The next-gen MacBook Pro with Retina Display Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 23, 2012 4:14 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- MacBook Pro
- Laptops
- Notebooks
Vastly Improved Thermals
When the 2011 MacBook Pro hit I was so excited because it finally gave me a fairly portable chassis with my definition of a “fast-enough” CPU: a quad-core Sandy Bridge. As always, there’s a downside to being an early adopter. In this case the downside to buying Apple’s first quad-core notebook was that it got incredibly hot and was fairly loud at that.
It had good reason for being a space heater. Intel crammed nearly a billion transistors on its 32nm process into the quad-core Sandy Bridge. AMD contributed over 700 million transistors on TSMC’s 40nm process with the Radeon HD 6750M, and when you used the two in tandem things got bad.
A bunch of ridiculously smart fab engineers in pursuit of maintaining Moore’s Law gave us improvements on both fronts. Ivy Bridge uses Intel’s brand new 22nm 3D transistors, while NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 650M (codename: Kepler) uses TSMC’s 28nm process. Both architectures are very focused on power reduction and it shows.
To understand the improvement that the Retina MacBook Pro offers over its predecessor we need to really understand where last year’s model suffered. To put things in perspective I created three experiments, two focused on the CPU’s thermal behavior and one on the CPU and GPU.
To start I took Cinebench and ran its single threaded test over and over again, plotting performance vs. number of runs. I ran the test for about 20 minutes before calling it quits. As you can see both the 2011 MacBook Pro and 2012 rMBP delivered consistent performance between runs:
Subjectively, fan speed wasn’t an issue on either system during this test. The fans never ramped up to full speed on either machine, which tells me that despite the CPUs supporting Turbo Boost neither chip is actually dissipating all 45W allocated during this test. It’s possible the chips could be clocked higher, or just as likely that thermal hotspotting (dense areas of transistors that get too hot) is preventing them from running at higher frequencies - not the overall power budget of the chip.
The next test uses Cinebench but instead focuses on the multithreaded benchmark. Here all four cores (and eight threads) are engaged across both systems. I ran these tests, back to back, for around 20 minutes straight. Despite the increased load, neither system shows any throttling of performance:
Fan speeds definitely ramped up here, stabilizing at their maximum spinning speeds of just over 6000 RPM. The Retina MacBook Pro is subjectively quieter but I’ll discuss that in greater detail shortly.
The final experiment focuses on a hardly stressful game by today’s standards: Half Life 2 Episode Two. Once again, for approximately 20 minutes I ran our standard macbench timedemo test in HL2. I ran both systems at 1680 x 1050, without AA, but with all other quality settings maxed out. This is a bit more stressful than 20 minutes of actual gameplay since the timedemo runs renders all frames as quickly as possible rather than playing back the demo in real time. In the end it worked out to be nearly 40 consecutive runs of our benchmark.
The graph below gives you an idea of what happens to performance over time:
I’ve adjusted the y-axis on the chart to exaggerate the impact here a bit, but you get a clear idea of just how much heat both of these chips were putting out in the 2011 MBP. Either the CPU or GPU (or both) have to be throttled back over time in order to stay within their thermal and power budgets. As a result, in the 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro, performance drops by over 20% over the course of 20 minutes of this test.
The MacBook Pro with Retina Display, on the other hand, remains relatively stable across all runs. While its performance definitely dips, the impact is around 5% off of peak.
Intel and NVIDIA are really to thank here as both Ivy Bridge and Kepler are really mobile focused. Kepler in particular was a dramatic leap forward in power efficiency as we saw from our deep-dive on the architecture. Intel’s 22nm process, while relatively unimpressive on the desktop (a 10W savings isn’t anything to write home about in a tower) makes its first dramatic impact in the next-gen MacBook Pro.
Apple does play a role in the improved thermals of the Retina Display equipped MacBook Pro. Although very similar to the unibody chassis that Apple has been shipping for the past few years, the cooling system is significantly revamped.
2011 15-inch MacBook Pro heatsink, iFixit
The previous generation 15-inch MacBook Pro featured two fans, each cooling a heatpipe that ran across the CPU and GPU. The two were treated as thermal equals with neither residing in the heat shadow of the other. By running both heatpipes over both chips Apple guaranteed equal cooling when both chips were active, or quieter operation when only one was doing significant work. With the traditional MacBook Pro design, air was exchanged in a single location: along the display hinge.
The next-gen MacBook Pro still retains the two fan design, but there’s now a single large heatpipe that runs across both the CPU and GPU. Heatsink thickness appears to have been reduced as well, a concession made in order to decrease the overall z-height of the rMBP. The entire construction looks far more MacBook Air-like, which makes sense given the design of the notebook.
The rMBP heatsink, iFixit
Air is now moved through three sides of the notebook. Small slits on the left and right sides of the MacBook Pro act as intakes, while warm air is still exhausted out of the rear.
Apple also went to an new fan design with asymmetrically spaced blades. The idea is that by changing blade spacing you produce a sound that is spread out over more frequencies, and thus appears quieter.
The combination of silicon changes, side intakes and fan design results in three things:
1) Under light use the rMBP’s fans are virtually inaudible compared to the previous generation. In a quiet room you can still hear them spinning but it’s a significant improvement over last year’s model. Originally I thought the fans simply spun slower but running a light workload both last year's MBP and the rMBP spin their fans at 2000 RPM. The rMBP's fans simply sound quieter.
2) Under moderate use the fans in the rMBP are generally quieter than in the previous generation. Again this is likely due to the 22/28nm silicon in combination with the improved cooling system.
3) Under heavy use the rMBP fans are definitely audible, but the sound is different than what you get with the previous model. I was disappointed at first because I was expecting a dramatic reduction in noise, but instead I got the sort of improvement that you really notice once you go back to the older system.
To give you a sense of how the two sound I’ve embedded two audio clips of the 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Pro with Retina Display running a multithreaded Cinebench 11.5 test. In both clips you can hear me open the lid on the sleeping machine, quit open apps, use Spotlight to run Cinebench and click to start the benchmark (and click to repeat the test throughout the recording).
Neither system can make it through a single run of this test without ramping up the fans but note how quiet the Retina MBP remains in the early part of the test. Although the rMBP fans sound louder towards the end of the recordings, in person they actually sound quieter. Unfortunately I didn't have a good setup to really convey that.
Many have you have asked for specifics on thermal and acoustic performance. Here you go.
I ran both the upgraded 2011 MacBook Pro and Retina MacBook Pro through the same Half Life 2 torture test I described above, but at even more stressful GPU settings (1680 x 1050 with 4X AA enabled). I measured surface temperatures at the top and bottom of the notebook, as well as noise 3 inches above the trackpad on both systems. The results are in the table below:
| 2011 MacBook Pro (Core i7 2.3GHz, 6750M) | Retina MacBook Pro (Core i7 2.6GHz, GT 650M) | |
| Max CPU Temp | 75C | 63C |
| Max GPU Temp | 69C | 72C |
| Max Surface Temperature (Top) | 47.3C | 49.8C |
| Max Surface Temperature (Bottom) | 49.8C | 41.8C |
| Max Noise (3" Above Trackpad) | 53.4dB | 51.3dB |
In this particular test we see the two machines trade blows. The Retina MBP actually has a higher surface temperature on the top of the machine, but the underside remains significantly cooler. I believe the tradeoff is honestly worth it as the new machine has a tangible impact on how hot your lap gets. The Retina MBP is also noticeably quieter during this run, although it does technically let the GPU get a little hotter than last year's system. CPU temperatures are down considerably as well but we're also comparing 32nm vs. 22nm silicon at potentially different leakage levels.
Overall I’d consider the acoustic and thermal improvements here to be significant. Apple’s Phil Schiller got some of his strongest applause from the audience when he mentioned the fan design at the rMBP’s WWDC introduction. It’s attention to detail that Apple earns a lot of bonus points for; the fan design in the next-gen MacBook Pro isn’t revolutionary but it’s a tangible improvement that I can appreciate.
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darkcrayon - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
I hear you can work around that by not using that feature ;)Spunjji - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
this is lost deep in the comments, so I doubt it will get any form of response. Nonetheless, while I feel this review has covered the ground incredibly well, there were some sever omissions that limit its usefulness.Where, for instance, are the comparisons to laptops that are not made by Apple? It's all well and good telling me that this laptop is cooler than its predecessor, but the trouble is that I didn't buy the 15" MBP because it turns into an unpleasantly hot and noisy beast as soon as you start gaming on it. Based on the surface temperatures you give, it sounds like this is no better with the new model *relative to non-Mac laptops* and yet I have no real way of knowing this for sure. I'd really appreciate that comparison - the same goes for battery life. In my case I currently use an Alienware M17x and would absolutely love to trade to something lighter with similar capabilities, but I need to know what the usability caveats will be.
I also feel that this site is asking us to take a lot on faith with regards to Thunderbolt. It's been a year and we can still only really attach storage to it outside of proprietary configurations, and even that doesn't work very well. We are also faced with the possibility that the first-gen tech will *never* work properly, yet it is still primarily mentioned as a good thing, with the rather horrible flaws pointed out deep within the bowls of a lengthy analysis.
flatform - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
I am surprised not to see Anand commenting on the SEVERE problem that MOST users have with the Retina Displays -at least those mac users who are able to actually see a problem on their mac-. Advertising reasons maybe???Macbook Pro Retina -Plasma-TV-like(!!!!!)- Ghosting/Burn-in Issues
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4034848?start...
IPad Retina issues: http://www.cultofmac.com/161495/new-ipads-retina-d...
Plus, the only reason for apple not to put gigabit is that the port did not fit in the new slimmer UPPER profile, not the case itself, it would had ruined their design lines, that is all!!!!! The 2012 Vaio Z is much slimmer but has a gigabit port, strangely implemented yet still there. Having worked for years with macs, we ALWAYS had the same problem, when you needed that adpter you had bought, it just wasn't -for any reason- there.... humiliating experience in front of clients...
having not normal SSD and especially no double slot configurable memory is probably just crap, 80% of laptops and desktops receive a hard drive and memory upgrade. just to shed off 100 Grams and 2mm of height?? 2009 Dell's Latitude Z600 was slimmer, 16inch displa, 2.0Kgs, yet had a normal hard drive and memory popped in.
Anand, with a 4 core/8 Thread Machine 16GB is BARELY enough TODAY, to work with Photoshop, Premiere, After FX and a RAW developer open, and still have free memory so that after fx can use all Threads. And That did not include one or 2 3D applications that a compositor would usually run. 16GB is the minimum, 32GB is the choice for the Video Professional. With so many programs switching to GPU processing, you should really be careful when commenting on the power of any machine with a dedicated graphic card.
For god's shake just wait and do not buy this crappy notebook. It is even more faulty than the first generation of 13inch Macbooks... wait at least 6 months for a proper revision, up to then Retina PC's will be available as well, with proper RETINA IPS displays with no burn-in issues and upgradeable parts.
darkcrayon - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
I like how you mentioned the Vaio Z to bash the rMBP design, and then you went on to bash the rMBP for "limitations" that the Vaio Z also has (soldered RAM, though limited to 8GB, and more. Though off topic, your almost 3 month old iPad retina display problem is a nice touch, considering anyone with the problem could've gotten theres replaced for free. Please let us know which company is making millions of 260 ppi 10" screens with 100% perfect yields...flatform - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
Comment on Vaio Z was just to point out stupid decisions who take into consideration only the looks of the machine, not direct comparison of the two machines, which are not comparable. Apple could have kept the same upper profile and diminish the lower bevel part. But it would not LOOK as thin. Let's see how professional Photographers -which i work with- will welcome the lack of FW800 and the need to echange 2-3 adapters to do one job, or the presence of only 2 USB's is a total failure when working in production environment. I am a professional industrial designer and compositor, believe me i would really like rMBP to serve me properly (i have been complaining about low-res screens since 2006) but it simply cannot. Replacing for free is the most logical thing to do and does not replace the evident problem. The iPAD is not of topic, it is a High PPI, same technology display which suffers from similar problems, just as the Macbook Display.My comment was that if Anandtech was serious about this review -respecting the readers that is- it SHOULD have mentioned -in a separate page with the fullest possible technical description- the problem in a clean and straightforward way, even if their sample did not have it (have they checked for it?)
When me moved from CRT's to TFT's (degrading our color reproduction, resolution and image quality) we did it because TFT;s had a hell less eyestrain, radiation, consumed less current and desk space. I cannot accepted that shedding off 150 grams (max) and 2mm of thickness from a WORKSTATION laptop is revolutionary and should force professionals to use adapters for the bluddy most used ports of their laptops, while depriving them from the most common upgrade in a notebook: memory and hard disk.
As for the last question, please let us know which company has developed the screen for apple and how many months later the same screen would be available in pc's as well.
Good thing Apple made the move, cause it has been FAR BEHIND in displays, (remember they where selling 1440x900 on 17" and 1280x800 on 15", then making it 1680x1050 and 1440x900 respectively, whereas a 1920x1200 15" screen was a common thing in mobile workstations) since they first brought a somewhat proper for graphic use display on their 2003 15" G4 Titanium. Workstation notebooks have IPS monitors for many years now.
robco - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
Looking at the Googles, the news stories about the ghosting issues were posted today. Not something that likely would have been found before posting the review. This is a new display manufacturing process and there are going to be some mistakes. Never buy the first version, or at least the first production run, of any Apple product. This is one of the downsides to being an early adopter of almost any new technology. Apple tends to wait and collect data rather than acting rashly (see iPhone 4 fiasco). There isn't any data showing if this is a widespread problem, or only affecting a small percentage of units. But Apple will replace defective units.It took a little while, but third-party SSD upgrades are available for the MacBook Air. But on another note, would you expect *every* piece of equipment in your shop to be 100% user-upgradeable?
Everyone whined when Apple ditched floppies, serial, ADB and SCSI. There were adapters and people, well they adapted as well. I'm sure some will just buy a Thunderbolt dock (a couple are coming in a few months) and hook up all their peripherals and then connect them (as well as gigabit Ethernet) to the laptop with a single cable. Some folks may even be OK with trying desperately to live with only 16GB of non-upgradeable memory and have a bit more room in their bags and a bit less weight to schlep around.
But the beauty of the free market is that you get to vote with your pocketbook. If you're so terribly unhappy with the new rMBP, the old model, with new CPU and GPU upgrades) is still available. Show Apple your displeasure by sticking with the old design. Or by a fragile Sony laptop. Or a Dell Precision. Nobody is twisting your arm to make you buy this thing. Lots of other people will gladly accept the trade-offs and be happy with their lighter, thinner, quite powerful rMBPs...
flatform - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
haha, good one "adapters that people adapted to" hahhaha. A good comment in general, covering most of the topics and dare i say most of the people in this page.wfolta - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
I stopped reading when you said "most users have", which is obviously not true.flatform - Thursday, June 28, 2012 - link
Good thing to do, i am sure that made you wiser. Truth is a floating mean point of falsifications. (will not continue because you must have stopped reading already ;)pirloui - Thursday, June 28, 2012 - link
"SEVERE problem that MOST"That would rather be "some" and "some".