The Black Friday Guide to MacBook Pros
ikkyu2 asked me to weigh in on his purchase of a fancy new MacBook Pro and I figured now's a good time to talk about where the hardware is right now. Short summary: not a lot has changed, you can still get the same stuff as cheap last-gen refurbs, there's an imminent hardware update, and when the update comes it'll be relatively significant.
I'm writing this from my new old MacBook FB588LL. It's been running quite nicely and I don't regret its purchase one bit. Not a lot in the MacBook line has changed since July: "Same chipset, same CPUs, same graphics card, same ports, same generous 8GB/$700 memory limit." Apple's running a $100 Black Friday sale on current new MacBooks, but you can save even more with a last-gen refurb since you'll basically be buying almost the same thing. Or you might want to wait, because there are some significant new things coming down the hardware pipeline.
First, graphics. Back in June NVidia announced the 200M series GPUs. This isn't yet another minor hardware update, it's a significant update to performance, power consumption, underlying architecture, and computational flexibility. (See " What's New in GPUs".)
Second, chipset and CPU. Intel announced their PM55 chipset and Core i7 processors at the IDF in September, and both of these are fairly big deals. On the CPU Intel is ditching the frontside bus and moving to a quick path interconnect and a die-integrated memory controller which finally brings it on par with the HyperTransport bus that was in use by AMD chips (and Apple's PowerPC 970, ironically). On the chipset side the PM55 supports up to DDR3-1600 RAM and hardware-supported H.264/MPEG-4 which means maybe we'll finally get a MacBook that plays Blu-Ray and doesn't eat batteries. Hopefully.
I was going to guess that Apple hadn't built a laptop with these features because they like the $1600/$1900/$2200 price points and these parts don't fit the budget, but that can't be it because Dell have been selling 15" 200m/PM55/i7 Alienware laptops for $1800 or so. Maybe they just didn't want to rock the architecture boat because they've been pushing 10.6 out the door. Whatever the reason, Apple's "Pro" laptops seem to be lacking from a pro-level perspective. You can still get pretty much the same thing at a cheaper price if you buy a last-gen refurb, or if you can afford to wait a little you might be able to buy a significantly improved model.
Update: The Clarksfield i7s use a DMI bus, not QPI, which is still way better than FSB. Arrandale will be out sometime in Q1 2010. The 2.8Ghz T9900 runs 35W max, the current Clarksfields run 45/55W max, and the Arrandales will be 18/25/35W. Maybe the MacBook chassis can handle up to 35W of heat and they're waiting for Arrandale for that reason.
Update 2: MacRumors is on pretty much the same page.
I'm writing this from my new old MacBook FB588LL. It's been running quite nicely and I don't regret its purchase one bit. Not a lot in the MacBook line has changed since July: "Same chipset, same CPUs, same graphics card, same ports, same generous 8GB/$700 memory limit." Apple's running a $100 Black Friday sale on current new MacBooks, but you can save even more with a last-gen refurb since you'll basically be buying almost the same thing. Or you might want to wait, because there are some significant new things coming down the hardware pipeline.
First, graphics. Back in June NVidia announced the 200M series GPUs. This isn't yet another minor hardware update, it's a significant update to performance, power consumption, underlying architecture, and computational flexibility. (See " What's New in GPUs".)
Second, chipset and CPU. Intel announced their PM55 chipset and Core i7 processors at the IDF in September, and both of these are fairly big deals. On the CPU Intel is ditching the frontside bus and moving to a quick path interconnect and a die-integrated memory controller which finally brings it on par with the HyperTransport bus that was in use by AMD chips (and Apple's PowerPC 970, ironically). On the chipset side the PM55 supports up to DDR3-1600 RAM and hardware-supported H.264/MPEG-4 which means maybe we'll finally get a MacBook that plays Blu-Ray and doesn't eat batteries. Hopefully.
I was going to guess that Apple hadn't built a laptop with these features because they like the $1600/$1900/$2200 price points and these parts don't fit the budget, but that can't be it because Dell have been selling 15" 200m/PM55/i7 Alienware laptops for $1800 or so. Maybe they just didn't want to rock the architecture boat because they've been pushing 10.6 out the door. Whatever the reason, Apple's "Pro" laptops seem to be lacking from a pro-level perspective. You can still get pretty much the same thing at a cheaper price if you buy a last-gen refurb, or if you can afford to wait a little you might be able to buy a significantly improved model.
Update: The Clarksfield i7s use a DMI bus, not QPI, which is still way better than FSB. Arrandale will be out sometime in Q1 2010. The 2.8Ghz T9900 runs 35W max, the current Clarksfields run 45/55W max, and the Arrandales will be 18/25/35W. Maybe the MacBook chassis can handle up to 35W of heat and they're waiting for Arrandale for that reason.
Update 2: MacRumors is on pretty much the same page.