The MacBook Pro Review (13 & 15-inch): 2011 Brings Sandy Bridge
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Brian Klug & Vivek Gowri on March 10, 2011 4:17 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Mac
- Apple
- Intel
- MacBook Pro
- Sandy Bridge
Apple's SSD Strategy
Despite the rumors, the 2011 MacBook Pro lineup does nothing to change the storage setup of the machine. All of the models have a single 2.5" 5400RPM hard drive and an integrated slot-load DVD drive.
I personally don't mind the lack of hard drive options. While 5400RPM is pretty slow, any additional money you spend on storage should go towards an SSD and not a faster mechanical drive. If you need the additional capacity there's always the optibay route, which replaces the optical drive with another 2.5" HDD bay. Other than installing Mac OS X, I pretty much never use the optical drive so the optibay approach in my opinion is a good combination of the performance of an SSD with the mass storage of a mechanical disk.
Apple offers an array of BTO (Build to Order) SSD options, however the drives are likely of average performance. Pricing actually isn't bad for the upgraded 13-inch and especially the upgraded 15-inch models. At $100 for a 128GB drive you really can't beat the upgrade price there. We're probably only one more generation away from seeing a standard SSD on some of these models.
| Apple SSD Upgrade Pricing | |||||
| 128GB | 256GB | 512GB | |||
| 13-inch 2011 MacBook Pro | $250 | $650 | $1250 | ||
| 13-inch 2011 MacBook Pro (high end) | $200 | $600 | $1200 | ||
| 15-inch 2011 MacBook Pro | $200 | $600 | $1200 | ||
| 15-inch 2011 MacBook Pro (high end) | $100 | $500 | $1100 | ||
| 17-inch 2011 MacBook Pro | $100 | $500 | $1100 | ||
In the MacBook Air Apple standardized on a Toshiba controller, delivering performance nearly identical to Kingston's SSDNow V+100. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple used the same controller in the new MacBook Pros. The SSDs are still 3Gbps and will be a huge improvement over the standard hard drive, but just know that you aren't getting the best performance possible. In exchange for the price premium, what you do get is a drive that Apple will support completely (and also official TRIM support, no 3rd party drives have TRIM support under OS X). In the past Apple has had serious compatibility issues with 3rd party SSDs, so there is some merit to the BTO SSD option.
This isn't Mac specific advice, but if you've got a modern Mac notebook I'd highly recommend upgrading to an SSD before you even consider the new MacBook Pro. I've said this countless times in the past but an SSD is the single best upgrade you can do to your computer.
To be honest the new MacBook Pros feel slow to me right out of the box. The issue is that once you have a few applications installed and start multitasking with a notebook that only has a 5400RPM hard drive application response time stops being consistent.
It seems like the more you have installed, the greater the chances are of there being small file random reads/writes going on in the background while you're trying to do other things on your computer. These aren't huge IO operations, but since we're dealing with mechanical storage they significantly reduce the throughput of other IO requests. For example, opening an image in Photoshop will take longer if the sequential read operation is constantly interrupted by several other reads spread out over the platters. The same is true for launching an application. Application launch speed is one area where an SSD really shines. The process of launching an application involves a lot of sequential and seemingly random reads (they aren't totally random but they aren't totally sequential either). On a hard drive the seemingly random operations aren't fast to begin with, but interrupt them with any other IO requests that may be happening in the background (saving files, backing up a disk, launching another application, etc...) and the application you're trying to launch will take significantly longer. In my older SSD articles I called this the "fresh test". When you first get a new computer everything responds quickly and applications just fly open. After a few weeks/months/years the performance stops being so fresh and instead everything seems to take forever. The graph below is one I've used in the past, it simply shoes the performance benefit realized from switching to an SSD when trying to launch a few applications in parallel:
The improvement is staggering. Generally speaking application launch time isn't really impacted by which SSD you get. In my experience pretty much all of the current crop of SSDs on the market will launch single (or even multiple) applications in about the same time. What really separates one SSD from the next are three things:
1) Reliability
2) Performance in periods of unusually heavy IO activity
3) Performance over time
The first one is really difficult to quantify. Reliability is the one area where going with a larger manufacturer typically helps. Intel, Samsung, Toshiba, all of these controller makers sell in large quantities to OEM systems and have significant experience in testing and validation. Reliability is also an area where I would say the Apple SSDs are probably going to be a good bet. They may not be the fastest, but Apple has likely tested them and is comfortable that they will at least work problem-free for a while. Apple also apparently does some firmware tuning of its own to make its SSDs play a bit nicer with OS X.
The second vector of differentiation is worst case (or best case depending on how you look at it) performance under load. This isn't just launching a single application, or even loading multiple, but it's how the drive performs when you're doing a lot at once. Perhaps you're running a backup, installing an application, opening a document, loading a web page, downloading a movie, downloading emails and trying to open another application all at once. In these sorts of situations you will notice a difference between SSD performance.
Performance over time is another important factor to consider. Building a good SSD controller really boils down to knowing how to manage data written to the drive's NAND. To measure performance over time we're really looking at quantifying write amplification and measuring how effective TRIM is at restoring performance.
I try to tackle as much of these items in our SSD reviews as possible, and we're constantly evolving so expect to see even more depth here going forward.
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zhill - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Good article. I was thinking about your issue with the high cpu utilization, and could it simply be a reporting issue? Could the cpu performance counters or OSX be reporting QuickSync as part of the cpu rather than the GPU? This would certainly be strange and not accurate, but given that intel seems to list QuickSync and HD3000 separately, maybe the reporting stats aren't accurate. Presumably this would be an issue in both Windows and OSX, but at the driver level there could be differences. Just a thought.Have you, or anyone else, noticed heat issues with the MBP lid closed versus open? Aren't the vent ports along the back next to the hinge such that when open they can vent, but when closed airflow could be inhibited?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
I thought about that too, but there seems to be a genuine increase in thermal output from the CPU - higher than I'd expect from idle cores and the quick sync engine active.I haven't personally noticed any heat issues with the lid open vs. closed, seems to behave similarly (although now that you mention it I feel like open I do get temperatures a couple of degrees cooler than when it's closed - that could just be psychological though as the comparison is completely unscientific).
Take care,
Anand
Omid.M - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Anand,So do the 15-17" MBPs have hardware acceleration support for Flash? I didn't see that explicitly in the review; sorry if I missed it, but I tweeted you asking for this.
The last MBP update, Anand said the 13" he could highly recommend, but the 15" got way too hot under load.
This update, Anand said the 13" he could highly recommend, but the 15" gets way too hot under load.
Hmm. (not insinuating anything, Anand and crew)
I find that odd. But, maybe it's a good thing: I'm not comfortable buying an MBP until Apple build TRIM support for 3rd party SSDs into OSX. I would not want the Apple SSDs.
My early 2008 MBP is still running fine, although I'm tempted by the QC models. Maybe waiting until Ivy Bridge, in hopes of a cooler laptop, will be enough time to see if Apple brings TRIM for after-market SSDs.
I'm disappointed, but I guess this review saved me some money until next year.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Sorry I think I missed your tweet! I measured around 40 - 60% CPU utilization of a single core when viewing a 1080p HD video in YouTube on the new 15-inch MBP (same CPU usage for both the iGPU and dGPU).The frame rate was perfectly smooth, but it's unclear to me how much lifting is being done by the GPU here.
Last year's 15 was pretty warm, but this year's model definitely didn't take a step back in that department - transistor count nearly doubled after all!
The move to 22nm should bring about marginal updates to architecture so I'm hoping for lower power consumption at similar performance levels.
Take care,
Anand
Omid.M - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Anand,You mentioned in the last MBP refresh/review that the 13" showed support for TRIM in OSX (evidenced in System Profiler, I believe).
You also said in this refresh/review that Apple supports TRIM for its own SSDs only.
To my knowledge, the last MBP generation had the SSD option for both 13" and 15-17" models, meaning the same SSD was offered across all models.
If TRIM is only supported for Apple SSDs, why did we see an evidence of TRIM in last year's 13" model but no evidence for the 15/17, assuming the same SSD was offered across the entire line and assuming the version of OSX shipped with the last models was the same across the line?
Was that due to different chipset drivers because the 13" had the Core 2 Duo/Nvidia combo, and the older 15/17 had Core i5/i7 (thus, newer chipset) ?
Does it make sense what I'm asking?
tno - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Apple ships different versions (small tweaks) of OSX with different laptops, and there is the key. If you recall, the field in System Profiler was populated indicating that at some level the chipset (Nvidia sourced) supported the instruction, but SSDs that supported the instruction did not.So you're correct, Nvidia chipset driver supported TRIM, but the OS did not implement the instruction. The Core i5/i7 integrated chipset driver had no support for TRIM.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3762/apples-13inch-m...
name99 - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
"I saw a number of different MCS (modulation coding scheme) values with the 2011 MBP in the exact same place. Link rates from just below 300 Mbps all the way up to the expected 450. It seems to settle out at the expected 450 Mbps in the same room as the AP, it just takes a while, whereas other 2x2 stacks I've seen always lock onto 300 Mbps and stay there in the same room and position."Is the state of the art any better than this?
The reason I ask is that the simple WiFi problem (1x1 antenna, what is the best modulation + puncturing I should use for this SINR?) is well understood.
But once MIMO enters the picture there are so many more options available --- for example: should we try to use all receive antennas for different streams, and run those three streams at "robust" modulation, or should we transmit a single "fragile" (64-QAM, 5/6) stream, and rely on receive diversity to be able to detect it without error? If we send a "fragile" stream, should we use the transmit antennas to perform beam shaping to target more power at the target?
As I understand it, optimal methods for handling the juggling between all the different types of diversity available in the MIMO space still do not really exist (if anyone has a reference stating otherwise, please provide it).
If this is the case, it would not surprise if, on either the base station end, the laptop end, or both, you have a huge amount of bouncing around between different possibilities (of course with 3x3:3 the space is larger than with 2x2:2 or 2x3:2) because what is being used to make the choices are simply heuristics, not engineered algorithms, and the heuristics are extremely sensitive to the slightest changes in the SINR covariance matrix).
Brian Klug - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
I haven't really played around enough with other 3x3 WiFi stacks enough to say for certain. I agree with you that a lot of this is it making some decisions based on whether to prioritize connection robustness or throughput rate. At close ranges, it certainly selects MCS that gives most throughput, but I'm still shocked to not see more 450 Mbps when in the exact same room as the AP.Moving away, you'll quickly fall back to single stream rates (but obviously still get MIMO range extension). You're exactly right that everyone has their own heuristics for how to do this based on SINR. I still haven't figured out how to actually grab SINR out on here, all I can see for the moment is just RSSI. Completely agreed though.
-Brian
MrCromulent - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Once again a very detailed, comprehensive and yet easy to understand article!I'd like to inquire once more about the C300: In the initial test, the C300 was criticized for poor garbage collection. Now it's considered an option for Apple notebooks. Has the GC been improved by Marvell in the last few firmware updates?
Griswold - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Interesting revenue information right at the start. Apple went from a computer- to a music&player- to a phone company. :P