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MacBook Pro Processor
- Thread starter jmegaman
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i7 is just a description of the tier within a generation. Right now Intel is at the 6th gen. i3, i5 and i7's. The current rMBP 13" has 5th gen. i5/i7 processors while the 15" has 4th gen. i5/i7 processors.
Both of these are due for a refresh, most likely at WWDC in June. Are you looking to buy a 13" or a 15"?
Both of these are due for a refresh, most likely at WWDC in June. Are you looking to buy a 13" or a 15"?
i7 is just a terminology Intel uses.... They have been using it for around a decade now with Skylake being the 6th generation of them. Intel makes the Pentium, Celeron, Atom, m3, m5, m7, i3, i5, and i7 processors. Each one is different even if they have the same clock speed and even same amount of cores. As far as I know Intel is not moving away from this naming structure. The current Macbook pros either have a Broadwell Dual core i7 ( 13 inch) or a Haswell Quad Core i7 ( 15 inch) since Intel didn't make quad core Broadwell. The newest macboooks that will come out will have either a dual or quad core i5 base or upgraded to a dual core or quad core i7.
This generation 13" shows a very minor difference between the i5 and i7 processors. It's really the same processor with a higher max CPU turbo boost frequency. It only accounts for a few % increase in benchmarks, and even less in real life.
Regardless, if you don't absolutely need a computer right now i'd wait and see what WWDC brings, its only 1,5 month away. The newer ones will definitely be faster, especially on the GPU side. But if you don't like them, you'll be able to pick up the current gen. machine at a great discount.
Not really .............. The integrated GPU's while be "better" they are still pretty bad at anything that requires a gpu.... With the 13 inch Macbook pro being on sale right now at Bestbuy the best time to buy one is right now. The base model but with a 256GB SSD is right now $1,199.99 which is the cheapest you'll probably see for a brand new Macbook pro. Honestly this deal is still better than the refresh for $1,499.99 for the same version I assume that would be announced later this year with the same SSD.
As others have pointed out, Intel simply uses i3, i5, i7, to categorize processors within a particular generation. What you're looking for is the processor microarchitecture (e.g. Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell).
The i7 processors in the current 15" MacBook Pros are Haswell, and Intel has since released Broadwell, as well as Skylake.
Apple refreshed the 15" MacBook Pros just a couple weeks before Broadwell was released (i.e. they skipped Broadwell altogether).
Intel then released Skylake at the beginning of this year (so the 15" MacBook Pro is essentially 2 generations behind).
You have to remember, Apple doesn't have much competition as far as OS X is concerned. If you want / need OS X, you essentially take whatever Apple gives you (you can go the hackintosh route as well, but that's niche enough that it really doesn't affect Apple in an appreciable way).
This means Apple feels very little (if any) pressure to keep pace with technology / hardware / other computer offerings, so updates are driven primarily by profit. Most people see "2.6GHz i7" here, and "2.6GHz i7" there, and conclude that they're the same thing. They haven't the slightest clue regarding different microarchitectures / IPC gains, and the lack of competition makes it all too easy for Apple to exploit this consumer ignorance.
Point being, if you sit around waiting for an update / refresh, you might be waiting awhile. Updates won't be predictable as they are with Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. (where they update the hardware as soon as they can get their hands on it). The further Apple hardware lags behind, the greater their profit margins (so as long as people are buying their computers, they're in no rush to update them).
This is why I always encourage people to buy last year's model (as opposed to the "latest and greatest"). They're significantly cheaper, you can still find them brand new, and the difference in performance ranges from negligible, to literally nonexistent (e.g. the current MBP uses the EXACT same processor, integrated graphics, memory, as the previous generation).
So, while Apple's hardware hubris is certainly a bit frustrating, they're to a certain extent shooting themselves in the foot with the more knowledgeable consumers. As they continue, a greater and greater portion of their customer base will catch on / wait for an update only to purchase the (almost indistinguishable) previous generation at a discount.
Wonderful how you can't read the OP's Post?
"I want to buy a MacBook Pro with an i7 processor, does anyone know if there will be an even faster processor offered in the near future? Seems like the i7 has been out for a while...."
Where did it say anything about dual core vs Quad core or anything like that? Simply asked why is there still an i7 in the laptops.
"I want to buy a MacBook Pro with an i7 processor, does anyone know if there will be an even faster processor offered in the near future? Seems like the i7 has been out for a while...."
Where did it say anything about dual core vs Quad core or anything like that? Simply asked why is there still an i7 in the laptops.
It may not have mentioned this, however many uninformed people do not realise that the i7 in the 13 inch is a dual core and assume all i7's are quad core, it is therefore always worth pointing this out if people are interested in the 13 inch to save confusion. The OP is interested in the 13 inch and is talking like they may believe i7 means quad core, clarifying this for them s perfectly acceptable and I would have done it myself.
You do realize he asked if there is a faster i7 coming soon? It doesn't seem like he wants the current ones if there is something better coming soon, which there is.
While iGPU's aren't that good for gaming, the new, more powerful ones will help in reaching a steady 60 fps UI everywhere, as opposed to the stutters we see in todays models. I should know, since i have a 2015 rMBP myself.
Also, i highly doubt you won't be able to get a deal that is as good as, or better than the deals you can get at the moment. Historically, models always get a price reduction once the next generation is released.
Faster is realitive..... The new ones will probably have the same clock speed.....the base model will have an i5 clocked at 2.5ghz but with a skylake cpu with an 500 series igpu be it whatever they decide on. The igpu is still pretty Meh and the 500 series isn't drastically better then whatever is in the 5th Gen models in the 13 inch models. People want to praise skylake as the best thing ever but it's just an incremental upgrade since the last 5 generations......Unless you do a lot photo editing, video editing or etc you probably won't notice and specially not for the price difference.
It is mainly very responsive and fluid, but i do experience stutters in these scenarios:
- Opening a folder in Launchpad (rarely do this)
- Safari scrolling, not constant stutter, comes and goes
- Window resizing
- Zooming in and out on photos
- Swiping between desktops
It will also, completely random go unresponsive, where the whole UI feels like its 40-50 fps instead of 60 fps. Sometimes it goes away after 10-15 seconds, other times it needs a restart for it to be fluid again.
However, as recorded by the Intel Power Gadget, the GPU never boosts up to its max clock of 1050 mhz (usually around 500-800 mhz while doing these things) suggesting that these are simply demanding tasks, but apple won't let the GPU boost high enough to cope with them. Therefore my hope is that the stronger Intel Iris 550 GPU will be able to do this completely fluid while at <max clock. I guess this has to do with minimizing battery usage.
I believe Apple's only stock MacBook offerings that come with i7 processors are the 15" MacBook Pros (which are all Quad-Core). To the best of my knowledge, everything else comes with an i5 (a dual-core i7 only being a BTO option in a few models), so it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume the OP was referring to the quad-core i7s.