The CultCast CultCast #347 - i9 MacBook Pro - a total ripoff?
Aug 3, 2018
01:00:41
This week: Is the i9 MacBook Pro a total ripoff? One YouTube reviewer says yes, and his tests are convincing. We’ll fill you in. Plus: the journey to a trillion! How did Apple become the most valuable company on earth? We discuss, and remember the company's troubled history. And stay tuned for the sad decline of MoviePass. Is the troubled movie service still worth it?
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Thanks to Kevin McLeodfor the music you hear on today’s episode.
On the show this week
i9 Macbook Pro - Apple's biggest RIPOFF! - erfon
- YouTuber Max Yuryev pitted the 2.2Ghz and 2.6Ghz i7 MacBook Pros against the the 2.9GHz i9, and the results aren’t great. These are the tests I’ve been waiting for.
- in his Cinebench test, he found the i9 beat the i7 by only 2 percent, averaging only 3.15Ghz, while both the 2.2Ghz and 2.6Ghz i7’s both averaged 3.05 Ghz.
- And in test after test, he showed that the i9 rarely performs better than the 2.6Ghz i7.
- Why? It seems like it comes down to heat. Even with the patch, the MBP struggles to keep the i9 cool enough to keep it in turbo mode, and sometimes it’s even not cool enough to run at base clock.
- For example: In his Red Raven 4.5K Raw rendering test, he noticed that the 2.2Ghz i7 ran about 500Mhz over base clock speed, the 2.7 ran about 200Mhz over base, and the 2.9 ran about 500Mhz below base clock.
- He noted that the GPU and CPU use the same cooler, so if you’re pushing the GPU, like many rendering apps do, the CPU won’t be cooled as well, so can end up throttling more than you’d want.
- So what does all these mean?
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- It doesn’t seem to make sense to pay extra for the i9. It matches or barely beats the 2.6Ghz in many tests, and sometimes can’t even beat the 2.2Ghz i7.
- A better value, and bigger a bottle neck in the 2018 MBP isn’t the CPU, it’s the GPU.
- The base MBP comes with a 555X Radeon GPU, whereas the premium 2.7Ghz i7 and 2.9Ghz i9 models come with a Radeon 560X, and that’s what made the biggest difference in his tests.
- My thoughts, go with the 2.7Ghz i7, the 560X GPU, and use the i9 money you save for extra SSD space.
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The biggest takeaways from Apple’s dominant Q3 earnings results
- Apple beat Wall Street’s expectations today w