MacBook Pro Retina with Haswell-GT3 CPU Spotted
A report from MacRumors indicates that the next Apple MacBook Pro (Retina) might not have a dedicated graphics card.
While the MacBook air refresh of 2013 has already taken place, and they already feature Intel's new Haswell processors, the MacBook Pro (Retina) lineup still has to be refreshed. The folks over at MacRumors have published a screenshot of GeekBench, and it shows some interesting details.
For starters, it appears that one of the units will feature an Intel Core i7-4950HQ. This CPU will run at 2.4 GHz and has four cores, but with hyperthreading features 8 threads. Most notably though, this CPU features the GT3 iGPU, which features twice the number of graphics processing cores as the lower-power units. It features 40 processing cores and is otherwise known as the "Iris" 5200 graphics part. That said, while it might be a nice development to have more powerful Intel graphics for power-saving reasons, the GeekBench screenshot makes no mention of a dedicated GPU, which if correct, means that the next generation of MacBook Pros might have to settle with only the internal graphics on the Intel Haswell CPU. The current generation of MacBook Pro Retinas feature an Nvidia GT650M graphics card, which would still be much more powerful than the Intel Iris graphics part.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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Estix The current 13" MBPs have no dedicated GPU, while the 15" ones have the nVidia chips.Reply
Apple is generally using that to differentiate the two. -
swordrage So this might be the 13inch one as estix said and the 15inch version must have a dedicated gpu since stepping down performance from a gtx 650M in a next gen model will not make senseReply -
JPNpower I'm uneasy with the path that Apple is taking. The MacBook pro and air were awesome. Then the new Retina series Pro's came around with no optical drive, and pretty much the exact same size as the air. Sooner or later the difference will be gone, for better or worse.Reply -
dsigned The fact that you can only get a dedicated GPU with a MB pro 15 inch is a) making the whole Mac store in Steam thing pretty worthless and b) keeping me from buying a Mac for my next laptop. I love OSX and am not overly fond of Windows 8 (and I feel silly just sticking with 7), but I'm not going through another generation of having an underpowered computer for anything requiring a modicum of horsepower.Reply -
BringMeAnother At this point I might consider getting a Macbook pro for the high resolution and install Windows on it. I mean if Windows ultrabooks like the ATIV Book 9 Plus, Zenbook Infinity and Lifebook UH90 are going to be even more expensive than the Macbook pro, I might as well get the cheapest one. 1080p resolution just won't cut it for me anymore.Reply
Ha, getting a Mac for the price, never though I'd say that. -
dragonsqrrl What distinguishes Iris Pro 5200 isn't the core count (HD5000 and Iris 5100 both have 40 EUs), but the 128MB of on-package eDRAM that serves as shared L4 cache for both the CPU and GPU. Anand did a review of the i7-4950HQ and Irs Pro 5200:Reply
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested
The performance is impressive, especially considering the 47W TDP of the total package. However Iris Pro isn't quite good enough to challenge the GT650M in current gen Retina Mac Book Pros. It's close, but I wonder if Apple is willing to sacrifice a little GPU performance in its top-end notebook, even if it means greatly improved battery life. -
cmartin011 I havent been able to figure out why intel hasnt been able to make a integrated gpu as good as amd I am stumpt as tech know it all. Some one inform meReply