2010 Macbook Pro 15" i5/2.4 First Impressions

I don't have time for a full review because one of the reasons I jumped so quickly into this new notebook is that I am on a deadline. However there are a few first observations I don't want to forget about, should anyone be interested in a more complete review.

A little history first. I have been a Mac user for the past 20 years. I grew up with them, have been responsible for them in an IT capacity and have made a living generating content from them. I know the platform well. I am however not the type of guy to put all his eggs in one basket and also routinely use Windows, mostly for gaming, and Linux, mostly for serving.

The point is, I make my living around the Mac.

Purchase and Arrival.
I made the decision to buy after 6 hours of spec shopping. I called around to the local Best Buy (you never know until checking) and the closest Apple store, which for me is 120 miles away. Neither had them in stock, but they both at least knew what I was talking about. The Apple store didn't have an ETA, but expected them within the week. That wasn't fast enough for me this time, so I ordered directly from Apple. This was Tuesday night at 5pm. Wednesday at 2:30PM, I took delivery. Nice. The outer packaging was a plain brown box. Inside, the standard Mac packaging with nothing but the notebook, a power adapter, and a simple folder with barebones manuals and the OS DVDs. Good presentation, but not a lot of goodies.

After updating, and marveling a bit about the sheer precision that goes into this computer, I ran my first CPU centric test - Handbrake. I compressed a 2hr movie at an average of 43.390FPS. This was using Handbrake .93 and the Apple Universal Preset. Not bad. I need to see how long it takes the same movie on my old machine and my i7 gaming rig for a true comparison. During the test, iStat showed my CPU usage at 100% which is good. What surprised me was that the machine got all the way to 96 deg C before the fans decided it was time to join the fun. That quickly brought the temps back down to a sane level, but still. Even with the fans at ~4000RPM, they are definitely quieter than my older MBP. Also, even at that heat level, the machine itself never got that nuclear feeling I get with the older MBP.

The second test I have run, just this morning, was Geekbench. Without preamble here are the results:

• 2007 MBP 15" 2.4GHz C2D "Santa Rosa" (4GB RAM) - 3309
• 2010 MBP 15" 2.4GHz i5 (4GB RAM) - 4728
• 2009 Win7 gaming rig i7 920 - STOCK (6GB RAM) - 7238

I haven't been able to find a test that works the 330M GPU out to my liking without installing Windows and just using a game bench. If there is demand for it I will, but honestly gaming on this notebook isn't a priority for me. I will say that playing back a 1080p trailer from Apple results in very smooth playback, with scrubbing, at very low (1-3%) CPU usage. I am still not sure which GPU is taking this burden.

Anyone have any tests they want run within the realm of OS X, please submit them here and I will try to run them. All in all, I am really liking this new MBP and would recommend it to any professional on the fence about its perceived value.

 

Thank you very much, that was a joy to read. Glad you like it and mine will be arriving soon.

 

I just got mine in yesterday and I did see a nice performance jump with the HT when using vmware fusion.

 

How in the H*ll did you all receive your laptop so soon? I ordered mine on Tuesday and it still has not shipped yet.

I ordered MBP i7, Hi Res screen, 4GB RAM, 500GB 7200RPM

How is it that mine has not shipped yet? I live in the United States.

 

Not sure. I ordered the base model with no options. BTW, I think that the best buys in this lineup right now are the base 15 and the base 17. The middle 15" models just don't give much value unless you specifically need more GPU buffer.

FWIW, I am in southern Indiana and my model came out of Nashville, TN.

 

I will magically offer the correct answer to your query

You did a custom order (stock HDD is 5400rpm, which is 24 hr ship) -- which is 1-3 business days assembly and processing before shipment. And the shipping points for all of Apple's notebook product (stock or CTO) tend to go through Shenzen or Shanghai, China.

 

A bit more info.

I played around with the 1080p Quicktime I got from Apple (Iron Man 2 trailer, for those curious). It would be fair say the CPU was at 5% utilization as an average. It also appears that the 330m is taking over for this as I turned off Auto GPU switching and the CPU stayed the same. Also, while playing back video in general, iStat will show the wattages of the GPU between 5 and 10w. This leads me to believe that the 330m is on, just not be used that heavily.

 

Is it safe to say that the T9400 2.53 ghz CPU in my current MBP is far inferior to the new i5/i7??

 

YES 10char

 

Thanks for the quick review..

 

By the way did you get the new antiglare screen? if so can you please tell us what you think?

 

any thoughts on running win 7 on a VM or is this thought blasphemous?
lol

 

I actually decided to make this purchase my first glare-type screen. I have a window behind me in my office and it is noticeable, but I think that I can live with it. My last MBP was the matte, but still a LED.

I would be happy to run Win 7 in virtualization, but I don't have the software for it just yet. In fact, my old MBP has a Win XP partition on it and I am debating about doing the same for this one.

BTW if you haven't tried the iStat Menus, they are fantastic. They take very little CPU and let you display all sorts of system info you otherwise have to dig for. They do need to update for the new MBPs though as the network activity is always zero.

 

game benchmark would be handy.

 

just did some converting with handbrake......got up to 86C before fans kicked in, max 94C.

Setting fan speed to max (6000rpm) with smc 2.2 temps are still high and around 75C

2% idle on cpu

I am averaging about 90fps on the i5 2.4ghz with intel ssd x25-m 80gb

 

You added that drive yourself, right? I am doing the Optibay swap on my return, and have a SSD on order. Can you fire up the System Profiler and give a little summary of the SATA bus for me?

Pretty please?

What I am looking for is your negotiated link speed.

Thanks!

 

what hit 94C? your GPU? surely not your CPU...

 

94C on the CPU!!!! I know its too high. Idling about 43C at 2000rpm.

I added the ssd myself

here are the details:

Intel 5 Series Chipset:

Vendor: Intel
Product: 5 Series Chipset
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

 

Is the new antiglare screen same as the old mate screens?
Anyone who has or seen the new antiglare who could share his/her thoughts would be great.

 

94c on the 2.4 (520M)? Ouch, wonder what the 620M would generate...

 

When you folks upgrade to the ssd drives, aren't you then seriously limited in terms of storage space??

 

80gb is more then enough for boot camp + applications. I still have 50gb free after installing everything i wanted. I keep all my media on externals

 

I'd love to see a 3dmark06 run if you have time.

 

oh hell no.

call Apple TODAY. tell them what temps you're seeing. exchange that thing TOMORROW.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_... I5-520M CP80617004119AE (BX80617I5520M).html

you're only 10C below the maximum temperature. it shouldn't get anywhere near that. at 94C, you're losing lifespan.

 

Same here, wonder if it can beat my M11X (got around 6500)

I know the GPU wise M11x is abit faster (nVidia GT 335 vs 330) but wondering if overall the CPU and rest of the Apple optimizations will make up for it.
Considering a 15" i7 AntiGlare+Hi-Res here.

 

Looks like the GPU is not only weak, but underclocked. The 335 is going to be quite a bit faster.... oh god. Does not feel good saying that about a 2k laptop.

 

I am on the job right now and have been using the new MBP next to my old one for the past few days.

Anecdotally, its noticeably snappier, though thats a not a fair test, as they both didn't start with clean installs.

I have all power options off, and the 330m on the entire time. The CPU and GPU seem to run ~60C all day like this. Again, the computer itself isn't getting ridiculously hot, but it is a bit surprising seeing the temps there as a norm. Battery life is ALOT better than what I am used to, but I haven't run comprehensive tests.

I have the Optibay on its way, in addition to a 128GB SSD. I will take pics of the install and share them here, then run a full set of diagnostics and review next week.

I will say that I am still quite happy, though I would prefer it run cooler. I might have to play with SMCfan control a bit...

 

60C idle tempertatues make me worry a bit. just seems high. and the CPU hitting the 90s under stress...I'm gonna have to call Apple about that if nobody else will.

 

Just a thought -

What if iStat is reporting the temps wrong?

I know for a fact that the networking sensor doesn't work in the new machines. The thing is, the machine NEVER feels hot. The outer casing around the screen, around where the exhaust is on my old MBP is almost too hot to touch. On the new MBP, I would call it warm.

 

Well, I don't think its iStat. I tried Temperature Sensors which calls out support for the new i5 mobile processors.

These chips are just hot.

 

I'm idling at 46C on the CPU and 40C on the GPU (using istat pro and smc fancontrol), 2000rpm on fan (using itunes, safari and thunderbird all day). AC plugged in and automatic graphics switch on

Just used iVoume to normalise my music (only about 700 songs).....hit 90C with 5% idle on cpu

Can someone else do some video converting or something and see if it is a common problem!!!

 

smcfancontrol..... only way to go.

hitting 90 before changing the fan speed is normal for many generations of the Macbook Pro... nothing new.

no idea why anyone would worry about 60º though.. thats pretty cool.

 

I was running my MBP on a table covered by thick cloth all day. When I got back to my room in the evening, my temps were MUCH closer to yours - high 40s to low 50s.

Again, I don't think there is an issue or that mine is an aberration. I do think SMC fan control is a must if you expect a 100% CPU usage.

BTW, I am rarely seeing the processor even spike above 25% throughout the day. The whole system has been solid with no surprises all week.

 

I can haz 3dmark06 score?

 

^ it'll be under 6,000. see the other thread.

 

Its odd that notebookcheck shows the 330m scoring about 12000....oh well..

 

Considering M11X with nVidia 335 scores 6500 (and maximum 7000) i say around 6000 is pretty good in my world. I guess playing StarcraftII should be just fine (crossfinger)

 

All Blizzard games scale well. It's just going to be a question of how many features you'd have to turn off to get smooth performance.

gibson: make sure you're looking at 3DMark '06 scores. not '05. the 330M isn't scoring 12,000 on anyone's 3DM '06 benchmarking. that's SLI territory for laptops.

 

In 3DMark05.

 

There's definitely some heat going on here.

I received my 15" i7 yesterday. I will probably post a full review here soon if somebody doesn't cover all the bases before I do, but I am pretty busy through the weekend. I have Windows 7 in boot camp and plan to test Dragon Age there to really let me know how this stands up to serious performance tests.

I will say that overall I am very pleased with the machine. Coming from a PC world I'm quite happy with OS-X and am enjoying playing with it and working on it. It looks great, gets better battery life than anything I've ever owned, and I am happy with the antiglare hi res screen.

But some preliminary play today confirms what is starting to appear on the web which is that the CPU temps reach some alarming numbers when stressed. Running a long MATLAB simulation while simultaneously running Cinebench quickly ran my CPU temp as high as 98!C before it started scaling back down .. presumably this was due to the fans kicking up. I'm still running these programs (for a second or third time and the temps have stabilized in the mid-80s, while it is still very quiet. I will be looking into the fan control program mentioned here for sure.

Gotta run for now, more later (most likely..)

 

@JohnSavage:
I love to hear about your result playing Dragon Age, i just finish the game and plan to download the Awakening once i'm done with FFXIII on my PS3 so excited to know if MBP can handle it on native Hi-Res screen with medium/default settings.

 

sweet man!

congrats on your purchase and let us know how those games score!

98C is scary to me...but someone mentioned that recent MBP models have run that hot in recent times?

can anyone with a MBP confirm that MBP cooling systems often get up into the 90C's when stressing them?

It just...seems so hot to me. the heat threshold for these CPUs is 110C. I'd normally think that kind of heat is bad for the silicon...but maybe Apple has found otherwise?

 

I agree with what you are saying but still i dont understand why the scores are so high here:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

Also more on the scores here:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-330M.22437.0.html

Still would be interesting to get a first hand experience from someone.

 

as people have said... 3dmark05 has different numbers than 3dmark06 ... you cannot compare the two.

your two links both show the 330m much lower than your saying it is... the first one says it gets a 6126 in 3dmark06

 

3D Mark '05 is different than 3D Mark '06. the 200 6 version is a more rigorous and demanding set of benchmarks. as such, everything scores lower on '06 than '05.

no matter what you decide to compare, be sure to compare the same years with one another.

compare '05 results to other computers' '05 results. compare '06 results with other '06 results.

 

oh sorry i miss-read the columns, i know you said to check 3DMark06 but somehow i mix it with the others, think its getting a bit late for my eyes
Need some sleep, i'm sitting and admiring the new MBP's and reading all i can find
Looking for launch flaws and thing like that but so far the only "concern" has been the cpu heat which might be as expected and nothing to worry about.

Want to press the order button

 

When I got home and ran cinebench by itself I never got above the 80s, and after I peaked at 98 I quickly dropped back down to the 80s too. I'm not sure what was behind the drop.. either the fans turned on or perhaps the MBP throttled itself down somehow. It was very quiet throughout my OS-X tests..

.. so then I bootcamped into Windows 7 and ran Cinebench there. Again, the cores under 100% load ran up to the mid to high 90s. I think I peaked at 96 and 97, and then the fans kicked on. In an interesting contrast to the behavior in OSX, the fans in W7 came on and were quite loud through the rest of the Cinebench testing. However, they worked, and the cores came down to mid to low 80s relatively quickly. Within 5 seconds of the test being complete the cores were back into the 60s.

Running a chess engine in Windows has produced similar results. Running Rybka 3 in a Fritz interface (doesn't work in Mac anyway) takes my temps up into the mid 80s, at 100% load. The fans come on here and hold me steady in the 78-82 range, and although I wouldn't describe this performance as "quiet", it is not so noisy as I was when Cinebench peaked me in the high 90s. This noise level is reasonable. After letting Rybka think for about 10 minutes I stopped it and within a minute temps were back under 50 and the fan was silent. Considering this (chess analysis on 8 threads) is the most processor intensive task I'm likely to perform, and considering it *is* pulling 100% CPU load throughout, I'm satisfied with this heat and noise performance (although battery life under these conditions is probably 3 or less hours). But I am left wondering why I don't hear the fans when I am running in OS-X at all.

Running MATLAB by itself, doing my normal computational work, I am getting very reasonable temps in the 60s and low 70s. I am idling in the 50s.

Overall the machine is very quiet and I do think it handles heat better for the end user than comparably slim PCs. The keyboard and the trackpad are always very cool, but the back of the machine can definitely warm up.

As for the graphics, Dragon Age will have to wait because I'm at a friend's for the night. But I did run 3DMark 06 and got 6091.

My config:
i7 15", 8gb, 7200 RPM 500gb HDD, hires antiglare screen.

And of course, the ultimate benchmark, the windows experience index: 6.9 CPU and RAM, 6.4 on both graphics, and 5.9 on hard drive.

 

cool. thanks for the insight. keep us posted!

 

I can confirm that the 15 inch MBP with the 2.4ghz i5 will get into the low 90s. But you have to really stress it, and once the fans kick up to high, the temps come down to the low 80s.

That being said, except for heavy stress, the temps are usually quite good - 40s, 50s, 60s.

 

I have had my 15" MBP run as hot as 105C until I set fans to run at full RPM(6000 or so)... which got it to retreat into the 80s or low 90s. I forget exactly what I was doing but I had a lot of things open. Yeah the MBPs are pretty bad about kicking their fans in... on time that is.