3DMark05 Score for New C2D MPB.... wow!

Brian from the MacRumors forum (the guy in this thread who was one of the first to report on getting his machine: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=245617 ) has started answering people's questions and posting more detailed information.

Here's the one that really stood out to me though:

http://lartren.com/mac/

3DMark05 score of 3955. This seems like a really nice improvement compared to the 2500-2800 scores that the previous MBP got. Note that this is the higher-end config (2GB, 256MB VRAM, 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo), but still pretty nice.

 

Sounds like they clocked the notebook similarly to the nc8430...I get about 3950. Nice!

 

Yeah, he said the core is clocked at 418.5 and memory at 445.5. It's a huge improvement over the previous MBP's, which were dramatically underclocked (like 310 and 270 or something).

I'm curious what the lower end C2D MBP with the 128MB X1600 gets. Hopefully someone else will test that soon.

It's just nice to see though; again, certainly this is not something anyone should buy whose primary use will be gameplaying, but it is a nice perk for someone who wants an MBP for other reasons but also does like to have some nice gaming capabilities.

 

This is great!.. Now the question comes to, will it burn ur lap?

 

It sounds like the normal temps (i.e. while not gaming aren't bad), but I would guess that while gaming it would still get hot enough that you wouldn't want it directly on your lap (if you did want to use it in your lap, i think using something like the iLap would be a good idea: http://www.raindesigninc.com/ilap.html )

 

this looks very promising! how on earth did they pull it off?

 

That's a beautiful 3DMark05 score for a MBP. Hopefully the 128MB version is similarly clocked. I think some of the 3DMark score could also be contributed to Merom since at the same clock speeds, Merom can give a 100-150 point boost and in this case we've also got a clock speed bump too. That still means that out of the 1000 point gain, 80% is still from the GPU which is great.

I wonder if the GPU is similarly clock in OS X? Perhaps now Apple decided to "release" the MR X1600 so to speak in Windows, where most people would probably game, and kind it constrained in OS X. That would certainly reinforce the "power-efficiency" of running in OS X vs Windows.

 

if an application needed more than 128mb for video card, would the Ram be used instead of the dedicated video memory?

 

As far as I know, the default clock speed of the X1600 is the same whether you boot into OS X or Windows, but I'm not sure how that could be checked from the OS X side.

In terms of how they pulled it off, all I can guess is that they've had some time to make some improvements to the MBP even without actual case changes, etc.

I recall reading that previous MBP owners were overclocking to the 400/400 range without too many problems, so it seems like there was some wiggle room anyway to work with.

But it's definitely nice to see.

-Zadillo

 

What's even more impressive is that they were able to increase the GPU clocks along with upgrading to Merom since Merom is supposed to be hotter than Yonah too. Perhaps there are a few new small vent holes somewhere that people haven't found yet. Wasn't the MacBook designed with extra vent holes than originally planned, like the ones on either side of the hinge on the back if I'm not mistaken.

This is slightly off topic, but has anyone tested the battery life yet? I believe Apple is claiming even longer battery life than the original MBP now, but that's hard to believe if they've added higher clocked Merom and clocked the GPU higher, unless they have a new battery.

 

I too am curious how they did this. I wish there was a way to tell the speed in OS X. i am wondering if they only bumped the clocks in Windows, or maybe this is coincidence, and the boost actually came in the last Boot Camp update, and no one noticed. The clock speed is dependent on the driver I believe.

 

Is it? I thought even without a driver, there is a natural clockspeed that the cards are set to.