Apple's 15-inch Core i5 MacBook Pro: The One to Get?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 14, 2010 10:38 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- MacBook Pro
- Arrandale
- Core i5
- Laptops
If you've followed our Mac coverage over the past year you know I've been telling everyone to wait until Apple brought Arrandale into its MacBook Pro lineup. The time has finally come and this week Apple updated its entire MacBook Pro lineup.
While the 13-inch models still sport Core 2 Duo CPUs, the 15 and 17-inch models now ship with your choice of Core i5-M or Core i7-M processors. In a somewhat unexpected twist, all of the new models ship with discrete graphics courtesy of NVIDIA's GeForce GT 330M.
Intel gets to sell Apple some chipsets again and NVIDIA gets its GPUs in the new systems (possibly making even more money than before). But do you all benefit? Read on to find out!
Update: We've added benchmarks of the Core i7 model as well on Page 3!
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yodasz - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
I wonder if the SSD performance and compatibility issues have been addressed in this revision? Does anybody have an update on that?Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
3Gbps works out of the box (confirmed on Corsair's Force 100GB drive). The system seems to work fine with the SandForce controller, but the same is true for the previous gen. I haven't tried Indilinx yet. Intel also appears to work fine.Take care,
Anand
solipsism - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
That is the most important information from this release. Sadly, you are likely the only one to report on it.How does the use of SATA II over SATA III affect the performance of SSDs?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
The only SSD that can benefit from 6Gbps SATA is the Crucial/Micron RealSSD C300, which I've briefly talked about here:http://anandtech.com/show/2944
The problem today is some 6Gbps SATA controllers are actually slower than Intel's 3Gbps SATA controller:
http://anandtech.com/show/2973/6gbps-sata-performa...
Realistically I don't expect 6Gbps SATA to be that important to SSD performance until next year.
Take care,
Anand
Pat69 - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
Do you know which kind of SSD Apple is providing through the 3 options (128, 256, 512)? Are these SSD good ones?Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
Apple doesn't like confirming this kind of stuff, but I'm guessing they are supplied by Toshiba and/or Samsung. If so, the drives are ok but not particularly great. I'd save the upgrade cost and do it yourself aftermarket.Take care,
Anand
kirkrw - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
I take it then that your recommendation would be to that same $500 that Apple wants for their 256G SSD and put it toward a 160G x25-M gen 2?bradpowers - Monday, April 19, 2010 - link
Could we get benchmarks on the MBP with the Corsair F100? I'm very interested in that combination.stimudent - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Still measuring in inches and feet...Squuiid - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Aynbody know what model the 256GB SSD is?