For your viewing pleasure, we present the latest Apple rumor doing the rounds this Saturday afternoon -- namely, GeekBench results for a "new" Core i7 MacBook Pro. According to the results, what you're looking at above are the numbers for the MacBook Pro 6,1, sporting a nastified Intel
Core i7 (dual core, not quad) 620M (
Arrandale) percolating along at 2.66GHz. Other curious points here are the 4.8GHz FSB, which sounds a little screwy to us, and a final GeekBench score of 5260, which makes current MBPs clocked at the same speed look like your grandfather with a walker (those ranges hover around 3700-4000 on average). The laptop in question is also allegedly running a fresh version of Snow Leopard (build 10C3067 of 10.6.2), which certainly makes sense if someone is out there benching a new Apple product, though it's not a number we can verify. Still, if you
were using a new Apple product, would you be dumb enough to publicly share this info? Probably not, which of course raises the question that this might just be a hackintosh or some other clever spoof (even if we did see
a suggestion of new MBPs on the way recently). In the meantime, you can dream of having your pants burnt off by the above monster, and we'll let you know if this thing starts looking a little more real.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
posted February 6th 2010 3:29PM
I wouldn't be surprised
@gonintendo Yeah I've been hoping to finally replace my 4 year old laptop.
@gonintendo Core i7 was announced January 7th...why wouldn't Apple be planning a revision.
@(Unverified) Well the integrated graphics are a touchy subject
@Spiraling Shape
I was hoping that Apple would go back to ATI graphics soon.
I think it's real. I bet Apple did this on purpose to say "Don't worry folks the new MacBook Pros are on the way but we don't want to go official or nobody will buy a Mackbook for the next month."
@(Unverified) Actually there was a leaked brochure on January that suggests this macbook pro running on i5-i7 cores is for real
Details: http://bit.ly/macbook-pro-core-i5-details
Although, this one is a bit more concise with some benchmarks from geekdom. The only question now is, How many grand
should we shell-out?
GeekBench is supposed to be OS-independant..
@Alexicov Geekbench runs on different OS's Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris. Geekbench results show whatever OS you happen to be running Geekbench on. Its a cool tool for testing your system performance.
@AlaskanHandyman
That's not what i meant. The point of Geekbench is that given the same hardware it will give the same performance regardless of the OS it's ran on.
@Alexicov
Though I don't doubt that there are approaches that can be taken to alleviate the difference that Operating Systems can mean for performance there is still the issue of OS Overhead which will have an impact on the benchmark score. For this reason I believe that it is impossible to have a Benchmark that runs within a host Operating System that is truely OS independent
is this good... ?
@Eugene Action
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz 1073
Integer Processor integer performance 1378
Floating Point Processor floating point performance 1111
Memory Memory performance 659
Stream Memory bandwidth performance 704
hmmm
8 year old laptop, unmodded
@Eugene Action I just got a 3205 on a Santa Rosa 2.2Ghz MBP with 4.0GB RAM 667MHZ. I am not sure how linear the scoring is, therefor a difference of 2000 doesn't really tell me much, other than its faster. Which should be obvious.
@Eugene Action
It thrashes both my iMac (2008):
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/189540
And my Hackintosh:
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/191659
@ChazClout
it looks like processors havn't really changed much in the past 10 years... just more dependable on RAM... my machine is running on 495 MB of RAM and 8 MB running my display... I used to care about my hardware... had a desktop, upgraded monthly... back in the 386,486 p1 p2 days... but it seems we are at a pinnacle and havn't done much in a decade, except for graphic processors...
@Eugene Action It's about 1k higher than my current-gen topline 15" MacBook Pro.
@Eugene Action
Of course. You'll be able to fry your eggs in less time than with the Core2Duo! And when the time comes for a quad-core processor, you can replace your whole stove!
@Eugene Action "it looks like processors havn't really changed much in the past 10 years... "
Seriously? I would argue It is just the opposite.... The IBM ASCII RED supercomputer launched in 1999 set a then-enormous record score of over 2 teraflops. We now have consumer PC graphics cards that can nearly match that (double precision).. (I understand the comparison is not completely analogous since you are talking about CPUs, but the point remains)
Check out these benchmarks
Intel Pentium IV 1.5Ghz (single-core ) - released Nov 2000
PassMark Score: 180
Intel Core i7 965 3.2Ghz (quad-core) - released Nov 2008
PassMark Score: 6800
In a few moths the 6-core Westmere will be out with 50% better performance and the 8-core Nehalem-ex will be out H2 2010.
By the time the 22nm "Haswell" processor comes out in 2012, a Pentium IV will be a complete joke.
@Eugene Action what?
@looselycoupled yeah, everything looks better when multiplied... but you HAVE to base things off of singles... so how would a single core fair with a single core from 10 years ago?
Name some things a PC can do today that a PC couldn't do in 2000, based on the above standard.
@Eugene Action
Processors haven't changed much in the past 10 years? Have you been living under a rock?
Any core2duo will eat your P4 and its kids for breakfast and this new revised MBP will have a Core i7.
@Eugene Action
"Name some things a PC can do today that a PC couldn't do in 2000, based on the above standard."
For my old computer to encode 1 dvd, my new one did 5 dvds in that time. If we were to do single core vs single core like you suggest, processors of today are still many times faster. Read up on CPU architecture and you'll understand.
@MrX8503 but it still does it... does it not? I'm talking about, things 10 year old processors CANT do... we have hit a wall
I can't remember the actual year, but a huge thing was when the processors were fast enough to display standard definition video in real time.
Before that you had to sell out $50K to buy special boards like those made by Avid and Media 100 to display and edit video on a computer.
Is there any reason for Apple not to be planning a Core i7 MBP?
How will be the battery life... I hope they can squeeze at-least 4 hours from it. What about the weight factor too its should be heavy. As far as i know i7 gets really hot..
@imaredia http://www.intel.com/products/processor/corei7/mobile/specifications.htm only uses 35w cpu/gpu so I would assume pretty good.
@imaredia
Desktop chips != laptop chips. They are often underclocked when you compare performance/dollar. Most importantly, it's really the quad core chips that suck up a lot of power, and you rarely see those in laptops.
This needs an apple tag...
@kspraydad Whoops! Added.
Please say it is true, I've been holding out for a core i Macbook Pro!!
I'm disappointed.
I would completely switch to Mac if Steam was ported and if most games were ported. Damn that DirectX! Plus I hate dual-booting OS's.
@ryankage
Check out the program called Crossover. I have steam installed, and so far I can play L4D 2, Portal, HL2, and several other games within Snow Leopard with no issues at all. Sometimes at the very beginning of loading a game it can get kinda slow, but within a few seconds it clears up and runs extremely well.
@ryankage
Crossover games supports Steam.
@ryankage If you can pony up the dough for Windows, you can use Boot Camp and dual boot. Always a thought :)
@Ambient80: How are games like Mass Effect 2, Bioshock, Crysis: Warhead, Far Cry 2, etc on Crossover?
@dickweed I know about Crossover, but native support would be soooo much better.
Hope MBP could have usb3.0 this time.
@mianmian
i think USB 3.0 is highly unlikely. Apple is going to be focusing on lightpeek I believe.
@marcomera lightpeak is a long way from being implemented in any laptop. I see know reason why Apple would not go with usb 3.0.
@Edobe
Apple is putting a lot of R&D into light peak. The last thing they want is a competing standard. Especially since almost nothing has USB 3.0 atm, I'd find it highly doubtful that Apple would put it on their laptops yet.
@Edobe Because that would be logical... and Apple has a history of making illogical decisions.
@Delta well usb 3.0 is backwards compatible so I still see no reason to exclude it.
@Tubamajuba That is a good point though.
@Edobe There is no doubt that Apple makes the best laptops but they tend to lag behind in the new features department and for good reason too.
@marcomera , Light Peak has no hardware support at all, at least for now and recent future. What else we find beside that Intel demo? Nothing at all. On the other hand, USB 3.0 chips and devices start to populate around. The backward compatibility is also a big plus.
@mianmian
I was getting at the same point Delta made. I don't see them supporting a rival technology, no matter how much sooner USB 3.0 will be ready.
I have been waiting on these MacBook pros since last summer... if apple wants my money they need to release this already. I've been contemplating those Sony vaio laptops recently lol
Inevitable. The MBP can't stay that far behind its PC brethren. Too bad GeekBench doesn't tell you the screen resolution. If the 15" is still 1440x900, its an instant failure.
IPS does come in higher resolution panels, you know.
And also, what is going to be the graphics processor? Thats probably the most important question. If Apple has not figured out instant graphics card switching in OSX, its over for the MBP. Unless, they already have.