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
13-inch Gaming Performance under Windows
Like I said earlier, this is the first Apple portable with Intel graphics in over two years. What does this mean for graphics performance?
Bad things. See, when Jarred looked at HD 3000 in our SNB mobile testbed, he found that it was a bit faster than the 320M at low settings, and a little bit slower at medium settings. The i5-2415M has the same specs as our testbed, with 12 execution units with a max clock speed of 1300MHz. Given the gaming performance from our Sandy Bridge review, I was actually pretty optimistic that the new 13" MacBook Pro's graphics weren't actually worse than the outgoing models.
Oh how I wish I wasn't wrong. 3DMark scores go down about 20% relative to the SNB testbed and stay within 10% of the old MBP. So far, so mediocre.
The good news in the gaming numbers is that everything is playable, at low settings at least. Unfortunately, performance is, for the most part, a lot slower than the outgoing 13" MBP. 30% slower in STALKER, 20% slower in Mass Effect 2, DiRT 2, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, 10% slower in L4D2, and a hair faster in StarCraft 2. StarCraft isn't actually that surprising, since it's by far the most CPU-centric game in our benchmark suite.
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tipoo - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
Its a shame that their base 15 inch, a 2000 dollar laptop, has a 256MB card by default. Even for non-gamers, that's starting to become a bottleneck. Especailly as this "pro" machine will make it into the hands of creative professionals, doing video work, rendering, mudbox, etc.Interesting about the performance differences in the HD3000 and 320M under Windows vs OSX.
tipoo - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
p.s whats an SNB GPU? Is that a typo? SB, perhaps?Brian Klug - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
When we say that, we're just referring to the Sandy Bridge (SNB) GPU. Essentially it's shorthand for the Intel HD Graphics 3000.-Brian
IntelUser2000 - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
The official short form for Sandy Bridge is SNB, not SB. SB is South Bridge.dcollins - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
For some reason Sandy Bridge is alway abbreviated as SNB. It took me a while to figure out.KoolAidMan1 - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
The baseline 15" MBP is $1800, not $2000.In any case, it is an unusual update. Usually the performance delta between MBPs hasn't been so extreme. The last generation had a common GPU between all 15" models, the main difference being video RAM. Now they have completely different GPUs, one being REALLY fast and the other not much better than the one that was in the models from last year.
saleem.kh - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Dear, please consider approximately 9.5% US Sales Tax on $1,799. Then total price reaches to $2,000 approxPeteH - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
There is no such thing as US Sales Tax, only state and local sales taxes. State rates range from a low of 0% to a high of 8.25% (I don't happen to know the range of local sales taxes). Adding 9.5% to the price of a computer seems completely arbitrary.turtle44 - Thursday, June 2, 2011 - link
sales tax in NY,NY is 11% don't say what you don't know.sfdiesel - Monday, July 25, 2011 - link
Sales tax in Portland, OR is 0%. So, adding 9.5% to the price of a computer does seem completely arbitrary.Do say what you don't know.