Apple MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo Review Discussion

When Apple announced its transition to Intel, there was the expectation that hardware updates would become more frequent. So it came as a surprise when Apple was slow to move to the newer, more efficient Core 2 Duo processor. Eventually, not only did Apple switch to the 64-bit processor, they also added many features that were left out of the original MacBook Pro, namely a dual-layer DVD burner and FireWire 800. Following is a full review of the updated MacBook Pro.

Read the full content of this Article: Apple MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo Review

 

Great review, very thorough, and it's definitely nice to get a view on a newer production model.

For anyone curious about the big jump in 3DMark05 score, it's primarily because the X1600 in the C2D MBP's are not so drastically underclocked. The clockspeeds are now 418/445.

Interesting to hear about the screen as well. I briefly owned a C2D MBP, and loved it, but had to return it ultimately because of uneven screen illumination (or at least an issue where, when viewed straight on, the right side of the screen appeared darker when viewing a solid color across the entire screen. Actually I'm pretty sure it wasn't uneven illumination, because if I moved my head to look at the right side of the screen straight on, it was just as bright as the rest of the screen.... so something about the viewing angles or something made it appear darker from certain angles in certain portions of the screen).

Perhaps Apple has finally resolved this issue, which would be great, as it was my one major issue with the line.

At this point I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what's in store for the MBP line to coincide with Santa Rosa.

 

I'm going to buy one of these someday.

Awesome review! Nice pics.

 

Why are the posts I make ABOVE the review???

 

Something to do with DST maybe? The timestamp on the post for the review is 2:00, but our posts so far are before that (i.e. 1:52 right now).

 

No, it's Y2k finally hitting us...omg!

 

It really is a daylight savings issue, lol, I'm going to have to go and fix some code here, the review post got posted "in the future" because it was +5 from GMT and not +4 which is what we are now here in the U.S Sorry about this issue.

In regards to the review, that's great that you've finally landed a perfect working condition MB Pro Gerald! The bump up in graphics performance is really pretty huge and the improved cooling is a major plus.


Edit: Fixed the post ordering problem.

 

Great review, cashmonee! I am very tempted to get a MBP, just since it's such an aesthetic machine...and I can run Linux if I want (or Windows if I REALLY wanted to, which I don't). Firewire800 isn't so bad...but I hear the DVI out is really annoying since its a proprietary mini-DVI port that needs a dongle to convert it over to normal DVI (which many college campuses don't support anyway, so you have to get a mini-DVI-DVI-VGA converter!)

 

Only Macbooks have the mini-DVI port. MBP's have the normal DVI port, as you can see in the picture so conveniently included in cashmonee's review.

 

I'm pretty sure that sometime later this year after I have a new car, I'm going to get a Mac. I'm really waiting for Santa rosa to hit and see what that brings to the Apple Camp. The form factor of the Macs as well as the reliability of OS X are definitely enticing me... and anything that reduces my dependence on Windows is fantastic IMO.

 

Another great review, Gerald! Thank you.

 

good job, great review!
i agreed with most of the things that the reviewer said.

 

Hey nice review...I gotta say i love the design of macbooks.

andrew you might wanna change the table where it says the super pi scores for the 'hp dv6000t' the part where it says 't2400' to 't2600' ...

 

how did you get superpi running on a mac, can you give me a link where to download it?

 

i sure this might be quibbling, but how can the apple customer support be so great when you need to replace the unit 4 or 5 times over the course of the first few months.

 

Customer support is generally considered to be distinct from specific hardware issues, etc.

Customer support is basically the infrastructure set up to provide support for customers (i.e. the people you call or deal with when you do have problems, questions, etc.).

A company can have excellent customer support while also having hardware problems, which is what cashmonee has had to deal with (note that his experience has been especially bad.......... it's not like needing 4-5 replacements is the "norm", even for the early gen MBP's). As cashmonee also noted, it seems like things have settled down with the Core 2 Duo MBP's compared to the original ones. It does seem likely that there were a lot more kinks to work out with the first generation of MBP's, as those were the first with the actual switch to the Intel platform, which was a pretty major change for Apple.

 

i understand what customer support is; it certainly isn't just answering the phone in a certain number of rings, it is actually solving the issues. needing 4-5 replacements of anything in the first year generally means the item is a piece of crap...does apple get a pass because they have good pr?..

 

No, Apple doesn't get a pass; they've actually received a fair amount of criticism (check out the forums on macnn.com or macforums.com for the year 2006 and you'll see tons of complaints, etc.). But Apple also has generally worked pretty hard to resolve the issues for most people (and again, cashmonee's particular case is a particularly bad one; most people who did need replacements didn't need quite that many).

This is an area where customer service comes into play though; Apple has worked fairly hard to make sure that people who have had problems have been taken care of. And as cashmonee noted, most of the major problems occurred with the Core Duo MBP's; ever since the C2D MBP refresh, it seems that most of the major issues have been resolved, including the improved vent design on the new MBP's which took care of the heat issues (which was one of the complaints about the originals).

-Zadillo

 

Great review. Good lookin notebook too. Who's the ODM for this MBP?

 

I believe Apple has vertically integrated their notebook market. Others correct me if I am wrong here? But I think Apple produces everything, from chassis to OS.

 

No, production usually is done by other companies....Apple does generally design the internal and external components, etc. themselves though. I know they used Asus for quite a while, and I think they might still use them for both the MacBook and MacBook Pro. I know there had been some talk of them having Foxconn and maybe some other companies start manufacturing some of the newer machines as well (not existing models, but some of the rumored upcoming models).

 

You are absolutely right. I did research and its Asus. Of course, I should have expected...MacBooks are gorgeous looking, so it seems reasonable its Asus

 

Nice review, wish a list of specs were included for your machine though. With such a higher 3D mark I would assume it is the 256 and not the 128 version GPU but I dunno. In the 3D Mark test you specified a 2.0 Ghz C2D and I thought you said you had a 2.16 Ghz. Aside from these nitpics, much appreciated review.

 

From what I've seen from other users, the 3DMark05 scores between the 128MB X1600 and the 256MB X1600 are almost identical. It seems like at least as far as 3DMark is concerned, the differences in VRAM don't affect the scores much at all.

 

Actually Asus only makes the Macbooks. Quanta is the one that makes the Macbook Pros.

 

I noticed that too and it probably was a typo. But my MacBook Pro, 2.16 C2D 128mb x1600 with 2gb of ram scored 3,8xx in 3dMark05 also.

 

Yeah, has to be a typo - Apple only uses the 2.0GHz C2D in the regular MacBook; the MBP only uses a 2.16 or 2.33 GHz C2D.

 

I'll just copy over a post I made in the graphics card section with my scores:

Since I have the 128MB X1600 MBP, I'll tell you my 3DMark scores. These are using the Omega 7.1 drivers since by default Boot Camp comes with some old beta ATI driver from before March 2006, which is barely optimized for 3DMark06. These are my best runs since they seem to have a bit of variation. But, I've done no optimization beyond using Omega drivers and have my antivirus, firewall, etc. all left running.

3DMark03 (default 1024x768): 7018
3DMark05 (default 1024x768): 3928
3DMark06 ("official" 1440x900): 1585
3DMark06 ("common" 1280x800): 1878

PCMark05: 4305

Now a note about 3DMark06. The official resolution is supposed to be 1280x1024. However, that is not a common resolution for most notebooks so the benchmark usually defaults so keeping 1280 horizontal pixels but varies the vertical pixels to fit the screen. Therefore, I've provided scores at 1440x900, which if you multiply it out is basically comparable to the number of pixels at 1280x1024. So 1585 in 3DMark06 is comparable to desktop setups and laptops with native resolutions of 1680x1050 and up.

Laptops that have a 1440x900 native resolution or lower usually default to 1280x800 so I've provided my 1878 score at that resolution. This score is probably applicable to the majority of laptops out there since scores for say that A8Js would likely be at this resolution unless the user deliberately changed it. The W3J seems to be one of the rare notebooks that use a 1280x768 resolution so it's score would be artificially inflated slightly above this.

BTW, the reason why 128MB and 256MB X1600s score so similar in 3DMark05 is because 3DMark05 was only designed to use 128MB of VRAM so any more has little benefit. 3DMark06 begins to use more than 128MB although I don't think it uses the full 256MB in all tests so a 128MB X1600 would score lower, but Hypermemory probably helps a bit.

 

No its because the x1600 doesnt take advanatge of 256MB of RAM for performance. Its kinda slow you know. GPU makers know people buy cards based on the RAM

 

I'm not too sure about that. While it's true that mid-range GPUs can't take advantage of 512MB of RAM which nVidia likes to put on the Go 7600 and Go 7700, mid-range graphics cards should be able to benefit from more than 128MB of RAM. 128MB is sufficient for a resolution of 1024x768 and 1280x800, but any higher and 256MB of RAM is definitely needed. Admittedly the X1600 would have difficulty running at 1280x1024 or 1440x900 unless it's clocked high, but the X1600 can handle lower resolutions along with low AA and AF settings. The ATI's AA and AF implementation has always been quite efficient so having them activated at low doesn't put much stress on processing power and the 256-bit ring-bus memory controller should be effective in providing sufficient bandwidth. Using AA and AF though would benefit from more than 128MB of RAM to store additional and larger textures.

 

Very nice review, Cashmonee.

While I'll agree with you on the MBP needing more USB ports, I'd rather it wasn't at the expense of the Firewire 800 port. One of the core markets for the the MBP is video production, and the Core Duo model was panned for dropping the 800 port... I have a very nice RAID0 enclosure sitting next to my machine connected via Firewire 800.

I'm not too sure on the quoted SuperPI score for the HP dv6000t either... the score is way too high even for a 2.16 GHz Core Duo. Sub 1 minute scores are usually the realm of T7 series Core 2 Duos with their 4 MB L2 cache.

Still, excellent work and I'm glad you've finally found a MBP that's a keeper.

 

actually, if i remember correctly, asus only makes the macbooks. i think the macbook pros are made by quanta.

 

awesome...damn I was going to do one but oh well.

 

Install Bootcamp, then dual boot into Windows XP/Vista?

 

Ya SuperPi was run in Boot Camp, as was 3DMark05. And the model I have is a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, there is no 2.0 Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro.

As for the customer service, they did solve my issue nearly every time. You cannot blame customer service for a faulty unit if they replace it with another unit that also turns out to be faulty. That problem lies with quality control, which Apple had some serious issues with. I also question the technicians they had working on one of previous notebooks since I sent it in twice and both times it came back with a new problem. All in all, I think they have ironed everything out with the newer versions, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

I already said that. (read post #25)

 

About the lack of sufficient USB ports, well....

How about placing an internal usb replicator and drilling the case to make a path for the new USB ports

he he I bet no one would do that to their MBP...

I did it on my IBM 390E which is 100$ worth, and they work 100%, and esthetically it was well done 100%

 

I wouldn't lose firewire 800 either. I want one for fast external hard drive without bottlenecking it's performance.

Does the firewire 800 port work under windows? No driver issue?

 

I agree. My T2600 only scores about 1:12 in SuperPi, which is normal. I think this score must come from a 2.16 Core 2 Duo dv6000t. That would fall in line with the other scores, including the 2.16 MBP featured in this review.

 

The MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo already comes with 3 USB ports. Why would someone need more? If abosolutely necessary then it would be possible to expand the number of ports using a USB splitter device. Maybe http://www.bookendzdocks.com/ will supply such a feature when they release their next dock for the MacBook Pro. If Apple does later release a version with an extra USB port then I also agree that I don't want them to add the extra port at the sacrifice of the Firewire ports.

 

Apple just needs one more upgrade. Before I pay $1957 (with the education discount) for a 15.4" laptop, I want a WSXGA+ screen. I do not want a 15.4" laptops with a 1440x900 resolution. It should be completely optional for those who want it. If they really wanted to impress me, Dell has a 15.4" laptop with a WUXGA (1920x1200) resolution.

 

We'll have to wait and see, but there is speculation that the upcoming MBP refresh will have higher res screens, which should work well in conjunction with the resolution independence functionality of Mac OS X 10.5.

 

It's only the 17" model that has 3 USB ports. The 15" model only has 2.

It's more just a matter of convenience really. If someone had an external mouse and a USB flash drive, that would already take up the two available slots on a 15" MBP. if that person then also had, say, a USB wireless modem, or hook up a USB hard drive, or wanted to hook up a USB printer, or a USB headset, they'd be out of ports.

Personally it doesn't affect me, but I can see how it might affect someone else.

 

It might come too late for me. I need my laptop by July.

 

Hopefully it should be out before then....... the Santa Rosa platform is due at the end of May, and there's a lot of expectation that the MacBook Pro updates could be released in June to coincide with the release of Mac OS X 10.5. July would seemingly be a later possible date for the refresh (i.e. even if Apple takes an extra long amount of time to get them out, they would still seemingly be available by July).

 

like TedJ said, there is absolutely no way whatsoever that Apple will get rid of the FW800 port. One of the largest markets for these computers is definitely the video production market.

being able to connect a FW800 drive or RAID setup via FW800 is absolutely essential when capturing a lot of footage directly on a laptop, as most laptops do not have enough storage space to keep all that footage, especially when dealing with HD etc.

for anyone doing some serious HD video editing, setting up a FW800 scratch disk is almost completely necessary, DVCPRO HD footage is around 1gb/minute i believe, so you get the idea.

and since HDD's are accessed like crazy with video production, it is good to protect your system drive a little bit by keeping all of your media on other drives, not to mention Final Cut studio alone can fill up half of a HDD with all of its content.

I need to hurry up an get a 17" MBP! no reviews of the 17" models yet, I have used quite a few different ones, I should have done a review of one when I had the chance

 

I currently have a 4-yr old T41 laptop. I typically run the T41 8-10 hours/day. In general, the T41 is ROCK SOLID

I am considering switching to MBP. However, based on the MBP reviews that I read, it appears that the 1st generation of MBP hardware is NOT rock-solid. Should this be a concern? Since I’m on the road 80 % of the time, I really need a reliable laptop

Should I purchase the 3-yr Apple Service agreement?

 

The current MacBook Pro is now in its third generation (first generation would be the original Core Duo MBP's released last year, 2nd gen would be the improved Core 2 Duo models, and the 3rd generation would be the current models updated with Santa Rosa, new GPUs and the new LED-backlit screens).

It seems like for the most part, most of the major issues with the MBP have been resolved. And for those who do still get one with problems, Apple still seems to have been very good about taking care of them.

The AppleCare warranty isn't a bad idea - note that you can purchase it anytime within the first year of ownership (i.e. you don't need to buy it when you buy the laptop).

Whether the MBP is right for you depends on your needs; OS X is of course a completely different OS, so if you are very comfortable with Windows and Windows apps, that is something to consider.

You might want to think about the ThinkPad T61 as well, which seems to be getting very good reviews.

Also, the ThinkPads have more business-oriented warranties which might be important to you.

-Zadillo

 

I currently have a 4-yr old T41 laptop. I typically run the T41 8-10 hours/day. In general, the T41 is ROCK SOLID

I am considering switching to MBP. However, based on the MBP reviews that I read, it appears that the 1st generation of MBP hardware is NOT rock-solid. Should this be a concern? Since I’m on the road 80 % of the time, I really need a reliable laptop

I'd appreciate your feedback on 3 questions:

Q1: Is the new MBP a solid laptop?

Q2: Should I purchase the 3-yr Apple Service agreement?

Q3: Or would I better off with a new T61?

 

As I mentioned, I'm very happy with my current T41 laptop. However, my main concern about upgrading to a new T61 is -- Now that Lenovo owns the line of Thinkpads, will the T61 still be as good as before?

I heard that Lenovo's objective in the future is to lower the price of future Thinkpads to appeal to the mass market. To achieve low costs, Lenovo will tend to use cheaper, lower-quality components.

Is there any truth to this rumor?