Apple released its new 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro with Haswell processors, Force Touch trackpads, and new PCIe-based flash storage both in 2.2 GHz and 2.5 GHz configuration. When the read/write speed of the 2015 Haswell MacBook Pro was tested, it performed and impressive 2 GB/s throughput speed, meaning it can transfer 2,502 MP3 songs in just 14 seconds.
When Apple finally released its new 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, many were surprised upon knowing that it didn't come out with the expected Broadwell processors. The company instead included the Haswell quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU, Force Touch trackpad, 2.2 GHz and 2.5 GHz configurations, 16 GB memory, and Intel Iris Pro Graphics cards. The higher-end 2.5 GHz version would have expected boosts in flash storage and memory.
While many are expecting a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro with Broadwell processors, it was said that Apple may opt to skip them because of its delay and use Skylake chipsets for the next MacBook Pro versions, expected to be released late 2015 at the earliest.
The Force Touch trackpad and the new PCIe-based flash storage are major improvements of the new 15-inch MacBook Pro. Apple claimed that the new PCIe-based flash storage is 2.5 times faster than the previous MacBook Pro versions, which is said to have a throughput speed of up to 2 GB/s. Apple assures that even though the laptop doesn't have Broadwell processors, it could still offer faster performance.
This claim was put under the test by the French site MacGeneration. The benchmarking site tried out the entry-level 2.2 GHz 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, and it demonstrated an "impressive read/write speeds," having its highest with 2 GB/s in QuickBench 4.0.
The benchmark showed that the new 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro can only take 14 seconds to transfer an 8.76 GB file to the machine. It is almost 3x faster than the slower Retina MacBook that needs 32 seconds to transfer the same file size. To make it more clear, the average size of an MP3 file is 3.5 MB. With the new MacBook Pro, it can transfer 2,502 MP3 songs in just 14 seconds. Trying it with small files, the speed could exceed a gigabyte per second.
If the Broadwell or Skylake is available already, the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro could transfer files much faster than it can right now. But because the chips are not yet available, Apple opted to have Haswell processors. Nevertheless, this showed that the upcoming 15-inch Skylake Retina MacBook Pro is very promising.
Skylake chips are expected to be released late 2015.
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