Some Interesting Surprises with the New C2D MBP's

Figured I'd bring everyone's attention to a thread going on at MacRumors:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=245617

One of the members picked up a new 2.33 GHz C2D MacBook Pro, and has already reported two interesting things:

1) With the current Boot Camp drivers, he discovered that the wireless card wasn't detected in XP (meaning a change from the wireless in the previous MBP's).

Upon installing a third party driver, the device now reports as "D-Link RangeBooster N 650" - meaning that it appears that, like the C2D iMacs, the new MBP's have another unadvertised bonus feature, some sort of draft-N wireless card. Presumably this is going to get "unlocked" in some OS X update down the road. Definitely a nice bonus for anyone concerned about that.

2) Many people were curious about the X1600 in this model, especially if it was as dramatically underclocked as the previous MBP's (which I recall were in the 300's for core clock and memory). He got an overclocking utility in order to find out what the default clockspeeds are, and reported this:

So, still underclocked, but it appears that it isn't nearly as underclocked as the previous MBP's. A nice bonus perhaps for anyone planning on doing a little gaming with this machine.

Note this is the 256meg X1600 in the higher-end 15" config; no reports yet on what the clockspeeds are of the 128meg X1600 in the base 15" MBP. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was similar.

 

Hmm...

Draft-N's personally I would want nothing to do with something thats draft, plus thats so sad, they got rid of the leading brand (Atheros) in the industry and switched to D.Link, in my eyes thats more of a downgrade than an upgrade.

To this day, I still haven't seen any wireless card that can keep up with Atheros, I still can't believe the range those things can get.

 

It actually is Atheros:

They downloaded the driver from dlink though - I am guessing that this particular DLink product is based on the Atheros one or something.

This is the driver they downloaded:

http://www.dlink.com/products/support.asp?pid=489&sec=0#drivers

I think it works because it is the same Atheros chipset, not because Apple used a DLink part specifically.

Either way, I would guess that this might be one of those things where the expectation is that it will be upgradeable if necessary to the final standard (I have to think Apple would not have put it in otherwise, if they couldn't be guaranteed it would be something they could modify later on if necessary).

Either way, it's a nice unadvertised bonus as I see it. Even in the worst case scenario that it wasn't somehow able to handle the final 802.11n stuff, it wouldn't be a negative compared to just shipping with 802.11g.

-Zadillo

 

Yeah, I want nothing to do wiht Pre-N stuff. I've heard nothing good about them unless you have matching pre-N gear. Unfortunantly, I'll be running on Cisco and Linksys wireless routers that are B/G.
I'd be pissed if this card had the same issue with most B/G routers that a lot of other pre-n cards have.

 

Well, again, at least on the OS X side, the pre-N functionality doesn't even seem to be available. It works just like the current Airport Express.

I would guess that on the OS X side, Apple will only "enable" the N functionality later on when it is finalized and when it becomes real. The main thing is just that it's interesting that it's a newer part.

So far I'm not hearing of any problems with the wireless cards; note that the Core 2 Duo iMacs have also been shipping with pre-N wireless cards (with the pre-N stuff not enabled on the OS X side), and I've heard no complaints about their wireless b/g performance.

So I'm not sure I see anything to worry about here.

For b/g stuff it seems like it should be fine, and the perk here is that there's the future possibility that this will be able to handle N stuff when it is ratified. I don't see how this is something to complain about.

-Zadillo

 

Has anyone see these connect at N speeds yet on the Windows side? I am just a little skeptical. I mean it could just be a bug in the way XP sees the drivers for these particular cards.

 

Great work.

Did he measured it while using a 3d application?

 

You'd have to ask him, he literally just got it (he is taking requests for people to run tests, etc.). I would venture to say he couldn't test it anyway, since I doubt he has any sort of pre-N router to connect at N speeds.

I don't think it's a bug though, it is definitely some sort of pre-N Atheros hardware. Windows itself didn't see the driver, and the wireless driver Apple includes with BootCamp 1.1.1 didn't work (since this is presumably new hardware and bootcamp hasn't been updated yet to support it). The DLink driver was downloaded and installed because it supports the same Atheros chipset apparently that is in the new C2D MBP's.

But yeah, actually testing any sort of speeds would require someone to get this and use it in Windows and use it with wireless.

I would guess that Apple is waiting to "unlock" the 802.11n stuff when it is finalized.... Apple has been pretty coy about wireless stuff lately; i.e. when they unveiled the iTV, they specifically only mentioned "802.11" wireless, not 802.11g or 802.11n specifically. Then I would expect a new Airport Extreme base station supporting the final wireless-N, and I would expect that Apple would be updating the Airport drivers on the OS X side to "unlock" the full featureset. Presumably the final version of BootCamp would also have the necessary drivers.

As it stands right now, if you get a C2D MacBook Pro and install Windows using BootCamp, the wireless apparently will not be recognized and will not work with the current drivers; it requires downloading drivers that support this new Atheros chipset (like the DLink drivers, for example).

 

It really wouldn't be that much of a surprise anyway, regarding the skepticism. We already know that the Core 2 Duo iMacs actually have pre-N wireless cards in them... and like the new MBP's, the pre-N stuff currently isn't available, and OS X just lets you use the 802.11b/g functionality.

So I would guess this is something that will wait for an Airport update, and accompanying hardware to use. But I think it is nice to know that option might be there, compared to just having 802.11g wireless cards in there.

 

No, he's just been taking requests, etc. right now. If you want to post and ask him to try something out though I'm sure he would. I personally asked him to go ahead and try running 3dMark05 and 06; would be curious to see how the scores compare with the higher clockspeeds. I would expect at least some slight increase (compared to the 310/278 clocks of the X1600 in the previous MBP's).

 

Well, thats cool that if it's completely shut off, it won't effect normal operations.
What gets me is... people are clamoring to get a DRAFT!!!
Whats the freaking use of getting pre-n if, when N comes out, the pre-n is not compatable.
It just seems like a big headache to me. I know it probably has to do with iTV, but hell, I'd rather jack both into a Ethernet port than have to deal with pre-n.

 

Well, I'm not sure Mac people specifically are clamoring for pre-N, nor is Apple making a big deal out of it - again, on the OS X side, it still shows up as an 802.11g card like the normal Airport Extreme.

The general idea though with some of the newer pre-N stuff though is that they might be flashable so that they will be able to support the final draft and any changes made. I would think that if Apple was including this feature secretly, they have some intention of being able to update it and unlock it later on. Not sure though.

I don't think Apple is going to expect any customers to have to deal with pre-N stuff; I think they will "unlock" it when the 802.11n spec is finalized, and update it if possible, but until that point, current C2D iMac and MBP owners will see it as a regular 802.11g Airport Extreme and that's it.

-Zadillo

 

Well part of the reason I am a little skeptical is the current state of Draft-n. Pre-N hardware was actually pretty good, but Draft-n was a big step backwards. The Draft-n is causing a lot of interference issues. As I understand it N is kind of up in the air at the moment. In a way, I hope Apple did not jump the gun on this one.

 

Well, if Apple did "jump" the gun, all it means is that the hidden N functionality of these cards are never going to get unlocked, and for current MBP and iMac owners, it will not be any different than if they had just gotten 802.11g cards (as advertised).

If it turns out that these cards won't be able to handle the final thing, then I imagine Apple would switch in future models. But I'm guessing they at least have some confidence in the particular parts they chose, or else they would have kept the same parts from the existing MBP's (and iMacs).

 

So is the iTV going to work with G?
I'm sure it'll be plenty fast enough, unless it's HD content. I don't know much about the iTV, but I didn't think it supported HD content.

**edit**
I don't know what the top avg. transfer speed will be for the final N, but I'm sure it won't be good enough for HD content anyway...

 

I think there actually were some mentions of HD content streaming, but I'm not sure.

Either way, the speculation is almost definitely that the iTV will use 802.11n. This is mainly based on Apple specifically saying just "802.11" wireless, and not including the g (when in the past they have used the full 802.11g when referring to that as a feature in other products.

As I understand it, actual speeds of 802.11n aren't necessarily supposed to be that much better, but it is more about better range, etc. and better support for more devices on the network at once.

-Zadillo

 

g is not fast enough to stream video well. n should be, but the only way to really ensure good transfer rates of video is gigabit ethernet for high quality stuff that you would actually want to watch on a good tv.

 

could that MBP's battery last for 4 hours? (with wireless card on)

 

I think 4 hours with wireless on would be a stretch, although perhaps if there wasn't constant data access and brightness was down, it might be possible. Apple apparently boosted the battery life estimates from "up to 4.5 hours" for the Core Duo MBP to "up to 5 hours" for the MBP, so people expect at least some battery life improvements. But 4 hours would probably be a bit much.

 

then how long does the MBP Core duo battery lasts then? ..

 

The MBP battery can last a bit over 4 hours wiht wireless on, low brightness and not much heavy use.
I consistently hit 4 hours if I'm taking notes and browsing web. Thats with 1-2 blocks on teh brightness level