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
Thermals and Power Consumption
The new MacBook Pros have the potential to draw more power than the previous generation. Despite being built on a 32nm process, the new 15 has twice the cores of last year's model—there's no question that it can draw more power under a full load.
I measured maximum power consumption at the wall using the same power brick and a fully charged battery. I chose two high-load scenarios: Cinebench 11.5 and Half Life 2. The former will fully load all CPU cores while the latter ramps up CPU and GPU usage.
Under Cinebench the new quad-core 15-inch MacBook Pro draws 70% more power at the wall than last year's dual-core model. This shouldn't be surprising as Cinebench scales nearly perfectly with core count—twice the cores should result in nearly twice the power draw. The scaling isn't perfect since we are dealing with different architectures and a number of factors such as display remain static. The new 13-inch MacBook Pro isn't as worrisome, it has 88% of the power usage of the high end 2010 15-inch MBP and 81% of the battery capacity.
The Half Life 2 comparison is not quite as bad, although the new 15-inch MBP still uses 45% more power under full load compared to the previous generation. These numbers tell you one thing: although the new MBP is significantly faster than its predecessor, it can also draw significantly more power. Running the same workload the new MBP shouldn't have any problems lasting as long as the old MBP on battery, but running a more aggressive workload will result in shorter battery life as a result of the higher max power consumption. In other words if you use the higher performance to do more, you can expect your battery to last proportionally less than the 2010 MBP.
The 15-inch MBP uses an 85W power adapter (left) and the 13-inch MBP uses a 60W adapter (right)
Drawing more power also has another unfortunate side effect: the bottom of the chassis gets even hotter than before. I took some crude temperature measurements when I did the 2010 MacBook Pro reviews last year. I pointed an IR thermometer at the center of the bottom of the notebook, right where you'd have your lap, and measured surface temperature in a couple of scenarios.
While browsing the web with tons of windows/tabs open I noticed a small but tangible increase in surface temperature of the 2011 15-inch MBP compared to the 2010 model. Even the new 13 is warmer than last year's 15. Under light workloads none of these temperatures are high enough to really be a problem.
Load up the system however and you start getting into the uncomfortable zone. The new 15 breaks 38C, while the new 13 is actually only marginally warmer than the old 13 thanks to the use of Intel's HD Graphics 3000.
The biggest difference I noticed was the max temperature near the exhaust fan(s) on the notebooks. The new 15 is a whole 13C warmer than last year's model.
There's no way to get around it—if you're going to be using these systems to anywhere near their potential, they are going to get significantly warmer than last year's. Also, as a result, the new systems are noisier. Fans are more likely to spin up and given how small they are, they are quite audible. If this is a deal breaker for you, the best advice I can give you is to wait for Ivy Bridge.
Ivy Bridge will bring mild updates to the Sandy Bridge architecture, an increase in performance but more importantly it'll bring Intel's 22nm process. At 22nm I'd expect somewhat lower power usage than what we're seeing here today. Ivy Bridge is expected to ship in the first half of 2012, with updated MacBook Pros arriving ~2 months post introduction.
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ImSpartacus - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
Apple doesn't do something unless they can do it 100%.They won't default to SSDs until they are on the logic board like the MBA. We'll probably see the disk drive go at the same time.
Maybe Apple will continue to use hard drives for storage? That might be the reason we are still seeing 5400rpm drives. Apple doesn't want to upgrade everyone to 7200rpm drives only to have 5400rpm drives the next year, even only for storage.
But who knows?
Tros - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
I imagine they'd go for the MBA-SSD and the larger platter-based storage, and just partition. But to do that smoothly, they need a better partitioning system (to keep it user friendly); ZFS.Nentor - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Apple doesn't do something unless they can do it grand (or make it seem grand).Why put in SSD standard if they are still a luxury? As long as the average pc user is not fully aware of what SSD are and what are the great benefits you can still demand premium for them as an upgrade for people that do want one.
Just watch, when SSD are becoming the standard Apple will put put them in and market the hell out of it and make it fit the whole Apple image.
dsumanik - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Dude, if your hdd is integrated into your mobo... Not only do have the disadvantage of not being able to upgrade to faster/larger capacity drives...If the disk fails you need to replace the whole board - $$$
If something on the board fails, you lose all your data - facepalm
Apple dictates the price of of the hdd, even when it's a yer old - $$$
A simple, 2 screw user replaceable hdd is the elegant solution and always will be.
Wake up peeps...
They aren't supporting other drives because they want to sell you outdated technology at a higher price.... End of story.
JasperJanssen - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Dude, do you even have a vague clue what you are talking about?The MBA doesn't have an SSD soldered onto the mainboard, it has it on a standardised daughter card. And by standardised I don't mean standardised by Apple, although to be fair Apple is the main supplier of machines using it at the moment. It's a card not unlike minipci(e), and entirely swappable from one machine to a replacement. Also, Apple isn't the only one supplying these drives.
It's entirely possible that other thing&light manufacturers will start using them, as it's a very useful form factor.
KoolAidMan1 - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
There is no dedicated GPU in the 13" MBP because there isn't room for it. Look at other notebooks in the same size and price class such as the Lenovo x220. Same situation, integrated GPU only. An dedicated GPU means bigger motherboard, which defeats the purpose of notebooks that are so small.Wieland - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
Sandy Bridge laptops haven't been on the market very long. It's way too early to make a conclusion about what is and isn't possible in terms of size. That said, the Sony Vaio S is basically the exact same size, lower weight, lower price, and offers almost as much battery life, and it is configurable with two different versions of AMD Radeon Graphics (6470M, 6630M). The new Vaio Z will probably be even more impressive in this regard.ltcommanderdata - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
The 13" MacBook Pro is a constant 0.95" thickness. The Vaio S ranges from 1.08" - 1.24" thick, a 14% to 31% difference. So the 13" MacBook Pro has significantly decreased internal volume which will definitely constrain how you lay out internal components and the thermal room on the machine impacting whether it's worthwhile to put in a discrete GPU.claytontullos - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
Have you dealt with HP's tech support? It's like pulling teeth to get anything done.My ram in my Dv4 was bad, it would randomly cause windows to crash both in Vista and Windows 7. My ram failed memtest86 with over 4 million errors after a few minutes of testing... however my ram would pass HP's 5 second ram test with flying colors.
HP's support first insisted I revert my laptop back to Vista and in any event would not service my laptop because the ram passed their "test."
I will never buy another HP product.
quiksilvr - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
I won't judge a race based on the actions of few. At the same time, I won't judge a company just because one of their products didn't work that well for me. That's like saying I bought a 4 pack of Duracells and one of the batteries weren't working so now I buy Energizer.And to be fair, it isn't like HP made the RAM. If you were getting random crashes, you obviously didn't do anything and are clearly under warranty. Simply say "I turned it on and it keeps crashing" and they'll say "Okay here send it back" and 9/10 they will pay for shipping (depending on where you got it from).
Now I'm not an HP fanboy (far from it, I own a Lenovo), but prior to that I owned a zd8000 for about 5 years with no problems. Does that mean that HP is utterly flawless and no one makes a product like them? No. But I know quality when I see one and I stand by what I said: The Envy 14 is probably one of the best laptops you can get. Hell, it's only $999 and it blows the MBP out of the park.