Mhackintosh blog

Intel announced Core i5 and Core i3 for laptops, with 35W heat dissipation, they could be at the heart of the next generation MacBook Pro and MacBook.

Alas, as usual with Intel (and nVidia or Apple), Core i5 doesn’t means Core i5: Desktop Core i5 are 4-cores desktop processor far faster than Core2 Quad. Mobile Core i5 are 2-cores mobile processors, with basic frequency lower than COre 2 Duo frequencies and even with Turbo Boost they are limited to 2.93Ghz (3.06Ghz for Cor2 Duo en actual MacBook Pro!).

So we will probably have Core i5 on next generation MacBook Pro, but there won’t be any Quad-core laptop and performance will be stagnant.

The actual Mac Pro may sport a Radeon 4870 graphic card. A high-end graphic card that Apple sell for few hundreds bucks, but that is totally bad at OpenCL, a great additionin Snow Leopard 10.6…

There’s OpenCL Benchmark of Radeon 4870, which show it slower than nVidia 9400M IGP (on Mac Mini, Mac Book Air, …).

Why radeon 4xxx are so slow? They lack “shared memory” that is the equivalent on a graphic card GPU of a processor cache, so every access to memory is 20X to 30X slower than access to cache (or “shared memory” in this case) and it could not compete even if it’s a 400$ graphic card!

If Radeon 4870 could not compete with GeForce 9400M, how a Radeon 4670 will? Having 4X slower memory and 3X less computing power, the Radeon 4670 will be crushed by GeForce 9400M, not talking about GeForce GT120 or even GT130 of last generation iMac!

Even high-end iMac with Radeon 4850 (0.8X slower than 4870 GPU with 2X slower memory) won’t be able to compete with entry-level iMac! It’s sad!

It’s sad Apple lied, as usually, on the Graphic Card implemented in new iMac…

Not only Radeon 4670 are underclocked on iMac (680Mhz core instead 750Mhz, -10%), the memory is underclocked too (790Mhz instead 800Mhz), but they put only 256MB video ram instead usual 512MB or even 1GB that you could find on any retalier for the same GPU!

2X or 4X more memory on usual Radeon 4670 makes a real difference when you have a 2560×1440 display to drive!!!

Addenda: Actual Mac Pro have ATI Radeon 4870 option. But with only 512MB video ram instead 1GB or 2GB that you will find in retail! 512MB is good for entry-level cards, not for high-end!

I wrote affordable Mac Pro, because I will talk about an “affordable” Mac that is Pro targeted. Pro Photographs, Pro Developpers, Pro video processing, Power users… Everything I am…

You may try to find a Motherboard with a Core i5 or Core i7, 6GB DDR3, a good graphic board, such as radeon 4850 or GeForce GTX 260, fast 1TB or 2TB hard-drive, cute box, and a gorgeous 27″ or 30″ 2560×1440 monitor, a bluettoh keyboard and pretty looking mouse, and then try to install Mac OS X 10.6, without any illusion to have everything working properly.

Or you may choose the 27″ Core i5 iMac that is faster than it’s MacPro counterpart, the 4×2.66Ghz Mac Pro, that cost hundreds dollars more, without gorgeous monitor, bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

Yes, the new 27″ Core i5 iMac is a bargain for Mac Users!

Finally, MacWorld changed it’s benchmark suite, to focalise on CPU more than other parts of what makes a great computer: balance between CPU, GPU, Memory and Hard-drive!

Anyway, what is really interesting is that old 3.06Ghz iMac is faster than new 3.06Ghz iMac on MacWorld’s new SpeedMark 6 suite. So the refurbished iMac 24″ 3.06Ghz is a real bargain

And for performance/price balance, the new entry-level 21.5″ Cor2 Duo 2×3.06Ghz equipped with GeForce 9400M seems to be unbeatable, and probably the most interesting model of the new line, except the 27″ Core i5 for power hungry

On OpenCL benchmarks that will rely on real-world OpenCL or CUDA ported applications, I wonder that old-generation equipped with GT130 or GeForce 8800 will easily beat Radeon 4670 or even 4850 cards, even if they are slower on pure games!

Alas, no USB 3.0, no eSATA, no SSD, no Firewire 3200 …

Wanna copy files from 1 external hard-drive to another? 45MB/s speed limit, my MacBook Pro with it’s eSATA ExpressCard is between 80MB/s and 90MB/s, 2X faster!

Please Apple, put an ExpressCard/34 slot into your next-generation iMac for us to be able to upgrade to eSATA, USB 3.0, 2 Firewire 800 ports, FireWire 3200, …