13-inch Retina MacBook Pro Review (Late 2012)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 13, 2012 2:53 AM ESTThunderbolt Performance
Similar to its 15-inch brother, the 13-inch rMBP integrates Intel's DSL3510L Cactus Ridge Thunderbolt controller. This is Intel's most capable Thunderbolt SKU as it takes four PCIe 2.0 lanes combined with DisplayPort and muxes them into four Thunderbolt channels (2 up/2 down) with two DP outputs.
As we've seen in the past, a single Thunderbolt channel is usually good for nearly 8Gbps although you'll have a hard time reaching that without a decent array of SSDs. With two Thunderbolt ports on board, it shouldn't be too difficult to go beyond 10Gbps if you've got the right devices.
For a sanity check I dusted off Promise's Pegasus J2 (in AC power mode) and measured peak sequential reads/writes between it and the 13-inch rMBP. Performance, as you'd expect, is near identical to what we've seen on the 15-inch model:
This is a final J2 sample that hasn't been battered as much as my original J2 review sample, so write speed looks a lot better. Either way it's pretty effortless to break 6Gbps over Thunderbolt on the 13-inch rMBP.
Thunderbolt behavior continues to be a point of contention with all new machines that implement the spec unfortunately. Of those involved (Apple, Intel and Microsoft), only Apple appears to be doing a somewhat good job of delivering a consistent experience with all devices available on the market today. Even then however, the experience isn't perfect.
I still encounter issues where plugging a sleeping 13-inch rMBP into Apple's Thunderbolt display won't always wake it up. Wake up latency is also highly inconsistent when using Thunderbolt in this manner as well. A big motivation behind Thunderbolt is its ability to let you quickly transition a notebook into a docked, desktop-mode, which is why this is so important.
Apple appears to be getting better with plug and play Thunderbolt compatibility with each new device however. The 15-inch rMBP was noticeably better in random plug testing than the 2011 MacBook Pro, and the 13-inch rMBP appears to be a bit better than the 15-inch model as well.
There are some software issues that I wish Apple would focus on as well. Right now OS X windows don't maintain their proportional size when you switch between resolutions, which can be a problem if you're frequently switching between using the rMBP in notebook mode and when docked to an external display. The result is that when you switch between displays (or even resolution settings on the same display) you often have to go in and resize all of your windows. Ideally I'd like for all windows to retain their proportional size when switching between displays at least. It's an annoying blemish to the Thunderbolt experience.
WiFi
Like its larger sibling, the 13-inch rMBP features a dual-band 3x3:3 802.11n WiFi powered by Broadcom's BCM4331. Peak link rate is unchanged at 450Mbps (5GHz, 40MHz channels, short guard intervals).
Range and performance seem relatively similar to the 15-inch rMBP, which was also a very good performer.
| 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display WiFi Performance | ||||
| 5.0GHz | 2.4GHz | |||
| Location 1 (Next to AP) | 299.5Mbps | 158.9Mbps | ||
| Location 2 (Down the Hall from AP) | 117.1Mbps | 25.2Mbps | ||
| Location 3 (Across House from AP) | 36.5Mbps | 33.2Mbps | ||
| Location 4 (Edge of Coverage Test) | - | 2.3Mbps | ||
Peak performance was just under 300Mbps right next to the access point.
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James5mith - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
One of the biggest advances the Windows OS made was moving from a strictly CPU driven windows management interface, to a GPU accelerated one. (Vista, Win7, Win8)It stopped things like the classic "trail of artifact windows" you could do when your old WindowsXP and earlier machines were bogged down. Since the desktop was drawn by the CPU, it wouldn't refresh properly until some CPU cycles were freed up.
Seems Apple did not learn from the past, and is now doomed to repeat it.
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Actually Apple introduced GPU accelerated window composition with Quartz Extreme nearly 10 years ago, a few years ahead of Microsoft.However there are several layers to GPU acceleration. The earliest solutions could do window composition on the GPU, but the contents of the windows themselves were still generated by the CPU. Since then both MS and Apple have been moving more and more of the workload on to the GPU as it makes sense to do so. But no one is 100% offloaded, so the CPU still plays a part and consequently can still be a bottleneck.
michal1980 - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
The bias is strongsolipsism - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - link
Yes, the bias is strong... in you.<ul><li><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/tag/windows-8>http://w...
cjs150 - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
But not yet. One maybe two generations to go before perfect.1. One obvious use of this will be to watch movies on go (especially on long business trips) but once again Apple ignores 1080p resolution (if there someone at Apple who hates this resolution, because they try and ignore it in every device they produce)
2. Card reader is flaky - is it because of chassis flex or just a bad reader?
3. storage needs to be bigger, I gues next generation will be 256gb.
4. A bit extra horse power obviously needed, but probably not a lot.
The real question though is as tablets get better, is there any point in the 13" Mac?
xTRICKYxx - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
What software do you use to test the framerates of the browser?Jorange - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
$1700 and laggy UI. Come on Apple fans admit that you buy their products for the image, and for fear of being seen as gauche in the eyes of your vapid clique. The best Apple zealots are those whom purchase the things on credit, look how wealthy I am, whilst paying off the monthly installments:)boblozano - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
This is the first review that I've read that captures the essence of this machine -- it is a machine of excellent balance, and in that balance lies it's real reason for being.Came from a mid-2011 mbair (1.8 i7, 256gb), and before that a mid-2009 mbp 15. Workload is a mix of writing, photo editing (lr, ps, etc.), and some video creation. Lots of travel. Went to the mbair after good friends with a heavy dev emphasis swore it was excellent. It was/is.
Considered the 15 rMBP since the price is effectively the same, and there is obviously more of just about everything. But size for travel and general mobility was a significant concern (the air allowed me to switch from a full-size backpack to a much smaller messenger bag).
The reason why I've settled on 13 as just about perfect for my present usage is simple: with the increasing number of full-screen apps, 13" is just about perfect for writing in a full screen, while 15 just feels overwrought. Even better, with retina the photo and video editing remains very usable.
With that as a background, the 13" rMBP was a real step up in everything that I liked about the air, with hardly any compromise (small bit of weight). Ended up with the 2.9 I7, 512gb. Everything I do is faster, better (though definitely not cheaper), and that screen just makes you smile when opening it up to work. It is good enough that I'm even going back to using the device open on a stand (trying the new twelve south height-adjustable stand) when docked.
Sure it would be nice to have 4 cores and a discrete gpu (particularly for rendering), but as of now there's no doubt it would have compromised mobility and/or battery life. About the only indisputable criticism is one of value, but such is life.
Undoubtedly (and always) there'll be something much better down the road, maybe even only a year from now. Good. But as of today, this is the best computing device I've ever used on a daily basis.
caleblloyd - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Anand - the Primary Storage for the 13in MBA that you have listed on the table on the first page should be 128GB.repoman27 - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
"In reality USB 3.0 is good for about 400 - 500MB/s (3.2Gbps - 4.0Gbps)..."The actual reality is that USB 3.0 provides a physical layer gross bit rate of 5 Gbit/s, and a physical layer net bit rate of 4 Gbit/s due to 8b/10b encoding. The net bit rate delivered to the application layer is unlikely to ever exceed 80% of that, or 400 MB/s, in the real world. Even using UASP, which clearly looks to be the case in these tests, I've never seen peak SuperSpeed USB transfer rates much in excess of 350 MB/s. USB 3.0 is good for 300 - 350 MB/s with the hardware shipping at this point, although we may see the upper bound approach 400 MB/s in the future.
"This is Intel's most capable Thunderbolt SKU as it takes four PCIe 2.0 lanes combined with DisplayPort and muxes them into four Thunderbolt channels (2 up/2 down) with two DP outputs."
This sentence has some problems as well. The DSL3510L has connections on the back end for 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes, 2 DisplayPort 1.1a sources and 1 DisplayPort 1.1a sink. On the front side it has four 10 Gbit/s, full-duplex Thunderbolt channels, 2 per port (i.e. 2 up/2 down per port or 4 up/4 down per controller). Each port can also operate in legacy DisplayPort signaling mode when a DisplayPort device is connected directly.
On another note, it's frustrating that Apple failed again at the SDXC card reader, and it appears to be a mechanical issue once again. iFixit's teardown photos seem to have omitted it, but if Apple used the same controller as in the 15-inch MBPR, then it's a Broadcom controller that supports SD 3.0 features such as SDXC and UHS-I paired with a PCIe 1.1 x1 back end. This should make it far more capable than a USB 2.0 based solution, but no, instead they made it useless because half the time it doesn't read a card at all when inserted.