Extremely Detailed Review of the rMBP

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Fascinating stuff!
As to ‘later in 2012″, this from page 8:
“Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge were both good steps for Intel, but Haswell and Broadwell are the designs that Apple truly wanted.”

That led me to:
“Haswell’s AVX2 integer support is particularly useful for processing visual data commonly encountered in consumer imaging and video processing workloads.”
https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2011/06/13/haswell-new-instruction-descriptions-now-available/

Also:
“In addition, it will support OpenGL 3.2 and OpenCL 1.2, which will improve performance in certain general purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) supported applications. The iGPU will feature new Auto-Stereoscopic 3D (AS3D), which will provide 3D support that is typically only available through the use of discrete GPUs. It will support up to three independent displays: HDMI 1.4, DVI, Display Port, VGA.”
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Haswell-iGPU-DirectX_11.1-OpenCL_1.2,14700.html

I also found a page (which I’ve lost the link to) discussing Intel’s strategy to get its next-gen IGP graphics ‘certified’ for applications like Nuke which now run need to run on nVidia Quadra-type external graphics cards…

Seems a lot is ‘going on’ for delivery ‘later in 2013’ 😉

[Steve Connor]

Thanks for posting this Andrew, reading it has almost convinced me to order one.

Steve Connor
“The ripple command is just a workaround for not having a magnetic timelinel”
Adrenalin Television

[Paul Dickin]

And the rMBP’s TB ports give even faster RAID storage access than Walter Biscardi’s ” don’t know about you, but 1100MB/s Write and 1300MB/s Read is about as fast a RAID as I’ve ever tested…” Promax One benchtests.
Nice 🙂

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Pages 6 and 7 go on about how Apple did very active efforts to make the software side of it work, and the filtering of the GPU. Half of it is incomprehensible for me (I’m a filmmaker, not a complete techie although it interests me), so for everyone that says that Apple only is looking out for consumers these days, just read these pages and what they have done.
They made their utmost software R&D to not only bragg about a high-resolution display, but let it work very smart in their OS and their software packages. (and if you read about the 1080p viewer in FCP X and the way it works in Aperture, it’s clear that they are not forgetting the professional)

[Herb Sevush]

[Paul Dickin] “And the rMBP’s TB ports give even faster RAID storage access than Walter Biscardi’s ” don’t know about you, but 1100MB/s Write and 1300MB/s Read is about as fast a RAID as I’ve ever tested…” Promax One benchtests.Nice :-)”

Your comparing SSD raids to HD raids. No shock they’re faster, but the cost for a large capacity SSD raid could buy you a new car.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Well Walter’s Promax One is $17,664.
rMBP + Promise Raid + SSD’s? More than $17,664?

Anand was trying to determine the speed of the ‘pipe’, with whatever was to hand to attempt to saturate it.

[Herb Sevush]

The 17K was for a loaded workstation with 18Tb raid. My guess is the raid part cost 5-6K. What would a 18Tb SSD raid cost when SSDs go for roughly $1/per Gb? Is say around 20K for the raid alone.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Jeremy Garchow]

This computer is a wonder and a stumper all in one. This article does a great job of explaining it.

Sure, Apple is pushing the limits of technology, but does this make things better?

Faster is one thing, I’m looking for better.

I could care less if Facebook runs at 60fps or 18.

It’s interesting he points out how much work the GPU combination is doing, and how much it has to do for the retina. It’s rather illuminating. I wonder how this effects performance in GPU based applications. This computer is an Apple test pod until technology catches up, they usually start slow.

One thing seems pretty clear, we can bet on Retina and Flash in the next desktop Apple releases, just don’t take it Vegas.

[Andrew Richards]

[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s interesting he points out how much work the GPU combination is doing, and how much it has to do for the retina. It’s rather illuminating. I wonder how this effects performance in GPU based applications. This computer is an Apple test pod until technology catches up, they usually start slow. “

This is the bit I was most dissuaded by. Bear in mind that you can get the same Ivy Bridge + Kepler guts in a old-school MBP, albeit with the old-school screen to go with it. But without all those built-in pixels to drive, GPU-hungry apps might likely fare better on the non-Retina MBPs. You can always get a fast SSD in the MBP to match (or exceed) the rMBP’s storage performance, pack it with 16 GB RAM after-market (maybe even 32 GB?), and swap out the ODD for a second HDD, which can be had up to 1 TB these days. Granted, the screen won’t be able to deliver as much real estate, but the Retina MBP apparently really has to strain its GPU just to do all the scaling necessary to drive 1920×1200 mode.

All told, if you can stand the old screen and its old resolution, the non-Retina MBP might be the safer choice for someone who plans to really push the rest of the hardware to its limits, at least this go ’round. In a couple years everything out of Apple will be Retina, and the GPUs won’t be breaking a sweat to handle it. But for now, I think I’d stick with the non-Retina.

(Full disclosure: I’m a 2010 13″ MacBook Air user and I plan up upgrade to a fully loaded 2012 13″ MacBook Air).

Best,
Andy

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Andrew Richards] “All told, if you can stand the old screen and its old resolution, “

This kills the edit.