Confused Between MacBook Pro Skylake and Kaby lake

[doctor93]

Thanks EugW and New_Mac_Smell
I think I should spend 180$ more as it worth as per your suggestion.
Will order the latest 256GB macBook pro 13" for 1479$

 

[MrGuder]

I have a question, so when Apple releases High Sierra will there be separate downloads depending on what system you are downloading it to or will there be 1 High Sierra upgrade and High Sierra will detect what kind of internals you have? In other words it will know what processors you have Haswell, Skylake or Kabylake and adjust accordingly for performance?

 

[EugW]

I have a question, so when Apple releases High Sierra will there be separate downloads depending on what system you are downloading it to or will there be 1 High Sierra upgrade and High Sierra will detect what kind of internals you have? In other words it will know what processors you have Haswell, Skylake or Kabylake and adjust accordingly for performance?

One install to rule them all!

You can boot 2009 machines with the exact same install as for those running on 2017 machines. The OS will determine which features are supported by the hardware and adjust accordingly.

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

I watched most of the seminar and skimmed the rest, online though as I am not a coder and was not at WWDC.

Bottom line is you are being far, far too optimistic about future Skylake support. When Apple says, “We will support this, but not this” for codec support on Macs, you should probably accept it at face value, esp. when we already know the that Skylake is actually incapable of doing full hardware 10-bit decode in hardware as the silicon simply isn’t there.

Software optimization will continue to improve of course, but IMO you’d be foolish to buy a 2016 Skylake model today in June 2017 if you have any intention of dealing with 10-bit HEVC video now or in the future., unless your budget is really, really tight or you’re getting a killer deal on it. $180 off is not a killer deal. I see you agree on that part at least.

For lower bitrate 10-bit HEVC it will play fine on Skylake Macs with optimized software decoder’s but CPU utilization will remain high and battery life will suck. That’s just the nature of the beast. That’s exactly what happened with h.264, and it’s likely what will happen with h.265. We are a decade later and h.264 continues to suck on machines with no hardware h.264 support.

If you KNOW you will never deal with 10-bit 4K HEVC then fine though.

Lol I'm not trying to be far too optimistic or anything, I'm just looking at this as an unbiased person. I find it incredibly hard to believe a 1.1Ghz Duel Core M3 WITH a dedicated 10bit chip could do something perfectly that a 2.6Ghz Quad Core i7 WITHOUT a dedicated 10bit chip would struggle with. I'd like to know more about it all though and as I said we should find out more closer to release, as right now the only information available at face value is the hardware/software decoding options. I would imagine they must be providing hybrid software 10bit in order to make it available on all Macs capable of running HS though, otherwise anything before Skylake could struggle a little bit.

As I said, we shall see, I just don't think it's necessary to paint a doom and gloom picture based on a single screen-cap when they specifically go into detail about how everything will work.

 

[EugW]

Lol I'm not trying to be far too optimistic or anything, I'm just looking at this as an unbiased person. I find it incredibly hard to believe a 1.1Ghz Duel Core M3 WITH a dedicated 10bit chip could do something perfectly that a 2.6Ghz Quad Core i7 WITHOUT a dedicated 10bit chip would struggle with. I'd like to know more about it all though and as I said we should find out more closer to release, as right now the only information available at face value is the hardware/software decoding options. I would imagine they must be providing hybrid software 10bit in order to make it available on all Macs capable of running HS though, otherwise anything before Skylake could struggle a little bit.

As I said, we shall see, I just don't think it's necessary to paint a doom and gloom picture based on a single screen-cap when they specifically go into detail about how everything will work.

Actually I just tried this the other day, after the High Sierra Public Beta came out.

2017 Core 1.2 GHz dual-Core 4-thread m3 MacBook, playing 76 Mbps 10-bit 4K HEVC. Worked perfectly with no stuttering. Total CPU usage only 25%. Here is my thread on it:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/4k-hevc-10-bit-on-the-2017-core-m3-macbook-is-gorgeous.2054232/

I tried this on a 4.2 GHz quad-core 8-thread Core i7 iMac in Sierra (which does not support hardware decode) and I could not play it cleanly in software even though it was using 650% CPU (out of 800%). It was not bad, but not perfect, and the fan was going full blast. In contrast, the 2017 m3 will play it perfectly in High Sierra, and it doesn’t even have a fan. (The 2017 iMacs would work fine in High Sierra too since they support hardware 10-bit HEVC decode too. The 2015 iMacs do not.)

Furthermore, as expected, these videos won’t play properly at all on my quad-Core 8-thread 2.93 GHz Core i7 870 iMac regardless if it’s Sierra or High Sierra. High Sierra officially supports this Mac, but not for hardware 10-bit (or even 8-bit) HEVC playback.

Same goes for my iPad Air 2. Even just a low complexity 8-bit 4K HEVC video recorded on my iOS 11 iPhone 7 Plus will not play properly on my iOS 11 iPad Air 2. It has a triple core A8X but not the required A9. The A8X has to tackle it in software but A9 and later can do it in hardware.

BTW, it truly is top to bottom support. These HEVC videos in High Sierra are natively supported in Photos. I was able to able to import the 10-bit 4K Sony HEVC right into Photos like any other video. Scrubbing was jerky but playback within Photos was again perfect. More importantly, transcoding for re-export was fast. It appears to use hardware decoding (whether it is HEVC or h.264) and hardware encoding for video transcodes to minimize CPU usage, whereas in High Sierra it is software re-encoding. It was really annoying in Sierra. Even just a simple drag and drop export of a h.264 video file from Photos would get the fan going full blast on my 4.2 GHz Core i7 iMac, since it would do a software transcode.

 

[MrGuder]

This is going to be really interesting to see how High Sierra works on all these different systems, part of me is nervous and part of me is excited. I hope Apple doesn't mess this up.

 

[EugW]

Interestingly, I just tried some 120 Mbps Jellyfish HEVC files, both 8-bit and 10-bit 4K, and neither would play cleanly in QuickTime in High Sierra. Pretty good but occasional stutters, despite having hardware decode. Note that this file is an MKV, so I had to remux it with Subler to m4v, which QT then could understand.

So, it seems there are some real limitations to the hardware HEVC 4K decode support on these 12" MacBooks. Mind you, for practical reasons it may be irrelevant. This 30 second video was 450.9 MB. So a single 45 minute TV show episode for example would be over 40 GB, so the bitrates here are way overkill in practical terms. Aside from UHD Blu-ray, HEVC is about reducing bandwidth usage, not increasing it. Streaming 4K HDR HEVC has way lower bitrates than that. Netflix 4K HDR is under 20 Mbps for example.

 

[ls1dreams]

This is all nice for now, but in a year or two when AV1 becomes the standard, all this HEVC/VP9 support will be pretty pointless.

I'm at the point where I despise my old macbook though. It's constantly overheating and spinning the fans up to play simple videos. So frustrating that my iphone can handle these videos and remain completely cool, but an i5 sandybridge laptop can't. (even h.264!)

 

[EugW]

This is all nice for now, but in a year or two when AV1 becomes the standard, all this HEVC/VP9 support will be pretty pointless.

I'm at the point where I despise my old macbook though. It's constantly overheating and spinning the fans up to play simple videos. So frustrating that my iphone can handle these videos and remain completely cool, but an i5 sandybridge laptop can't. (even h.264!)

AV1 is important but it is unlikely to be the standard for Apple for the foreseeable future. They are not part of the AV1 Alliance.

Furthermore, don’t expect full Intel support for AV1 in hardware until 2020 or later. Remember, the format does not even officially exist yet. The standard’s specs have not yet been ratified.

 

[ls1dreams]

AV1 is important but it is unlikely to be the standard for Apple for the foreseeable future. They are not part of the AV1 Alliance.

Furthermore, don’t expect full Intel support for AV1 in hardware until 2020 or later. Remember, the format does not even officially exist yet. The standard’s specs have not yet been ratified.

Right, code freeze is targeted for end of this year. Given the alliance I was hoping to see it in hardware by late 2018, but that's probably optimistic. Maybe I should just suck it up and buy a 2017 machine now and then trade it in 3 years from now when AV1 is more prevalent.