Skylake: is it worth the wait?

[RayIshido]

Hi,

as a lot of people on the forum I was waiting for the new skylake MPB in march, then in June and now, well, you know the story.

But as I was looking for what the competitors are offering, it seems that there is not a big difference in performance between Haswell and Skylake (around 6%)

So, is it really worth all the wait? What are you expecting of the new Skylakes MBP except usb-c?

 

[SuprUsrStan]

Yes. The 6% is useless, however the battery life and iGPU is not.

 

[Closingracer]

Yes. The 6% is useless, however the battery life and iGPU is not.

Lol you actually think the gpu is that much better..... It isn't and still won't hold a candle to dedicated gpu's

 

[Closingracer]

If you buy the model without the dedicated GPU, the integrated Intel GPU will offer a significant upgrade in terms of performance over the Haswell / Broadwell Intel iGPU, as syan48306 notes above.

Not really......

 

[RayIshido]

I am looking for some benchmark but how much do you expect the performance to upgrade in comparison of the actual lineup?

edit: find some
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-580.160664.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-5200.90965.0.html

it seems the perf that the perf improvement depended highly of the application.

 

[jozero]

Thats not the issue. Macs seemed to get dropped of the OS supported list after 6 years, which is reasonable. However the update cycle for Macs has now become incredibly stretched out. You could buy a "new" mac now that could conceivably be chopped off the supported list within 3 years, or not get all the features due to insanely out of date GPU, given the 6 year cut off average.

 

[CWallace]

Not really......

Yeah, I just looked at Anandtech's review and at least for gaming, Skylake is worse then Haswell / Broadwell.

 

[Totally Bored]

Nope don't matter.

Bought a new MacBook Pro yesterday ( for my daughter ) after finding out there is NO new one coming out.

I'm a Mac geek but not as bad as some of you guys. I do appreciate all your knowledge tho ... \m/ \m/

 

[Closingracer]

Thats not the issue. Macs seemed to get dropped of the OS supported list after 6 years, which is reasonable. However the update cycle for Macs has now become incredibly stretched out. You could buy a "new" mac now that could conceivably be chopped off the supported list within 3 years, or not get all the features due to insanely out of date GPU, given the 6 year cut off average.

It's to the point where it matters little..... I have an Intel i7-4710MQ in one windows laptop along with 8gb of DDR3 RAM Nividia 970m gpu, 1tb 7200 rpm hdd , another laptop with an Intel i7 6500U, 8GB of ddr3 ram, 256gb ssd , and my Macbook Pro 13 early 2015 with an Intel i5, 8gb DDR3 RAM and a 256gb ssd. The only differences os my first windows laptop boots slower and can play games while the other 2 laptops are not gaming laptops and boots up faster..... They can all handle the same workload that i do and the vast majority of people who use laptops do which doesn't involve editing video or pictures..... Yeah for those more cpu power helps but a skylake and Haswell clocked at the same ghz won't be vastly different to go wait for a skylake or spend money on a new one when you don't need it. But i guess this is a first world problem that "must" be solved.

 

[SuprUsrStan]

The macbook pro's are expected to carry Skylake H processors with Iris Pro iGPUs. The Skylake Intel Iris Pro 580 is supposed to push 1152 GFlops @ 1 GHz. In comparison, the R9 M370X in the current 15" Macbook Pro only pushes 992 GFlops.

The Intel Iris Pro 580 really is a champ of a iGPU that can be a really good alternative if you want to avoid graphics switching and the power hungry nature of a dedicated graphics card.

Personally, if the next gen MBP comes with an Iris Pro iGPU, I'd probably go for a base iGPU model and upgrade it to the max rather than a dGPU version just to avoid the graphics switching. I've owned multiple MBP's over the years and the graphics switching is just never perfect.

 

[ljjycss]

The macbook pro's are expected to carry Skylake H processors with Iris Pro iGPUs. The Skylake Intel Iris Pro 580 is supposed to push 1152 GFlops @ 1 GHz. In comparison, the R9 M370X in the current 15" Macbook Pro only pushes 992 GFlops.

The Intel Iris Pro 580 really is a champ of a iGPU that can be a really good alternative if you want to avoid graphics switching and the power hungry nature of a dedicated graphics card.

Personally, if the next gen MBP comes with an Iris Pro iGPU, I'd probably go for a base iGPU model and upgrade it to the max rather than a dGPU version just to avoid the graphics switching. I've owned multiple MBP's over the years and the graphics switching is just never perfect.

Intel's Skull Canyon is out already. It has a i7 6770HQ with iris pro 580. 6770 is direct successor to 4770 used in previous MBP. This year's MBP 15 is very likely going to have i7 6770/6870/6970. According to anandtech's test result, its cpu part is quite good but not significantly better than haswell counterpart. Iris pro 580 is much better than iris pro 5200, 50% to 100% faster depending on tasks. However, its actual performance is about 70% to 80% of M270X(m370x is renamed m270x) . No doubt this is the best iGPU so far and it is more than enough for daily tasks, but iGPU isn't good enough to go head on with mid range dGPU. If you take heat and power consumption into consideration, 580 might be the best GPU for laptop.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

In terms of performance it will depend on usage. In terms of other things, oled screens, tb3, battery life, ddr4 ram, thinner lighter, etc etc it could well be worth the wait.

 

[maflynn]

I think for me, its the entire package. The chipset will offer some nice improvements on performance, then there's the improvement on battery life, and then hopefully a better GPU. But then there's the expectation (or hope) that apple will completely redesign the MBP.

macOS sierra resources hints on up and coming macs

 

[SuprUsrStan]

Intel's Skull Canyon is out already. It has a i7 6770HQ with iris pro 580. 6770 is direct successor to 4770 used in previous MBP. This year's MBP 15 is very likely going to have i7 6770/6870/6970. According to anandtech's test result, its cpu part is quite good but not significantly better than haswell counterpart. Iris pro 580 is much better than iris pro 5200, 50% to 100% faster depending on tasks. However, its actual performance is about 70% to 80% of M270X(m370x is renamed m270x) . No doubt this is the best iGPU so far and it is more than enough for daily tasks, but iGPU isn't good enough to go head on with mid range dGPU. If you take heat and power consumption into consideration, 580 might be the best GPU for laptop.

I completely agree with your assessment. In my opinion, that is plenty for a computer running MacOS considering the majority of people interested in graphics are going to be doing light video editing, and maybe light gaming. Especially when you consider the game incompatibilities with MacOS, you're pretty much playing either WoW or SC2 and maybe simcity. Unless you're installing Windows and gaming in there, that's a whole different story.

Back in the days when my macbook pro was my only computer, that might have been the case but these days I've got a dedicated gaming PC. For everything non gaming related, 70% to 80% of the current dedicated graphics is plenty. IMO.

 

[RayIshido]

Intel's Skull Canyon is out already. It has a i7 6770HQ with iris pro 580. 6770 is direct successor to 4770 used in previous MBP. This year's MBP 15 is very likely going to have i7 6770/6870/6970. According to anandtech's test result, its cpu part is quite good but not significantly better than haswell counterpart. Iris pro 580 is much better than iris pro 5200, 50% to 100% faster depending on tasks. However, its actual performance is about 70% to 80% of M270X(m370x is renamed m270x) . No doubt this is the best iGPU so far and it is more than enough for daily tasks, but iGPU isn't good enough to go head on with mid range dGPU. If you take heat and power consumption into consideration, 580 might be the best GPU for laptop.

Very interesting as I will use it to light video edition when on the field, photo edition, and light gaming (Minecraft XD )

 

[Closingracer]

Intel's Skull Canyon is out already. It has a i7 6770HQ with iris pro 580. 6770 is direct successor to 4770 used in previous MBP. This year's MBP 15 is very likely going to have i7 6770/6870/6970. According to anandtech's test result, its cpu part is quite good but not significantly better than haswell counterpart. Iris pro 580 is much better than iris pro 5200, 50% to 100% faster depending on tasks. However, its actual performance is about 70% to 80% of M270X(m370x is renamed m270x) . No doubt this is the best iGPU so far and it is more than enough for daily tasks, but iGPU isn't good enough to go head on with mid range dGPU. If you take heat and power consumption into consideration, 580 might be the best GPU for laptop.

Lol I seriously think people are over selling the integrated gpu..... They Suck and always will compared to dedicated. These will be minor improvements in real life use....

 

[Codeseven]

In the shadow of Kaby Lake, Skylake has been discussed for so long it's beginning to sound like old news. To calm the angry 'I demand a new MBP!' mob, Apple may toss them a basic Skylake version in October, just in time for some Holiday sales revinue, but they're focus has been on a Kaby Lake powered MBP line for some time now.

Just another guess of coarse.

 

[vatter69]

The only thing that 'sucks' are the thermal issue that a dGPU brings, the never ending stories of logic boards frying because of the permanent heat and the overall noise the extra heats generate, let alone the major drain of battery life.

Lol I seriously think people are over selling the integrated gpu..... They Suck and always will compared to dedicated. These will be minor improvements in real life use....

 

[campyguy]

One of my reps showed up with a demo of one of these (shown on the Win Experience Blog site: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/05/30/asus-announces-new-windows-10-pcs

Kaby Lake, TB3, fingerprint reader - the demo had Win 10 Pro (which we use here), a 1TB PCIe SSD and (I think 16GB of RAM) - AutoCAD flew on this thing (attached to one of our Eizo displays with an adapter) as did some video encoding with an Adobe product (I didn't catch which app was being used). He told me they'll be shipping them to corporate late Q2 and to consumers in Q3 (as indicated in the MS blog post).

I'm passing on Skylake...

 

[jerryk]

I am with MaFlynn. It is the total package that Skylake brings that is interesting to me. With Skylake we can do TB-3 which together with USB C brings 40 GB/sec ports, charging from any port, etc.

 

[Queen6]

One of my reps showed up with a demo of one of these (shown on the Win Experience Blog site: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/05/30/asus-announces-new-windows-10-pcs

Kaby Lake, TB3, fingerprint reader - the demo had Win 10 Pro (which we use here), a 1TB PCIe SSD and (I think 16GB of RAM) - AutoCAD flew on this thing (attached to one of our Eizo displays with an adapter) as did some video encoding with an Adobe product (I didn't catch which app was being used). He told me they'll be shipping them to corporate late Q2 and to consumers in Q3 (as indicated in the MS blog post).

I'm passing on Skylake...

I was initially very excited by Skylake, however as it progressed it`s rather turned out to be a non event in comparison to Kaby Lake. Certainly will be giving the Sky Lake rMBP a miss, this also gives Apple time to workout the 1st Gen kinks

Q-6

 

[SuprUsrStan]

Sure Kaby Lake might be slated for a Q3 2016 launch but it's going to be a staggered launch. We might see some Kaby Lake U Macbooks but not Macbook Pros. We probably wont see Kaby Lake H until early 2017, which by then will be 6 - 8 months after a Q3 release of Skylake Macbook Pros. Even if it takes another 3 months for Apple to announce Skylake MBPs, it's still worth getting even with Kaby Lake on the horizon for Q1/2 2017.

 

[PTLove]

Lol I seriously think people are over selling the integrated gpu..... They Suck and always will compared to dedicated. These will be minor improvements in real life use....

The 13" will see atleast 50% real world GPU performance increase. Theres no need to guess, just look at reviews of the Vaio Z Flip, which uses the 550.

 

[Closingracer]

The 13" will see atleast 50% real world GPU performance increase. Theres no need to guess, just look at reviews of the Vaio Z Flip, which uses the 550.

Lol..... The integrated gpu's Suck and always will.... I couldn't care less what benchmarks say at all

 

[SuprUsrStan]

What are you, 12? You can't even admit that intel has made big advancements in iGPUs- so much so that the Iris Pro 580 can come within 20% to the dedicated GPU on the current macbook pro 15" in real world applications, and even better on paper?

You must be referring to your current early 2015 13" mbp when you're bashing integrated GPUs.