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
6Gbps SATA
Twenty eight days after Intel launched its Sandy Bridge microprocessors, it announced the stop-shipment of all 6-series Sandy Bridge chipsets. The first shipping version of these chipsets (B2 stepping) was affected by an unfortunate "oversight" that could cause failure in the four 3Gbps SATA ports that branch off the chipset. The remaining two 6Gbps SATA ports were unaffected by the bug.
Most notebooks only use two of the six SATA ports supported by most members of Intel's 6-series chipset family. If a notebook design used the 6Gbps ports exclusively, the notebook would be fine to ship using the flawed B2 stepping parts. With the 3Gbps ports not in use the bug would never show up. Notebooks that used more than just two ports or used at least one of the 3Gbps ports would be affected and would have to be remanufactured with a fixed version of the 6-series chipset. Intel promised to begin shipping fixed (B3 stepping) 6-series chipsets by the end of February.
Apple announced and started selling the 2011 MacBook Pro lineup on February 24, four days before the end of the month. Surely that would be too soon for Apple's manufacturing partners to have received B3 stepping chipsets, built boards around them, integrated them into MacBook Pro designs and shipped them half way across the world to Apple stores all around the US.
Naturally Apple wouldn't comment on what chipset revision was in the 2011 MacBook Pro, so the first thing we did was check to see what SATA ports were in use on our systems.
Here we have the high end 15-inch MacBook Pro. I installed an Intel SSD 510 in the lone 2.5" drive bay and it is connected via a 6Gbps port internally:
So far, so good. The only other bay in the new MacBook Pro is used for the optical drive. And it's connected to a:
...3Gbps SATA port. Uh-oh.
Apple doesn't directly report chipset IDs under OS X. I installed Windows 7 via Boot Camp and headed over to device manager to pull the device ID of the SATA controller: 1C01.
Cross referencing with Intel's datasheets I found that there are two revisions of the SATA controller: 04 and 05. The latter is used in the "fixed" B3 stepping chipsets. And what do we have here at the end of the hardware ID string for the SATA controller?
REV_05.
This is a B3 stepping chipset. In fact, Apple's manufacturing partners seem to have received B3 chipsets before anyone else given that boards were produced, tested and shipped in time for a February 24th launch. It would appear that Apple was among the first if not the first company to receive B3 stepping 6-series chipsets. Although I had concern for the health of the Apple/Intel relationship over the past couple of years, it looks like the two are back to being bedfellows.
Internally there are no visible changes to the MacBook Pro's primary SATA cable. It's still a flex cable but apparently capable of delivering twice the bandwidth of last year's model. Apple doesn't ship the new MacBook Pros with any 6Gbps drives and I would be surprised if it selected anything other than Samsung or Toshiba for SSDs, which means even the SSD options are 3Gbps. Luckily I happen to have a small cache of SSDs, including a bunch of new 6Gbps offerings.
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Brian Klug - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
So I roll with my optical drive replaced with a Vertex 2 SSD inside an OptiBay daily. It's an awesome combination if you can do it.One problem I noticed however is that Apple's EFI won't boot optical drives other than their own $79 external drive. That means if you want to use boot camp, you have to install Windows with the optical drive (internal SATA) connected, then do the swap to OptiBay SSD + HDD.
-Brian
AmdInside - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
I'm just not that interested in this years lineup. The better CPU performance is nice but given how much more features Windows notebooks provide today, I feel I can rely on Windows notebooks as a desktop replacement much more than I can a Macbook Pro. I will still use my MBP 13 2010 for home use but for business, I rely on my Windows laptop.Braddik - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
Amazing article! I love how thorough and detailed you are. Mad props! I work in a medium-large size organization and the Dell vs. Apple debate is hot right now. Our Mac user base is growing, but the majority of the organization is Dell. I would love an article that compares the performance/value/support of MacBook Pros vs. Dell Latitudes in the Enterprise environment. Which is better? Can/should organizations feasible make the move to a full Mac environment? I would love your input! Thanks!Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Thanks for the kind words. I'm not sure I can offer much advice in terms of how the MBPs fare in an enterprise environment. While I know of many corporations that now issue OS X systems as an option, those systems typically have some form of Windows on them (either via Boot Camp or as a VM).Perhaps someone else may be able to offer more input?
Take care,
Anand
Chloiber - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
I still think it's too early to completely throw away desktops.With my T410, I also made the change to use it as my main "working" computer. At home, I can dock it and use my big, comfortable screen. It's very fast in "normal" usage like simple programming, texting, surfing, some "medium" load graphical stuff, some MATLAB etc. etc. - it's just perfect.
But as soon as I want to do really heavy stuff like hours of video encoding, I still switch to my desktop with 4 or more cores and a fast dedicated GPU. It's just not the same and I really don't like to stress my laptop that much (allthough it is a Thinkpad). I don't know - I'm even less comfortable with a quad in my notebook. I don't know, but it's just not the same as a Desktop for really heavy stuff.
I do like the new MacBooks - I don't like the resolution of the 13" model though...it's awful...
Ushio01 - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
While i expect a Mac Pro refresh late 2011 early 2012 I wonder if it could be the last. With the discontinuation of xserve and as this review demonstrates a mobile CPU matching less than year old server level parts in performance and thunderbolt allowing highspeed access to a NAS box I can see Apple discontinuing there last product targeting solely the professional market and truly becoming a CE company.rural_oregon - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
Yes, I have to agree with you. With macs only 20% of Apple's total revenue, and the mac pro only perhaps 5% of the mac revenue, at some point soon it just won't be worth the effort. I think it's even possible that there may not even be a sandy bridge mac pro.tipoo - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link
It certainly seems like a possibility. Apples focus really has shifted to mobile devices, and its Mac revenues are only about a fifth of what the company makes. I can't imagine the Pro is any substantial percentage of their revenue, 1-5% perhaps. Might not be worth the effort for them. On the other hand, it would irk mac developers and creative pro's.wast3gat3 - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
Just a short thanks for such an in-depth review.I have a mid-2010 15" MBP and am upgrading this week to the 2011 15" MBP as the performance gain is just too good to pass up. Interesting though that Apple locks the TRIM support in to their own SSD. I'm still going with the 7200rpm 500GB option and will move that disk to an opti-bay and the 3GB controller now knowing that they are using B3 stepping and fit a 6gb sata SSD. Hopefully LION will fix that TRIM support or some clever cookie works out how to enable it.
Once again thanks!
Kuril - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
I always wait for AnandTech reviews because they are almost aways the most comprehensive. I love how the technology behind the reviewed product is summarized, and that there is some footwork to better describe the exact hardware being used (e.g., CPUs for MacBook Pros).Thanks for the informative reviews. No one comes close.