FS Bus Fuss: Montevina and Santa Rosa

danbroad

danbroad

danbroad

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Hi there. Rather than all the speculation and the usual questions regarding the 'Now or later?' purchase of MacBook Pro's, here's a question not asked on the usual suspect forums, and one which OCUK seems most likely to answer....

What's the 'real world' performance gains to be found using a 1066Mhz FSB over an 800Mhz FSB [i.e Montevina over Santa Rosa], specifically for MBP BootCamp gaming? And might those performance gains be effectively matched in the 'real world' by simply upping the system RAM amount on Santa Rosa, given the Nvidia 8600M graphics card already carries DDR3?

This is what I know so far...

OK, so the present lineup of Macbook Pro's use the 45nm Penryn Chips, but on the Santa Rosa 800Mhz FSB platform. The Intel Roadmap shows a near-future increase over to the 1066MHz FSB of Montevina. The Montevina platform also opens up the use of DDR3 and Robson 2.0 memory usage on the motherboard.
However, it seems that the increased graphics capability of Montevina's bus speeds are only of benefit to integrated graphics, and given that the MBP's use DDR3-enabled graphics cards anyway, there might not be much difference to dedicated 3d-accelerated games.

I know that there's quad, octo- etc cores and the Moorfield platforms far off, but my question isn't a "should I wait" type. I'm merely interested to see if the Montevina platform would allow, say, COD4 or Crysis to be ramped up a settings-notch in BootCamp.

Anyone know more than this? Always, knowledgable help seems to come in spades on this forum...
 
Real World performance you're not going to see a difference. Maybe if you used benchmarking software. Maybe. Certainly nothing perceivable by a human.

Upping systems RAM will be more effective than a small increase in bus speed. Even relatively large increases in bus frequency have very little effect, whereas more RAM decreases the chance of thrashing the hard drive which is significantly slower than other system components. Three orders of magnitude slower FYI.
 
As much as I thought... seems an awful many people are waiting for Montevina, feverishly expecting a minor miracle, when in fact the GFX architecture means the present [and likely cheaper] MBP's are just as capable as a gaming platform.

I guess all sensible advice would be on a MBP, with the 6MB L2 chip cache - so make it the 2.5Ghz, coupled to the 512MB 8600M, and then a user upgrade to 4Gb ram from OCUK...
 
You'll find, too, that caches on Intel chips are freakishly large in the grand scheme of things because they rely on the FSB architecture, which can't feed the CPU engine enough data. When Nehalem comes out cache sizes will probably stabilize or even reduce in size which is going to confuse a lot of people.
 
theheyes said:
You'll find, too, that caches on Intel chips are freakishly large in the grand scheme of things because they rely on the FSB architecture, which can't feed the CPU engine enough data. When Nehalem comes out cache sizes will probably stabilize or even reduce in size which is going to confuse a lot of people.
Click to expand...

HP's PA-RISC 8900 has a 64MB cache but also shares that same FSB architecture.

AMD's architecture also fails from a different perspective - you need OS and runtime support for NUMA to get the best out of it. a lot of compilers aren't written to perform the right data analysis to do this automatically.

If you had written a specific application that was super efficient at using the bus for 24/7 processing then you'd notice the difference however with the normal usage for the MBP it may appear a little snappier but that's about it.
 
Look at the iMac Benchmarks - they went 1066Mhz in last weeks refresh. There's something like a 2% increase in CPU intensive scores, so 99% of people would never notice any difference.

You'd get more benefit with a faster HDD / better graphics chip / more RAM.

There was the same feverish expectation last year with the Santa Rosa update. Apple practise continual improvement so you've got to jump on the bandwagon at some point. I'm using a 2 year old Core Duo MBP and it does everything I need perfectly well.
 
danbroad I'm guessing your looking to buy a MBP. The rumours all seem to suggest that it will receive a face lift too. If you're not bothered about the way the laptop looks (I don't see what's wrong with the current version) then you could buy now.

I'm personally waiting a month but the main reason for that is to distinguish whether or not this is an impulse buy for me :p
 
Yes, an MBP it is, but I've already made up my mind to buy in the next few weeks; I suppose that the MBP update is still some 6 months away, given that the keynote's not until June. I actually think the present 'brushed steel' design is really understated and businesslike, so have no need to wait for a new case... If I wanted great design above all else, I'd get an Air...

No, my question was a genuine interest in how much something like the moderate FSB speed increase can improve user-genuine performance given all else remaining as is. There are other forums [no prizes for the names] that have ten-page threads about Montevina as though it represents the second coming...

These threads usually suggest that any Santa Rosa MBP owner will hang their head in shame the second 'Centrino 2' is the big thing. They end with a wry comment about waiting for Nehalem and Quad core....

As usual, OCUK seems to come up with sensible stuff. I doubt that any Santa Rosa/Penryn MBP couldn't handle the next 5 years of computing pretty well considering, certainly with respect to gaming and audio production, which will be the 'play' in my 'work and play'!
 
danbroad said:
These threads usually suggest that any Santa Rosa MBP owner will hang their head in shame the second 'Centrino 2' is the big thing. They end with a wry comment about waiting for Nehalem and Quad core....
Click to expand...

I waited for Santa Rosa for dual channel fully addressable 4GB and 256MB vram.. and the LED backlight that extended the battery life considerably but to be honest my MBP isn't for gaming. I have an old X2 4400, 2GB, 36GB raptor and X1950XTX for that which is far quicker.
 
danbroad said:
Yes, an MBP it is, but I've already made up my mind to buy in the next few weeks; I suppose that the MBP update is still some 6 months away, given that the keynote's not until June. I actually think the present 'brushed steel' design is really understated and businesslike, so have no need to wait for a new case... If I wanted great design above all else, I'd get an Air...
Click to expand...

Will it really be that long if it's announced in June? I was under the impression that it would be for sale June/July. In theory I could wait until September but I know the urge to spend will get the better of me.
 
Thanks for all the advice. I know that any laptop is never going to give the high-end gaming experience that a good desktop system could, but as long as it'll boot XP and play HL2 episode 3 at a fair resolution, then I'll not mind at all.

I admire the little touches, like the LED screen, the understated design, the integration of the OS and the Apple brand. I miss my iMac, and really only wanted for a PC because of HL2 episode 1/2, TBH! Now my study/bedroom has to become a nursery, it's time to go mobile....

BTW, are there any 9000-series mobile GFX cards in the near pipeline? Or is the 8600 about 'where it's at' right now?
 
The current iMac range isnt Montevina even though its at 1066, its still running Santa Rosa but with higher clock frequency. A kind of inbetween variation while Intel release Montevina.

I have the 800mhz iMac when it changed to alumi, and I bet I wouldn't notice a difference per say.

Probably be all in our heads unless we saw benchmarks!
 
2% quicker you say ? So the 10 second CPU limited task I have to do will only take 9.8 seconds. Hardly anything worth getting excited over now is it and certainly not anything you'll notice in day to day usage. If that's your only concern then why wait ?
 
What would the performance increase in the graphics for the macbook. The Montevina has the GMA X4500 as opposed to the GMA X3100. Will there be much of a difference here? The only difference I've come across is the increase of shaders (8 to 10)?
 
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