Mhackintosh blog

I just compiled results of Core i3 to Core i7 Mobile GPU, with Geekbench benchmark, comparing them to actual flagship of the Mac laptop, Core2 Duo T9600 2×2.8Ghz (2 threads). And results are astonishing!

The graphic just to have an overview on 32bits (blue) and 64bits (green) :

Core i3 Mobile

The Core i3 mobile cpu is available in 2×2.13Ghz and 2×2.26Ghz, with 2 physical cores and 4 threads (hyper-threading) but only 3MB cache. They offers approximately the performance of Core2 Duo 2×2.53Ghz and 2×2.66 Ghz respectively, that is speed of mainstream actual MacBook Pro in 13″ and 15″, at the entry-level of the new Mobile lineup!

Core i5 Mobile

The Core i5 mobile cpu is available in 2×2.26, 2×2.4Ghz and 2×2.53Ghz, with 2 physical cores and 4 threads (hyper-threading) with 3MB cache as Core i3, but they add Intel Turbo-Boost technology, with respectively 2×2.53, 2×2.93 and 2×3.06Ghz. Latest model (Core i5 540M 2×2.53 to 2×3.06Ghz) have not been tested on Geekbench, so there’s no result at this time.

Turbo-boost enable the entry-level Core i5 Mobile processor to largely outperform the Core i3 Mobile of same frequency, offering performance between actual Core2 Duo 2×2.8Ghz and 2×3.06Ghz! First Core i5 Mobile equal the best Core2 Duo Mobile CPU, at only 2×2.26Ghz so needless to say, Core i5 is the way to go, if possible to upgrade your laptop.

2×2.4Ghz with Turbo-boost up to 2×2.93Ghz just outperforms any existing Mobile Mac CPU…

Core i7 Mobile

The Core i7 Mobile CPU will be available on 2×2.66Ghz on Mac laptops with 2×3.33Ghz Turbo-boost, as other Core i mobile cpu, it integrates 2 physical cores and 4 threads with hyper-threading, it have the more impressive Turbo-boost, and sports 4MB cache instead 3MB.

This is a real fast processor with 4900 GeekBench score on 32bits and 5500 on 64bits, offering a 12% boost on 64bits due to it’s larger cache, and 20% faster than 2×3.06Ghz Core2 Duo Mobile.

Which one of these you will find on February 16th, 2010 MacBook Pro?

The early-2010 MacBook Pro lineup is expected this next tuesday, and we won’t be sure of which one will sport which processor, but some choices are obvious:

MacBook Pro 13″ will be offered with Core i3 Mobile processor in 2×1.13 and 2×2.26Ghz, offering same cpu performance-level of actual MacBook Pro 15″ 2.53Ghz and 2.66Ghz. For thermal reason we might not see the Core i5 on 13″ MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro 15″ will sport the Core i5 processor at 2.26Ghz, 2.4Ghz and 2.53Ghz, offering performance level on a par with 2×3.06Ghz actual customized MacBook Pro, and over! Core i7 maybe offered as a custom option.

MacBook Pro 17″ will probably sports Core i5 2.53Ghz and Core i7 2.66Ghz as custom option, maybe 2.8Ghz if Apple overclock the Core i7 as it did for some previous generations. The 17″ will probably offers 4 DDR3 DIMM support to be upgradeable up to 16GB DDR3 RAM!

Depending on the configuration the CPU performance-level will increase from 10% to 25%, for same price-level… Considering Apple pricing, it’s a gift of $200 to $300! So wait until tuesday to discover the new Mac lineup, and probably new ATI Radeon Mobile GPU too

A last word: with these dual-core 4-threads cpu, the MacBook Pro will reach the performance-level of original Mac Pro, sporting 2 dual-core server-grade CPU! And I find it exciting!

Apple will unveil new MacBook Pro lineup with Core i3 and Core i5 mobile cpu. Maybe Core i7 mobile CPU if we are lucky, but it will be an built-to-order option on MacBook Pro 15″ and 17″ if it ever appears on a MacBook.

On the GPU side, as nVidia seems to be unable to launch new GPU since 2007 and G80, GeForce 8800, for the gamer or fot he mobility market, just trying to hide evolutions of this old chip with marketing rebranding, and Apple choose ATI GPU for the iMac, it seems nVidia wont be the next generation MacBook Pro choice.

Obviously, the new Radeon HD 5830 Mobility seems to be the best GPU for MacBook Pro, with 24W TDP, compatible with actual design and cooling fan, it offers up to 800 Gflops raw processing power for OpenCL and 3D, and 25.6GB/s memory bandwidth, it might be a great choice for OpenCL but a bad one for 3D.

Effectively 3D performance will be just a little better than last-generation 8600M GT or actual 9600M GT (nVidia rebranded the 8600M GT to hide it’s inability to create new chips) with same 25Gb/s memory bandwidth, but will shine on the raw processing side for OpenCL software, such as video encoding, photo processing, antivirus, compression, encryption, raid management… In OpenCL the Radeon HD 5830 Mobility could deliver up to 6.5X the raw processing power of actual MacBook Pro GPU while keeping same TDP.

Radeon HD 5750 Mobility might be a better choice for OpenCL and games, with “only” 500 Giglaflops of raw processing power because of it’s memory bandwith of 51 GB/s, that will help for both games and applications. This will be my GPU of choice, even if the name seems to imply that it is less performing than the 5830!

I suspect there will be two choice, as in the iMac lineup, with probably the HD 5650 Mobility as entry-level GPU, with same raw processing power but only 25.6GB/s GDDR3 memory.

My guess will be Apple offered Radeon HD 5650 Mobility with 512MB DDR3 or GDDR3 on all MacBook Pro and HD 5830 with 1GB GDDR3 on 17″ or built-to-order configuration. But alas we won’t see the really interesting HD 5770 on MacBook Pro.

PS: with same TDP, nVidia offers the GT 240M, that is marginally faster than the 8600M GT and the n-th evolution of GeForce 8xxx G80 chip, with only 25GB/s memory bandwidth (same as GeForce 8600M GT), and 178 Gflops, so Radeon HD 5770 offers 2.5X memory bandwidth and 3X raw processing power, nVidia is totally out of the mobility market!

Here it is, Silicon Images posted Snow Leopard 10.6 SIS3132 ExpressCard eSATA Drivers. These drivers are beta, and supports PIC-express SATA SIL3132 cards too.

I am copying 834GB from a 2TB FAT32 SATA drive to a 1TB HFS+ SATA Drive on my MacBook Pro, and the speed is impressive, around 100MB/s, 4X faster than USB 2.0 real-world speed

Beware that these drivers are beta, without any warranty, and should not be considered at this point as production drivers, but still this is a solution for those like me that have a MacBook Pro w/ ExpressCard eSATA SIL3132 controller (real MacBook Pro have ExpressCards, other are just MacBook in disguise )

Go to Silicon Image download page for SIL3132 Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Drivers (second one)

PS: Finally was 90MB/s thouput for hard-drive copy on eSATA with 25$ eSATA ExpressCard/34! 3X time faster than fastest USB 2.0 hard-drives!

The actual MacBook Pro 2×2.8Ghz is on average as fast as the first MacPro 4×2.66Ghz, and faster on Photoshop tasks, as stated by MacWorld SpeedMark benchmark!

Yesterday night I just finished Lightroom 2 transition, iTunes migration, I put music and photos on their own partition to have a small boot partition at the beginning of the 500GB hard-drive. I modified LightRoom 2’s infos to launch in 64-bits mode instead default 32-bit. And finally calibrate the screen using Spyder 2 Express. Better rendering.

One dawback with the gorgeous screen on the 17″ is that background pictures doesn’t cope with it’s 1920×1200 resolutions and every jagged part or compression block is too visible, so do your background image by yourself

Yes I changed my old 15″ MacBook Pro (early 2008 2×2.4Ghz/4GB/500GB/256MB VRAM) by a brand new 17″ unibody (2×2.8Ghz/4GB/500GB/512MB VRAM) that is 20% to 30% faster, mainly due to magic of DDR3 bandwidth!

Naturally I choose the 17″ for three reasons:

• The screen displays 1.8X more informations
• The 17″ is the only one to keep a ExpressCard slot
• It’s just 10% more expensive than the 15″ equivalent, and I may get ride of my 24″ monitor

In fact my MacBook Pro 17″ is faster than the original Mac Pro for many tasks including CS3, according to macWorld SpeedMark 5! It’s impressive to have it’s power on it’s lap

Sadly, the 2×4GB DDR3-1066 memory kit are not just expensive, they are sold at the price of gold! less than 130$ for 2×2GB DDR3-1066 and instead around 260$ for 2×4GB DDR3-1066 it’s over $800!

I want to run Windows in VM with 4GB to spare, or be able to launch 3 or 4 real linux servers! Pleeassseeeee