Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro (Early 2010) Reviewed: Shaking the CPU/GPU Balance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 9, 2010 12:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- Intel
- MacBook Pro
- NVIDIA
Final Words
The 13-inch MacBook Pro continues to be portable Mac of choice for most users. You get a decent performance over the MacBook Air while maintaining a good degree of portability and battery life. It doesn't hurt that it's also by far the most affordable in the Pro lineup.
Apple also keeps delivering with its honest battery life claims. I measured between 3.5 and 9.75 hours of battery life on the new 13-inch MacBook Pro depending on workload. The 13-inch gives you a good combination of netbook-like battery life but with the performance on tap when you need it.
The missing Core i5 is by far the biggest issue in my eyes. It's the only thing that makes the 13-inch MacBook Pro a good portable but not the perfect notebook. While it's fast enough for most tasks the Core i5/i7 are significantly faster in anything that's CPU intensive, and it's a difference that's noticeable. For me personally, it's the faster CPU and higher resolution that make the 15-inch model my choice. While I can appreciate Apple's desire to have a base level of GPU functionality across its entire lineup the fact of the matter is that today, the killer apps for GPUs continue to be 3D games. If you aren't spending a lot of time gaming on your notebook then Apple's CPU/GPU balance isn't optimal.
If you've got last year's 13-inch model you'd get more bang for your buck by upgrading to 4GB of memory and/or buying an SSD. The exception of course being if you play any 3D games.
The GeForce 320M in the 13-inch MacBook Pro is fast enough to play anything Valve has out for OS X today. If you reboot into Windows you can even get over 60fps at the panel's native resolution in Half Life 2 Episode 2. Stick around in OS X and you're looking at the mid-40s. Not bad. This is roughly twice the performance of the GeForce 9400M used in last year's model.
I'm very curious to see what Apple will do going forward. At some point it will have to abandon the Core 2 platform in favor of the new Core i3/5/7 family. Moving back to a 3-chip solution will require a board redesign, which I'd expect out of the next generation MacBook Pro. Apple is very committed to using powerful GPUs in its products, I'm more interested in finding out why. There's got to be a killer app brewing somewhere in there.
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Setsunayaki - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
While I am not a fan of Apple by any means in any sector, I like their consistency within battery life. They offer laptops that at least wont discharge rapidly. I don't like the 1280x800 resolution simply because I do more things, and if the resolution was so low...then I rather opt for something much cooler...
Rather than spend money on this and everything needed to get started, I prefer spending that money to build my own desktop PC to have at home and buy a netbook as well. The combination of the two would be far more valuable for the money, considering in my own usage..
I don't play many 3D games on the road, or do many heavy things on a laptop...unless I am working off-site with a team of course.
intelpatriot - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
Is there that meaningful a difference between a core 2 and an i5 (even an i7), anyway?I'm guessing it's going to be nothing like the performance gain stepping up a GPU price bracket/generation.
Calin - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
The performance gain for stepping up a GPU price bracket and/or generation might be zero if you don't even use Aero and the most difficult graphic activity on your laptop are sliding menus.Games are a totally different thing, and some people don't use games (or other applications) that benefit from high performance graphics.
As for Core2Duo (E6550) versus Core i7 920:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/47?vs=61
Over 10% faster in worst case (Fallout 3 1680x1050 medium quality), and triple the speed in a couple of benchmarks (Sorenson Squeeze pro5, Cinebench R10 multithreaded). The E6550 is similar (slightly better) to one of the first "high performance" Core2Duo that appeared, and I think the price at launch was somewhat similar.
Howierr - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
Has anyone tried using a X-25M G2 (80gb or 160gb) in the early 2010 MacBook Pro 13", and installing Windows 7 through Bootcamp? I tried this with 2 different brand new X-25M SSDs, and the MacBook has a hard time detecting the SSD consistently on boot up. When installing Windows 7, sometimes no disks are detected, and it takes many reboots to get the SSD to be detected. But after a successful installation, whenever I reboot the MacBook Pro, there is a very good chance that the question mark icon shows up, meaning that it cannot detect any bootable devices.I installed one of the X-25M into a mid-2009 MacBook Pro 13", bootcamp Winodws 7 and it works flawlessly reboot after reboot.
Could this be an isolated incident, or do all early-2010 MacBook Pro 13s dislike the Intel X-25M G2?
Zok - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
Not quite to your question, but I installed a 160 GB G2 into my 2010 i5 15" MBP and have had no issues whatsoever. There have been reports that the NVIDIA chipset's SATA implementation is somewhat subpar compared to Intel's, as is in the new 2010 15" MBPs.Jamor - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
Would it be possible to get WoW results in OSX at similar settings?That'd give something to compare Portal/Half Life results to.
My gut feeling is, the OSX/Win performance difference is more in the drivers and the way OS handles 3D, less in the porting.
Meaker10 - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
How can a 2 chip platform (core i series) not fit when a 3 chip platform (core 2) already does?BlendMe - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
Well the Core i platform in itself is a 2 chip solution, but only if you stick with Intel's graphics. If you want something more powerfull you have to go with a discrete GPU which makes it a 3 chip solution (like on the 2010 15" & 17").The C2D platform in the 13" is a 2 chip solution, because you have the CPU and a Nvidia chipset with integrated GPU, which is much more powerfull than Intel's on-chip graphics.
I am disappointed about the missing Core i in the 13", but then I kinda understand Apple's decision.
gcor - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
Last June I reluctantly bought a 13" MacBook Pro for university as it seemed the only 8+ hr machine with big enough screen and performance to get me through the day.Having been a Windows person since 3.11 (I used to be a sys admin & software engineer), I was not looking forward to the learning curve of OS-X and becoming savvy enough to fix problems.
I got to say though, the laptop has meet all my needs admirably, with a tiny learning curve. Also, maybe I was just unlucky with the ~15 PC's I had beforehand, but the machine seems rock solid stable in comparison. It's definitely saved me a ton of time in terms of; no BSOD's, no driver compatibility issues, no anti-virus machine hogging, no bloatware, no OS patches killing the machine, etc.
Basically, when I want to use it, I just lift the lid and I'm away. I never turn it off & have re-booted no more than a handful of times in a year.
About the only trouble I've had is the occasional Office crashes (I wonder if the manufacturer has done this intentionally?)
Anyway, after a one year experiment, I feel the additional price has been well worth it. It's an absolute work horse that is always ready to let me get the job done. Other than games, there is nothing I miss from Windows that would convince me to swap back.
To all the die hard Windows folks out there (like I was), if you want a machine to get your job done without needing to mess about with the machine itself, I strongly recommend giving one a go. Keep a PC around for gaming and you'll be fine.
killerclick - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - link
I've been trying to convince all my moron friends who can't handle Windows to give Mac a try. "It's so simple, an idiot could use it!" I keep saying but to no avail, most of them insist on struggling with an operating system which is clearly too taxing on their mental abilities. I wish we could simply force all Windows users to use a Mac for a day, that would do the trick!