal

 

From benchmarks the new Intel HD3000 card vs the 320m is a draw/push in many cases. It is a shame it is an update and they chose not to push the envelope and better the graphics.

 

it's not even worth it to talk about how much faster the 330m is over the intel 3000.

the 330m can play every game and run every graphics application on the market. the intel is hit or miss with games and other apps (maya, autocad, etc). raw performance is probably at least twice as fast, compatibility means that the performance can actually be used... so...

 

Oooohhh new shiny.... *whips out credit card*

On a more serious note. Disappointed with the screen res they've used but otherwise I think these are quite good.

The HD 3000 is roughly the same as the 320M IGP in speed but it's also got a wickedly faster video encoder which I believe Apple is using for Facetime HD so hopefully it'll be available for other applications to use as well. Faster than anything AMD and Nvidia have out now, even in their top of the line cards.

The CPU is twice the speed of the Core 2 Duo roughly which is two generations behind. So you get to keep a similar speed GPU but get double the CPU performance, that's not something to sniff at. Most people don't push the GPU unless they game which I imagine most 13inch MacBook Pro users don't do but they will notice if webpages render faster for instance.

I've got a 2010 MacBook Pro 13inch and I've never got it close to 10 hours so if the new ones 7 hours is more realistic then good on Apple for being a bit more honest. Even if it's 5 - 6 hours, that's roughly what I tend to average on my 2010 model anyway in my usage.

I will happily agree that the low end 15inch model isn't good but the higher end 15 is very good other than the default screen again. The 17 is great as well with a good default screen.

Price is quite high but then again it always has been in the UK. I don't see this generation being much different in those regards from the last. Rocket fuel for Steve to fly to his lunar liar isn't cheap you know.

 

I don't know if this has already been discussed... but $2,199 for A 6750?!?!
Oh wait... sorry... almost forgot this was apple we were talking about

 

As an Apple fan I too, am disappointed. I was waiting to buy a SB MBP but I will not be buying this update/model. Oh well.

 

At first I was actually impressed when I saw the 6750m. Then saw it was $2200. And 17" at $2500?

I like that MBP is thin and light, but damn, they need to work on pricing and/or trial a slightly larger model with more beefy components.

 

the cost is insane, the $2200 machine is good, but the price is nuts.

and yeah, overall, the $1800 machine is better as a whole than the previous version, but if that's the statement you have to make, there is already a problem. There is no reason they couldn't have put in a GPU that's a little better than the last version in the 1800 machine. It would cost them a few dollars per unit, and their profit margin has got to be through the roof.

 

I really enjoy/ed Apple products over the past 3 years but they are getting a little too ridiculous IMO of course. They adopt a port that has nothing for it yet (Thundercats) yet they wont adopt Blu ray which I am sorry but that will be around for minimum the next 10 years.

Customers will pay it though, eventually that balloon will pop but it shall be awhile. It is a shame they have and will not have to have competition for OSX users hardware wise, those sad price to spec ratios are what happens. It will be magical though.

If they ever get on the brink of going out again they better not receive a bailout again, OSX gets free from jail and we all win. Any OS of the big 3 on any hardware you choose. Be sooo nice.

 

Yup I would say at least 50-70% margins for them. Way higher than the 30% people say. That 2200 should be no higher than 1600.00 I can find better specs on the dark side for probably 1500. I think the G73 would beat it actually and that hasn't refreshed yet I believe.

Hype and pretty eye candy does wonders.

 

no one says 30% for this go around. it's been less than 30% in the past, just a few years ago.

 

looks like the resale value for my 2010 will be quite good!

I'm thinking $2100, minimum for my 17" i7 620 + matte (which is in pristine condition)? higher?

As for the specs...sorry you guys are disappointed. I think 2x the GPU and a significantly better CPU (with epic video performance) represents a fair upgrade from last year's top models.

 

I'm actually not too displeased with the 13"er. I was expecting them to pull some weird stuff with the lower end one. My only question is why the battery life is so much lower than the previous model...

 

In Spain it actually is 2,149€ = 2,966.42 USD

Apple is absolutely nuts, and the people who pay that kind of money for that kind of hardware deserve to be shot.

God help Apple users in the UK...