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BARE FEATS LAB - real world Mac speed tests

Is The 2018 MacBook Pro Seriously Faster Than Older Models?

August 31st, 2018, by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist

Many owners of "previous" MacBook Pros are asking, should I upgrade to the 2018 MacBook Pro 15 inch? How much faster is it?

GRAPH LEGEND

2018 MBP 2.9GHz i9 560X = 15in MacBook Pro 2.9GHz 6-core i9, 16G RAM, Pro 560X GPU
2018 MBP 2.2GHz i7 555X = 15in MacBook Pro 2.2GHz 6-core i7, 16G RAM, Pro 555X GPU
2017 MBP 2.9GHz i7 560 = 15in MacBook Pro 2.9GHz 4-core i7, 16G RAM, Pro 560 GPU
2016 MBP 2.9GHz i7 460 = 15in MacBook Pro 2.9GHz 4-core i7, 16G RAM, Pro 460 GPU
2015 MBP 2.8GHz i7 370X = 15in MacBook Pro 2.8GHz 4-core i7, 16G RAM, M370X GPU

TOMB RAIDER

We used the "old" Tomb Raider since we had test results going back to 2015. (The HIGHER the Frames per Second, the FASTER the Mac.)

LUXMARK GPU

LuxMark is an OpenCL rendering benchmark. It has three scenes of increasing complexity. We ran the default LuxBall scene rendering one discrete GPU only. (The HIGHER the rating in KSamples per Second, the FASTER the Mac.)

HEAVEN BASIC

We chose the Basic preset for this OpenGL benchmark. (The HIGHER the Frames per Second, the FASTER the Mac.)

FURMARK OPENGL

Settings were Windowed with Anti-aliasing OFF. (The HIGHER the Frames per Second, the FASTER the Mac.)

DAVINCI RESOLVE

Looped playback with Noise Reduction rendering on-the-fly. (The HIGHER the Frames per Second, the FASTER the Mac.)

WHAT DID WE LEARN?

The 2018 MacBook Pro 15 inch is only incrementally faster than the three previous models of MacBook Pro 15 inch when it comes to graphics intensive apps.

If you want graphics intensive apps to speed up on any MacBook Pro, you should consider an eGPU Box with high-end GPU like the AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. Click HERE to see a 2018 MacBook Pro with an eGPU breathing down the neck of a iMac Pro.

The above graphs are running apps that lean hard on the GPU. What about pure CPU performance? Here is that answer:

As you can see, the 6-core CPU is of the 2018 MacBook Pros is a serious upgrade over the 4-core models of the past.

Of course, if you don't need portability, you might consider an iMac 5K or iMac Pro -- both of which provide CPU and GPU performance far superior to the MacBook Pros.

Comments? Suggestions? Feel free to email me,
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copyright 2018 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
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