Apple's 15-inch Core i5 MacBook Pro: The One to Get?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 14, 2010 10:38 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- MacBook Pro
- Arrandale
- Core i5
- Laptops
No AES-NI Support in OS X?
One of the features of Arrandale (and all other Westmere derived architectures) is support for AES-NI. The six instructions that fall under the AES-NI umbrella can accelerate encryption and decryption operations.
Microsoft's full disk encryption feature in Windows 7, BitLocker, is AES-NI accelerated. Simply upgrading to a supported Core i5 or i7 processor gives you better disk performance with BitLocker turned on.
While I'm still waiting for Apple to get back to me on a number of questions, I decided to see if FileVault, OS X's encryption system was AES-NI accelerated as well.
I ran XBench's disk tests on an encrypted home directory and then again on a completely unencrypted portion of the drive. If Apple takes advantage of the Core i5's AES-NI I should see a smaller drop in performance on the new MacBook Pro compared to the old one:
| FileVault Disk Performance Comparison | ||||||
| Sequential Read (256KB) | Sequential Write (256KB) | Random Read (4KB) | Random Write (4KB) | |||
| Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro - FV Off | 172.5 MB/s | 127.1 MB/s | 10.9 MB/s | 134.1 MB/s | ||
| Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro - FV On | 79.5 MB/s | 61.9 MB/s | 6.8 MB/s | 67.8 MB/s | ||
| Core i5 MacBook Pro - FV Off | 175.1 MB/s | 160.0 MB/s | 21.5 MB/s | 112.7 MB/s | ||
| Core i5 MacBook Pro - FV On | 80.5 MB/s | 66.6 MB/s | 13.2 MB/s | 61.0 MB/s | ||
And it looks like we have no AES-NI support in FileVault at least. It's not terribly surprising. Apple usually takes a while to implement new features enabled by hardware changes. Remember how long it took Apple to get GPU accelerated video decoding?
These numbers do tell us something else entirely though: the new MacBook Pro appears to offer better SATA performance.
Not too long ago I published a quick look at 6Gbps SATA controller performance and concluded, among other things, that Intel's SATA controllers are quite good. The numbers above support that theory as disk performance has gone up considerably compared to last year's NVIDIA based MacBook Pro. While random write speed dropped a bit, random read and sequential write performance jumped up significantly.
This is quite noticeable with a SSD but less of a problem with a hard drive. Needless to say Apple's return to Intel is a good thing, especially because we didn't have to give up NVIDIA's graphics.
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michal1980 - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
thats what this place feels like now. I geuss the website redesign was timed to that reflect change.Cardio - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Apples guarantees "Up To" 1,000 battery recharges is complete idiot speek. 7 recharges would comply with that guarantee. That is just the same as saying "not more than". Apple you always double-talk or just outright lie.solipsism - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Wow! What an asshat comment. Apple and Sony are the only two PC vendors that I know of that report accurate battery specs."The built-in battery in the new 13-, 15-, and 17-inch MacBook Pro is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at up to 1000 full charge and discharge cycles."
• http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
I just returned a 2.5 year old battery to Apple a couple months ago because it wasn't holding a charge and only a few hundred cycles on it. It wasn't under any warranty and they gave me a new one right then and there for free.
omgrtm - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Also, as a company you have to show proof (based on statistical analysis) for all your advertising claims. Not entirely sure about numbers, but something like 9 in 10 at least should meet the stated (would be 1000 recharges in this case), for you to be able to use 'up to'. You'd be incredibly unlucky to get 7 in reality.sebmel - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Apple changed my last battery, too... 2.5 years old... it got the Sony problem... swelled up.The internal regulations appeared to be change if less than 300 cycles.
Mine was 320 or so and they changed it anyway.
Apple seem pretty good at offering a new battery that fails to meet their advertised expectation so I'm guessing they are going to honour these ones up to 1000 cycles.
sebmel - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Error, apologies:Apple seem pretty good at offering a new battery WHEN ONE fails to meet their advertised expectation so I'm guessing they are going to honour these ones up to 1000 cycles.
tynopik - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
"Less than 20 fps under World of Warcraft at 800 x 600"Actually, it's 52.3
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
haha, wow, fixed :)Take care,
Anand
surgex - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Can you tell us how this will work, or IF it will work at all?surgex - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Sorry, I see it now.."Despite using a NVIDIA GPU, there's no support for Optimus under Windows 7 on the new MacBook Pro. The GeForce GT 330M is always in use there regardless of whether you use an Optimus enabled driver or the 196.21 driver that comes with the MacBook Pro."
That is really BS if you ask me, but who would expect anything less from Apple...
Do you forsee any way of a third-party enabling this functionality in the future though, or no?