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
Thunderbolt Performance
Apple’s 2011 Macs were the first to enjoy Thunderbolt, an interface co-developed with Intel that carries PCIe and DisplayPort over a single cable. As it derives most of its revenue from mobile, Apple wasted no time in bringing its Thunderbolt Display to market. A single Thunderbolt cable could bring Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire 800, high-speed mass storage, external audio and display to an otherwise IO-deprived MacBook Air.
At a high level, Thunderbolt is pretty easy to explain. The current implementation of Thunderbolt pairs four PCIe 2.0 lanes with DisplayPort, offering a maximum bandwidth of 2GB/s in either direction in addition to DP bandwidth. The Thunderbolt interface itself can deliver 10Gbps of bandwidth in each direction, per channel. The physical Thunderbolt port is compatible with mini DisplayPort to allow for the use of mini-DP displays as well as Thunderbolt chains. Each Thunderbolt port can carry up to two Thunderbolt channels, although one channel is typically reserved for DisplayPort duties.
In the past we measured a maximum of 1GB/s of unidirectional bandwidth for a single Thunderbolt channel in addition to video bandwidth over DisplayPort. There’s no shipping device that will deliver this sort of performance, I needed to outfit a Promise Pegasus with a handful of SSDs to truly saturate the bus.
In the 2012 Macs Apple, like the rest of the PC industry, has switched to using Intel’s 2nd generation Thunderbolt controllers codenamed Cactus Ridge.
The Retina MacBook Pro uses a four-channel Cactus Ridge controller and drives two Thunderbolt ports with it. Each port can drive a mini-DP display or a Thunderbolt chain with a mini-DP/Thunderbolt Display at the end of or in it. The rMBP can actually drive a fourth panel (counting the integrated Retina Display) via the integrated HDMI port although that’s not an officially supported configuration.
Unlike most other implementations, Apple hangs the Cactus Ridge controller off of the Ivy Bridge CPU rather than the PCH. The GeForce GT 650M in the system only gets the use of 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes instead of the full 16, but with PCIe 3.0 this is not an issue (it wouldn’t be an issue with PCIe 2.0 either to be honest).
I performed the same test as before to test if maximum bandwidth has gone up since switching to Cactus Ridge. Initial results remained unchanged, I was able to get north of 900MB/s to an array of SSDs in the Pegasus connected to a single Thunderbolt port. Now with two Thunderbolt on the rMBP however I was able to create a second chain of devices. I only have a single Pegasus so I resorted to chaining a LaCie Little Big Disk (SSD) and Elgato Thunderbolt drive. The combination of the two isn’t anywhere near as fast as the SSD array in the Pegasus but it allowed me to push the limits of the controller even more:
1380MB/s, over copper, to the rMBP. I suspect if I had another Pegasus SSD array I’d be able to approach 1800MB/s, all while driving video over the ports. Apple may limit the internal storage expansion of the rMBP but you still have a path to expansion for storage of large media files and other archives. And it’s very fast.
Unfortunately Thunderbolt behavior is still not perfect, although it is improved compared to previous Macs. If you write to Promise’s Pegasus for long enough while playing audio through Apple’s Thunderbolt Display you will still drop audio frames. Subjectively it seems to take longer to trigger this phenomenon but it does still happen. On my early 2011 MacBook Pro the problem has gotten so bad that I’ll even drop other USB packets for devices connected to the Thunderbolt Display. If I’m writing to the Pegasus I’ll miss keystrokes and the mouse will jump around until the high-speed write is complete. So far I haven’t had anything this bad happen on the Retina MBP but it took a while for this behavior to manifest on my early 2011 model so we’ll see what happens. I’m not sure what the fix will be for these types of issues as it seems there’s no good quality of service assurance for PCIe devices residing on Thunderbolt. As Thunderbolt was supposed to be as transparent as possible, it’s not surprising that even QoS overhead is nonexistent but it’s something that is clearly necessary. I’m not sure this is Apple’s fault as I’ve seen similar behavior under Windows. I suspect it’s something that Intel is going to have to figure out a way to address.
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Ohhmaagawd - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
It's a first step. There will be retina monitors in the future.Freakie - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Lolwut... Monitors that have great quality color are already high resolution... They were pushing major pixels before it was popular ;)vegemeister - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
With the exception of the (discontinued and originally $10,000) IBM T221 and it's derivatives, no desktop monitor has resolution exceeding 2560x1600, and that resolution is only available in the 30" form factor.Solandri - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
I have the lower-end version of that particular laptop ("only" a 1600x900 screen, 2x64 GB SSD). I wish I'd opted for the 1080p screen. 1600p wide isn't really enough to put two apps side-by-side. I do that all the time on my 1920x1200 external monitor though.The screen is a glossy TN panel, but is pretty much the best TN panel I've used. My desktop monitor is IPS so I can see its limitations. But when I'm using the Z in public, the most frequently comment I get is how beautiful the screen is. Sony also does a stellar job with their anti-reflective coatings. it's a glossy screen, but I almost never see reflections (except in sunlight). Colors are a bit too saturated, and the custom color profile I made tones it down. Unfortunately none of the reviews on it tested its gamut. But from photo editing, it's got a wider gamut than most high-end laptop displays I've seen. And it's blindingly bright too - perfectly usable in direct sunlight at max brightness. I rarely run it over half brightness.
The quad-SSD was because the laptop came out before SATA3 SSDs were available (the SATA3 spec had only been finalized a few months prior). 2.5" SSDs were already hitting the limits of SATA2 (3 Gbps) and the only way to get around it was by putting multiple SSDs in a RAID 0 array. So that's what Sony did. The 4-SSD version benchmarks at 430-500 MB/s sequential read/write. Not too shabby in 2010 using 150 MB/s mSATA stick SSDs on SATA2.
Optical drives are more a matter of preference. I end up burning a lot of DVDs so it's definitely convenient. But if you don't do that or watch movies, then yeah I can see it being superfluous. As much as I'd like to see media being distributed on USB sticks, their cost of $1-$2 for 4GB vs. a few cents for a DVD means it's not happening yet. Do note that the Z tops out at 2.9 pounds. It's lighter than the first and second gen Macbook Air despite having a DVD/Bluray drive. That's the second most common comment I get - "It's so light!"
OCedHrt - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
The 1080p panel on the Z is IPS. And it's not glossy - you don't have a glass on your laptop. I believe this is more for weight reasons than anything else.maratus - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
No, it's not IPS.Solidstate89 - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
You have to be the most ignorant jackass I've ever seen. You've basically never even heard of that product until now yet that doesn't stop you from making baseless accusation after baseless accusation.Get the fuck over yourself. And Windows has always handled resolution scaling better than OS X, and it still does.
ananduser - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
In 2010 Sony offered a 13" MBP equivalent with matte 1080p TN panel(like all the other macbooks). It had a BluRay built besides a quad raid SSD option(that still exists). The current Z has the video card inside an external dock, it is as slim as the thinnest ultrabook with a full voltage CPU.OCedHrt - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
Sony offered it in 2008 :)OCedHrt - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
You are not applying the correct context.1080p is okay because windows has DPI scaling - though I agree with Anand that this doesn't work with apps that aren't written correctly. But the same applies to OS X. OS X handles it better because of vector based UI.
It is an IPS display with 92% color gamut that Anandtech called amazing. Don't even try to pretend it sucks: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5530/sony-vaio-z2-ev...
Blu-ray is not a default option, it is an extra configuration that you'd have to pay for. This isn't Apple were talking about - even Sony has typically more options than Apple.
Quad-SSDs. Yes. You need to remember that his happened back in 2008 when SSDs were not doing 500mb/sec. This was back when a quad SSD only netted you about 300mb/sec and before TRIM was prevalent.