Apple's MacBook Pro: Using it as a Mac and a PC
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 13, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
The Most Powerful Apple Notebook Ever
The heart and soul of the MacBook Pro is the Intel Core Duo processor, which is available in 1.83GHz, 2.0GHz and 2.16GHz flavors in the notebook. Although it is the same Core Duo processor used in PC notebooks, Apple has refrained from using Intel's model number system to avoid confusion within their user base. Later this year Intel will introduce a 2.33GHz Core Duo processor, which will most likely replace or augment the 2.16GHz part at the high end of Apple's offerings. Of course by the end of this year, Intel will be shipping Merom, the mobile version of Conroe, and it is backwards compatible with currently shipping Core Duo platforms. While the currently shipping MacBook Pros should be compatible with future Merom chips, the Core Duo processor is actually soldered onto the motherboard and is socketless; that means there's no removing, replacing or upgrading your CPU.
I am disappointed to say that battery life really hasn't been improved over my old PowerBook G4. General usage still leaves me with less than 3 hours of battery life, which is disappointing since Core Duo is supposed to be the CPU to bring us to the 5 hour marker.
The MacBook Pro features Intel's 945 Express chipset, but opts for a faster external graphics solution rather than rely on Intel's integrated graphics. Being based on the 945 of course means that it features a dual channel DDR2-667 memory controller, but in order to take advantage of that you have to populate both SO-DIMM slots on the MacBook Pro. There is no performance benefit however to enabling dual channel mode; remember that the Core Duo only features a 64-bit wide 667MHz FSB, and without integrated graphics a single 64-bit DDR2-667 channel can offer enough bandwidth to saturate that bus. If the future MacBooks (non-pro) do ship with integrated graphics, you may want to install memory in pairs as dual channel will matter there.
To confirm that dual channel does nothing I ran a couple of tests with a single 1GB DDR2-667 SO-DIMM vs. 2 x 512MB DDR2-667 SO-DIMMs:
The results are what they should be: there's no benefit to enabling dual channel mode on the MacBook Pros.
A very unfortunate limitation of the MacBook Pro is its 2GB memory size, meaning that at best you can install two 1GB DDR2-667 SO-DIMMs in this system and that's all. It's unfortunate because OS X does an extremely good job of taking advantage of additional memory. When I started using OS X I initially hated the idea that closing all the windows of an application wouldn't actually close the application itself. However the more I used OS X, the more I realized that I didn't want to close the applications I used a lot; I wanted their windows out of the way but I wanted the ability to switch to them without waiting on the hard drive to load up that program again.
Leaving just about every application I use open all the time and not having to worry about my system getting slow over time was a bit of a new experience for me, but it was a welcome one. However, getting addicted to leaving everything open all of the time also made me want and appreciate what the PC user in me would consider to be a ridiculous amount of memory. While anything above 2GB would generally go unused on my PC, I've found that on my desktop Mac around 4GB ends up being the sweet spot. Needless to say, a 2GB memory limitation on the MacBook Pro is a bit of a disappointment. Admittedly, I haven't actually tried sticking 4GB in there to see if it is an actual limitation or a guideline to avoid installing memory modules that are physically too big for the unit.
As always, if you want more memory your best bet is to not order it from Apple. The 1.83GHz MacBook Pro comes with 512MB of DDR2-667 standard, and to upgrade it to 1GB Apple asks for an additional $100. If you want a single 1GB DIMM instead, you pay Apple $200. The most ridiculous upgrade price is the $500 cost for 2 x 1GB modules. The same applies to the 2.0GHz MacBook Pro; stock it ships with 1GB of memory, but adding a second 1GB stick tacks on an additional $300 to the cost of the notebook.
We went to Crucial and found MacBook Pro compatible memory for close to half the cost of Apple's upgrades. A 512MB stick will run you $77 at Crucial, but the real steal (compared to Apple's pricing) is a 1GB stick that will cost $162. For the cost of a 1GB upgrade to the MacBook Pro 2.0GHz you can almost get a pair of 1GB sticks from Crucial. The choice is pretty simple.
Of course we went the Crucial route and the memory worked perfectly.
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nels0360 - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
The hardware issue mentioned have been or are being fixed.Apple has release silent revisions of the MacBook Pro. It is well documented on other sites such as Macrumors.com
In fact, I believe Apple will give you a new revision if you complain about one of these problems.
plinden - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
I know they are different benchmarks, but over at http://www.macworld.com/2006/04/firstlooks/xpbench...">MacWorld, they found that the MacBook Pro was faster at running Windows than three Windows-only PCs.I'm not going to editorialize here, just bringing this to your attention.
ss284 - Friday, April 14, 2006 - link
Which pretty much drops macworld's benchmark credibility to zero. Actually, their credibility was already really low so its no big deal.ss284 - Friday, April 14, 2006 - link
Unless the benchmark was how fast it could burn a hole in your pants and sterilize your important parts.jbb132 - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Sadly, even the most recent MacBook Pro's continue to suffer from the hardware problems you noticed. I've now had two units with the "whine," particularly when the laptop is running on battery power. The only way to stop it is to turn photobooth on and leave it on. Various hacks (magicnoisekiller in particular) help but really...Pirks - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Hey Anand!Thanks for an interesting review! Now, what was the video source codec and resolution in your H.264 encoding test? I've got a Mac zealot here saying he's got only 2 frames per second in similar H.264 encoding task. He also has Mac OS X 10.4.6 and Quicktime Pro 7.0.4. I wonder is you used source with resolution like 160 by 120 for that test??
To other readers: take with a grain of salt Anand's view on running multiple apps simultaneously in XP. He says something like "uh oh we can't run multiple apps all the time on win coz win can't manage its RAM blah blah", but in fact if you disable XP swap AND if you stick 2 or 3 gigs or RAM in your mobo you'll get my experience of running dozens of apps open at the same time and even some games while at it (DOOM 3 + Matlab + Maya 7 + other little apps like VDub open at the same time is a no brainer on my XP). Stick 4 gigs and open even more, without loss of performance. In fact if you wanna get Mac OS X experience, just stuff your mobo with RAM and turn off swap, that's it, no need to spend $$$ on Mac to get this "experience" :-))
One last minor correction - Anand tells you "anything more than 2GB of RAM on your PC is useless" but he does not know about /3GB switch (google up "/3GB switch") which again allowed me to run Matlab with THREE gigs or RAM consumed, not two.
Just my 2 cents to debunk some myths that Mac zealots love to spread ;) Don't get caught in that stuff, read docs/mans and be smart.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 14, 2006 - link
The source for my H.264 test was the Hoodwinked trailer from Apple's Quicktime trailers site.My comments about memory usage and Windows XP have nothing to do with the /3GB switch. The point I was trying to make is that Windows XP does not do a good job of caching to reduce disk accesses. Microsoft itself has admitted that there's lots of room for improvement, which is why you hear about all of the caching improvements that will be introduced in Vista.
Take care,
Anand
kleinwl - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
BTW: if you don't think that anandtech knows about the /3GB switch you certainly haven't been here very long.Pirks - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Did Anand ever mention this switch in any of his reviews? Or anyone else besides him from AT staff? I've never seen it before. How about you? Would you provide me with a link or some other proof? I'd love to be corrected here, since AT guys should know about it, and I wish I were wrong stating the opposite, especially about Anand himself.As for the stability - I run Matlab with 3GB consumed routinely, it also loads some Maya 7 stuff internally via my own DLL and there's another Maya 7 hanging around to check results from Matlab quickly, and I never saw a slightest glitch. Of course YMMV but I heard too much "omg windoze is 2GB limited and mac is TrUe 64-bit WoNdEr" and I've got some experience with Matlab on both Mac OS X (no 64-bit matlab there) and WinXP (now this is true 64-bit product) to let Anand repeat that kind of sh.t. Mac guys are ok to say that, they live like this, so no big deal but not Anand please :-) So let's just say "please Anand be a bit more correct in some places and don't sound like a dumb Mac user", saying windows can't properly run a lot of apps at once and stuff like that.
Speaking of Vista I've read somewhere on MSDN that a lot of XP 64 code is in there so it _should_ be as robust as XP 64 with regard to RAM handling. I'm sure after SP1 or SP2 it'll be absolutely rock solid :-)
kleinwl - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
I've used the /3GB switch as well... however it can (and does) degrade the stability of your system (running fluent (a CFD program) on XP SP2). I wouldn't run around recommending the normal use of the /3GB switch. Some programs don't even support it (ie. Catia V15). Ultimately we upgraded to XP x64 (which came with it's own headachs).2.5GB seems to be the most that XP SP2 can really handle well.. everything else is a waste. OS X just does a better job handing large amounts of ram and not "losing" it with time.
I am interested is seeing how VISTA will perform and if will be as good as OSX or XP x64 with ram... or something quite better (or worse).