Looking forward to buying a Haswell Macbook Pro with oodles and oodles of battery life, all day usability? Perhaps you will get your wish, but it may come at the expense of discrete graphics, though that isn’t entirely clear at this point.
MacRumors is reporting that Intel is building special high-efficiency versions of its Haswell processors and integrated graphics for use in upcoming MacBook Pro. Specifically, as revealed by recently uncovered and 13 and 15 -inch MBP benchmarks, Apple has been testing Core i7-4950HQ and Iris Pro 5200 chips, with the latter providing up to 2.5X the performance of Intel’s well-regarded HD 4000 integrated graphics which are found in current MBP models.
Though Iris 5200 is a significant step ahead, as AnandTech shows, Intel still can’t seriously challenge discrete graphics solutions — it’s not even close.
That said, some feel that with Iris 5200 Apple will feel comfortable forgoing discrete graphics and go exclusively with Intel’s best integrated solution in order to boost battery life, and perhaps even make the Haswell MacBook Pros even thinner/lighter.
Of course, we won’t know for sure, one way or the other, until Tim Cook, Phil Schiller et al unveil them at a media event, which is expected sometime in September.
Would you trade high-end graphics performance for all-day battery?
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