Although mostly irrelevant, it is interesting that Apple have dropped the high end Iris Pro graphics in the new 15" MacBook Pros, instead going with the Intel HD 530 alongside exclusive Radeon Pro 400-series dedicated graphics chips:
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No Iris Pro on the new MacBook Pros
- Thread starter Appleaker
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I found this to be the most curious aspect of the MBPs just released. Over the past several generations since the first Intel processors with iGPUs came out, Apple has always used the 45W CPU with the highest end integrated graphics in the 15", and the next lower capability one (corresponding to a 28W chip) in the 13" . Now they've upended that formula entirely for the 15".
The lowest end 13" MBP gets the 540 Iris Graphics (a lower clocked 550), the premier 13" gets the Iris 550. Neither get the Iris Pro 580 GT4e. The 13" choices are within expected lines.
The 15" on the other hand does not get Iris Graphics at all. It takes 2 steps back from the top end Iris Pro 580 and instead uses the HD 530 integrated graphics, with a discrete AMD card included across the board. This is effectively a vote of no confidence towards Intel's iGPU because Apple entirely skips Iris graphics.
I guess Apple decided HD 530 is enough to drive the current screen, but that for intensive graphics or to drive one or more external displays, the discrete card is preferable. Of course, this could also be a margin related choice on their part - why use a GT4e Iris Pro when they can just put a cheaper HD 530 based Skylake and a discrete card ? Alternately, Intel could not supply them enough GT4e based chips to make it worth their while.
Whatever the reason, 'automatic graphics switching' is fairly useless now. For anything more than basic graphics needs, it's better to run the dGPU mode.
The lowest end 13" MBP gets the 540 Iris Graphics (a lower clocked 550), the premier 13" gets the Iris 550. Neither get the Iris Pro 580 GT4e. The 13" choices are within expected lines.
The 15" on the other hand does not get Iris Graphics at all. It takes 2 steps back from the top end Iris Pro 580 and instead uses the HD 530 integrated graphics, with a discrete AMD card included across the board. This is effectively a vote of no confidence towards Intel's iGPU because Apple entirely skips Iris graphics.
I guess Apple decided HD 530 is enough to drive the current screen, but that for intensive graphics or to drive one or more external displays, the discrete card is preferable. Of course, this could also be a margin related choice on their part - why use a GT4e Iris Pro when they can just put a cheaper HD 530 based Skylake and a discrete card ? Alternately, Intel could not supply them enough GT4e based chips to make it worth their while.
Whatever the reason, 'automatic graphics switching' is fairly useless now. For anything more than basic graphics needs, it's better to run the dGPU mode.
Just another disappointment - within expected lines means no improvement. The 13" with GT4e would have given more of a reason for those who like the form factor to consider the 13" over the 15", and its not exactly like the new 13"s are cheap either.
Miss, miss, miss. Bad
.That's not Apple's fault. Intel does no make any 28W Skylake parts with GT4e / Iris Pro 580 . The best they have is Iris 550 for 28W, and that's what the top end 13" Touch Bar model gets. The lower end non-TouchBar model gets the downclocked Iris 540 instead. However, the lower end 13" is seriously Air-territory processing power, with just a 15W CPU instead of 28W in the Touch Bar 13" .
It's the 15" model that's really surprising. Now, there are no Skylake SKUs that are 45W and have either Iris 550 or 540. All 45W parts are with Iris Pro 580 (GT4e) or HD 530 . I'm surprised that Apple went for the latter exclusively. In each of the cases here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyla...s_.28See_also_.22Server.2C_Mobile.22_below.29 :
Apple went for the HD530 parts instead of Iris Pro 580 GT4e ones , e.g. 6920HQ instead of 6970HQ. It gets them more baseline and turbo boost clock , but also a much lower per unit price. The spread between the Iris Pro 580 and HD530 versions is over $50 in each case.
Considering the MBPs history of long term dGPU failures, I would have preferred that Apple use the GT4e part so I could disable the dGPU if needed, and still get top end Intel graphics instead of the same stuff that's on an XPS as well.
It's the 15" model that's really surprising. Now, there are no Skylake SKUs that are 45W and have either Iris 550 or 540. All 45W parts are with Iris Pro 580 (GT4e) or HD 530 . I'm surprised that Apple went for the latter exclusively. In each of the cases here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyla...s_.28See_also_.22Server.2C_Mobile.22_below.29 :
Apple went for the HD530 parts instead of Iris Pro 580 GT4e ones , e.g. 6920HQ instead of 6970HQ. It gets them more baseline and turbo boost clock , but also a much lower per unit price. The spread between the Iris Pro 580 and HD530 versions is over $50 in each case.
Considering the MBPs history of long term dGPU failures, I would have preferred that Apple use the GT4e part so I could disable the dGPU if needed, and still get top end Intel graphics instead of the same stuff that's on an XPS as well.
I think the 580 might not be too far off, the Iris 5200 was getting quite long in the tooth. The 530 on my 6700K is quite comparable to the Iris Pro 6200 though there is a significant difference in power usage (91 vs 45) which will greatly affect the performance ability of the graphic card. Hard to say with a 530 in a 45 w power envelope but the 580 has that 128 MB of VRAM which is quite significant and they did double the EU count if I'm not mistaken.
I'm going to guess this is for battery savings. The 530 can still handle basic things like Youtube but for games or rendering, it probably kicks in at the perfect time. I'm also assuming the 530 uses less power than the iris chips, which would make better use of battery life on the 15" models.
My only issue in getting the new 13" is I wonder if it has enough power for the Retina display or increasing the resolution.
This will be mainly for programming but I do occasionally some 3D CAD (Fusion 360) and I'm not sure how the GPUs in any of the 13" will fare out
This will be mainly for programming but I do occasionally some 3D CAD (Fusion 360) and I'm not sure how the GPUs in any of the 13" will fare out
I think that any way you slice it the last gen iris pro 5200 is faster than the HD 530 (http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compar...is-Pro-HD-5200-V2-Mobile-12-GHz/m34955vsm8190)
There's was a site that benchmarked all current Intel GPUs and the 7700k 530 was slightly faster than the 550.
If there is ever one. There is no 2+4e, just 2+3e (48EU, 64MB eDRAM), which these 13" MBPs are apparently using.Just another disappointment - within expected lines means no improvement. The 13" with GT4e would have given more of a reason for those who like the form factor to consider the 13" over the 15", and its not exactly like the new 13"s are cheap either.
Miss, miss, miss. Bad
According to my research:
Radeon Pro 450=R9 M370X
Radeon Pro 455=GTX 960M
Radeon Pro 460=GTX 965M
If we compare the Iris Pro 580 to the R9M370X (Radeon Pro 450 stand in) we find that the Iris Pro is ~30% faster. (http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compar...l-Iris-Pro-580-Mobile-Skylake/m30774vsm132950)
They would not have put the Iris Pro in the 15in when it would outperform the dedicated card.
What is kinda interesting is that the Iris 550 in the 13in outperforms the HD 530 in the 15 in (http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compar...Intel-Iris-550-Mobile-Skylake/m34955vsm129148)
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But we dont get the 7700K 530, we get the 6700HQ 530.
Just synthetic benchmarks. If you check gaming reviews for 580, you can see 580 is either on par with or slower than M270, which is slightly slower than M370X but still the same chip. Say AnandTech's NUC review.
NotebookCheck.net for you too.
One thing to note is that while Pro 450 has similar spec as 4 years old M370X (codenamed Cape Verde, only 10GB/s less in memory BW), Pro 450 has quite a few architectural improvements e.g. delta color compression, doubled graphics front-end and improved geometry engines. So it should perform tangibly better than M370X.
Still, kudos to Intel for pushing their eDRAM based iGPU this far.
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That's why I said I mentioned it was hard to determine the performance of the 530 in my original statement? I'm using that as a baseline and expect lower performance. No different from various sites taking the desktop 1060 and subtracting 20% as the possible performance of the laptop variant. Without benchmarks, all we are claiming are just speculations.
It could be they found that the Skylake 530 is roughly the same as the Haswell 580. Since it seems there will never be a Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake Iris Pro, it could be Apple decided to go with a cheaper CPU that has a bit more CPU power and less GPU and switch to dGPU now instead of next year.