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That's useful AFTER you bought the machine.
What's useful BEFORE you buy the machine? Simple: CPUBoss and GPUBoss.
http://cpuboss.com/compare-cpu...
http://gpuboss.com/compare-gpu...

THIS is the laptop.

That's definitely looking like a beast, what little I can make out of the system. Core i7 (quad I'm sure) and 970M graphics? What's interesting to me is that CPU wise, the latest 2016 MBP CPU is a neck and neck comparison, but the GPUs obviously are a clear win for the 970M, and also likely a huge battery eater. What's interesting is that laptop makes no mention of the integrated Iris graphics. Are non mac laptops still bound by discrete graphics, or have they also included auto-switching to the integrated Iris graphics to save power when convenient? Also, that laptop states it comes with dual spinning drives for the price I saw, which wasn't surprisingly high, but in line with what I expected. With bigger M.2 drive (only 1 supported?) and 1 or 2 SSDs, you can probably create a better battery life situation if you haven't already, if that's important to you.

As for heat and battery life, I dunno, both my 2011 17" and my 2014 15" retina run hot and don't last long; the 2011 claims 81% battery capacity still and it does seem to last about as long as the 2014. My wife's 2013 13" does the same, but it also has a bad RAM slot (common on that model) and a slew of other issues, so I attribute all of its problems to the faulty design and manufacturing.

A quick note - as these are older macs, and likely have been upgraded OS wise, you might wish to inspect your running processes. I had a mini just recently that shutdown due to heat sporadically. I traced it down to the upgrade process not having completed successfully due to XCode requiring registration agreement, or something like that. Once fixed, it ran cool as a cucumber again. And yes, there are Apple products with issues, like any other. The 3 year AC is vital on laptops, and I've used it for 3 of 4 of my laptops. The current 2014 is the only one that hasn't had it used. For any of your issues, I'd have immediately taken it to the apple store, where so far they've replaced 2 minis, 2 batteries, and 1 logic board, no questions asked. So yes, I too have my set of failed hardware. :) My list of other systems is far longer, and usually ends with: junked after 'n' months as unfixable.

Now that I've gotten that rant off my chest: thank you for not contributing to that.

Don't intend to - I also run a hack.... That should tell you everything you need to know.

I really just want Apple to make something that I can actually use. I greatly prefer Mac OS to Windows (I'd prefer Linux to either of those if the apps I need ran on it), but the hardware just isn't keeping up. I'm buying a machine for the long haul and I need it to not already be 2-3 years out of date when I buy it.

BTW, that hack runs a 980x, which hasn't been worth upgrading since 2010. Latest hardware just doesn't mean much in desktops anymore. Yes, I can double the performance of the desktop, it'll cost me something like $5K to do so, and run some rather interesting hardware. It doesn't seem cost effective until I need a new machine. However, I'd agree that if I'm paying top dollar, I should at least get current hardware. The minis and mac pros have not been keeping up to date.

it's something a company with Apple's resources and engineering talent could pop off on a monthly basis, which is faster than the new parts come to market on average.

Actually I read an article on the latest Intel processors, Kaby Lake?, and why they weren't in the 2016 refresh. Essentially, the MBP design was already finalized, tested, and sent to manufacturing before the processor was available. That CPU also required new supporting hardware on the logic boards. I

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...

That is pretty spot on.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...

I have the older CPU here. It works well. But I sure would not turn down 20-30% 'better' at a lower power usage... That is from about 2012. That was a fairly noticeably better improvement from the computer it replaced from 2009.

The CPU has *long* been the speedy part in almost all of our systems anyway (since even the 386 days). The rest of the system is starting to catch up.

So yeah when I do end up replacing this computer. It will not be just for the CPU. It will be the 5 year advance in the rest of the system too. Memory, connectors (all usb3), better screen, better video, better wireless, etc... Prob a MB with m.2 connectors for the SSD.

To say a 2005 computer is 'just fine' solely because of CPU is probably a bit myopic. Computers do not consist only of CPUs. If I was still using the laptop I owned back then it would be a 802.11g with a 5200 rpm drive in it. Painful to use to say the least, with today's software. Usable, but not worth my time.

INTEL and AMD both had to 'slow down' a bit. They probably could crank out CPUs that had crazy TDP on them. But would sell few. The whole market basically shifted to low power and mobile. They had to get with it or get left behind. In many ways they have been by Qualcomm, Apple, and other ARM companies.

AMD hardware is trash, Linux should not support it. My Intel Xeon 5472 (from 2007) from is twice as fast as the AMD A8 5600K(2012) in the GeekBench 3 multicore benchmark and competitive in most other benchmarks. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...

I had a Q6600 , then upgraded to a 3770K. There was easily a 10x speed increase in any compute-heavy task.

I'm still using my Q6600, and ended up giving my i3770 to a family member (due to hating Win 8 so much). No idea where you get the "easily 10x speed increase" from. Not a single number here is even 2x.

Please elaborate.

You need to figure out shit at all.

There's no benefit in the PS4 having eight weak-ass cores. If the complete package was powerful because of it then fine but it's not, it's a weak CPU. Even the AMD pieces at ~4 GHz with 8 cores can't keep up with 4 core Intel ones for gaming.
The i3 6100 as said beat the FX-6300 in many games regardless of the later having three times the more cores and it's clocked twice as high as the PS4!

The AMD CPUs perform like shit and AMD knows it.

Here you have the weak-ass Athlon X4 860K, it should be very similar to what you have in the PS4, it's quad-core here but running at 3.7 GHz instead:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/AMD-FX...

Feel free to compare it straight to the PS4, it's clocked twice as high but with half the cores so it should be about right I guess:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...

Also you got links to videos of actual game-play and I guess that's what matter the most, that account for less optimization with the PC games and for the lacks DirectX 11 have with poor multi-threading and draw calls which use up lots of processing power but it still perform ok.

What matters IS PERFORMANCE, THE AMD CHIPS DOESN'T HAVE IT!

Also your "argument" make no sense because the PS3 was the Cell one there the cell part had 8 SPEs of which 6 was used for gaming and one for OS and then one Power core. So I guess PS4 gamers viewed that as 7-9 core.

Who said anything about twitch-streaming? But yeah I figured I'd throw that in for good measure too, how well does the PS4 do that with it's weak-ass processor? The AMD chips at-least on PC encode video with more of a penalty than the Nvidia chips to. The GTX 950 have encoding on the graphics card so it drop close to nothing for encoding game videos.

Of course you don't see enough of a difference! This $600 PC with an i3 6100 + GTX 950 wasn't there to BE SUPERIOR TO THE PLAYSTATION 4! It was there to state what a PC with at-least as good performance would cost!
Sure you can spend $3000 on a gaming-PC but then it will be much much much much better than the PS4, for $1000+ you could get the i5 + GTX 970 PC but then that would totally smoke the PS4 and give you ~60 FPS gaming in Ultra in 1080p in more or less all titles. The PS4 doesn't do that and yes a PC which do that cost $1000 or thereabout (maybe even more, it will do more than 60 FPS in some titles of course.)

The i3 6100 + GTX 950 is still enough to beat the Playstation 4 and that cost as said around $600 or 50% more than the similar PS4 console.

Now if you want to see a difference ..
Here, have some Star wars: Battlefront Ultra 4K: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You won't be able to play that on a $600 i3 6100 + GTX 950 machine though but I never said you would.
On a $2000-2500 machine yes.

You need to figure out shit at all.

There's no benefit in the PS4 having eight weak-ass cores. If the complete package was powerful because of it then fine but it's not, it's a weak CPU. Even the AMD pieces at ~4 GHz with 8 cores can't keep up with 4 core Intel ones for gaming.
The i3 6100 as said beat the FX-6300 in many games regardless of the later having three times the more cores and it's clocked twice as high as the PS4!

The AMD CPUs perform like shit and AMD knows it.

Here you have the weak-ass Athlon X4 860K, it should be very similar to what you have in the PS4, it's quad-core here but running at 3.7 GHz instead:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/AMD-FX...

Feel free to compare it straight to the PS4, it's clocked twice as high but with half the cores so it should be about right I guess:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...

Also you got links to videos of actual game-play and I guess that's what matter the most, that account for less optimization with the PC games and for the lacks DirectX 11 have with poor multi-threading and draw calls which use up lots of processing power but it still perform ok.

What matters IS PERFORMANCE, THE AMD CHIPS DOESN'T HAVE IT!

Also your "argument" make no sense because the PS3 was the Cell one there the cell part had 8 SPEs of which 6 was used for gaming and one for OS and then one Power core. So I guess PS4 gamers viewed that as 7-9 core.

Who said anything about twitch-streaming? But yeah I figured I'd throw that in for good measure too, how well does the PS4 do that with it's weak-ass processor? The AMD chips at-least on PC encode video with more of a penalty than the Nvidia chips to. The GTX 950 have encoding on the graphics card so it drop close to nothing for encoding game videos.

Of course you don't see enough of a difference! This $600 PC with an i3 6100 + GTX 950 wasn't there to BE SUPERIOR TO THE PLAYSTATION 4! It was there to state what a PC with at-least as good performance would cost!
Sure you can spend $3000 on a gaming-PC but then it will be much much much much better than the PS4, for $1000+ you could get the i5 + GTX 970 PC but then that would totally smoke the PS4 and give you ~60 FPS gaming in Ultra in 1080p in more or less all titles. The PS4 doesn't do that and yes a PC which do that cost $1000 or thereabout (maybe even more, it will do more than 60 FPS in some titles of course.)

The i3 6100 + GTX 950 is still enough to beat the Playstation 4 and that cost as said around $600 or 50% more than the similar PS4 console.

Now if you want to see a difference ..
Here, have some Star wars: Battlefront Ultra 4K: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You won't be able to play that on a $600 i3 6100 + GTX 950 machine though but I never said you would.
On a $2000-2500 machine yes.

Their top of the line FX-processor vs yours:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...

Not too much of a difference, so maybe +40% IPC will actually reach the ~50%, I were going to say it won't but yeah, maybe.

high-end intel i7 workstation, which would have given me maybe 30% higher performance (at best)

At that time I don't know, now? Totally not true.

The Athlon X4 860K would cost half as much but get rid of the integrated graphics, better for the gamer who would rather spend the money on the graphics card.

Anyway the processor is SLOOOOW, a dual-core i3 6100 will perform about the same as the FX-6300, a quad-core will be better and quad-core i7 with hyper-threading better still.

There's not 30% difference:
vs somewhat older i7 4790K: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...
Two generations older still i7 2700K vs A10 7850K: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/C...

From the last one:
"Hugely faster multi-core fp speed.
+163%"

They aren't as similar as you think they are.

An FX-8350/70 cost about the same as an i5 4460, former is 8 core later is 4 core.

For gaming the later is kinda more capable, even if you throw in another 40% IPC on top you will have to compare to the i5 6600K and the i7 6700K too.

And then there's the Broadwell-E chips coming up with 6, 8 and 10 cores. Assume the Zen for normal consumers will be 8 core it likely can't really compete with Broadwell-E there, but it likely won't in price either, at-least not the 10 core chips which will likely start at $1000, at-least, and be for an expensive X99 motherboard.

Sip power compared to Core2, but even in performance per watt, Sandy Bridge is not really that far behind. My 3.5GHz Sandy Bridge Xeon has a TDP of 80 Watts. Look at these numbers and you won't get the impression that a half a decade has passed since it came out.

I suspect the 'pc' is far far more versatile and a bit faster as well....

After some searching, I did find the result eventually:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...

Single-core performance, the Celeron M 430 scores 894 and the Atom scores 761. However the Atom is a quad-core so probably makes up for it.

According to http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Atom-N2800-vs-Intel-Atom-E3805 , the typical power consumption is 2.44 W.
But due to my five-minute attention span, I haven't found any max values.

Sigh, does nobody know how the BD/PD arch works here? It CAN share the FPU but absolutely does NOT "have to". Allow me to quote from Wikipedia: "."Two symmetrical 128-bit FMAC (fused multiplyâ"add capability) floating-point pipelines per module that can be unified into one large 256-bit-wide unit if one of the integer cores dispatches AVX instruction and two symmetrical x87/MMX/SSE capable FPPs for backward compatibility with SSE2 non-optimized software."

So each core DOES have an FPU, they simply used a simpler 128bit FPU that CAN be joined together to make a single 256bit FPU for use with AVX instructions and ya know what? The majority of users will NEVER NOTICE as every program and game Joe Average runs will run great on an AMD chip. I myself run an FX-8320E which I upgraded from a Phenom II X6 (which according to the lawsuit is a "full" core compared to mine) and the FX blows through transcodes and multieffects layering a good 40% faster than the P II X6. And if his BS was true how does he explain the fact that the 6350 and 1100T are equal in performance despite the fact that according to him its a triple core versus a hexacore?

FX-9590 is the fastest AMD CPU you can buy and it is on par with i7 4770k. (as usual, behind in single threaded test, ahead in multi-threaded tests)
http://cpuboss.com/cpu/AMD-FX-...
It IS faster than i5, if you are after multi-threaded load.
On top of it, it has margin corresponding to "my fastest processor".
It has no GPU.

Your choice of CPUs to compare reviewed i5 to is questionable, to say the least.
A10 APUs that were reviewed by Anandtech, cost half/third of Intel's, yet are within 20% performance wise.

I have an i5-4690 Which is 3.5Ghz with turbo up to 3.9Ghz, and 84W TDP.

i7-4771 is rated at 3.5Ghz base, turbo of 3.9Ghz, and 84WTDP.

These benchmarks show identical single thread performance:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/s...
i7-4771-2,229
i5-4690-2,228

So? The Haswell Core i7 is faster. Also the Alienware laptops come with more RAM and MUCH faster GPUs.

Comparing the specs of the $3999 Mac Pro vs the $3799 Alienware 18 we get:
Intel Xeon E5-1620 vs Core i7 4910MQ
AMD FirePro D500 vs Nvidia Geforce GTX 880M

As you can clearly see, the Alienware 18 beats out a higher priced Mac Pro.

Lets face it ARM only has 2 things going for it

I think you missed a third point. They sip power, compared to x86 chips. Well, that, and apparently recent ARMs compare favorably against low-end Intel chips.

And anyhow, I've got a PC from circa 1998 that I use to run some older software, and I wouldn't expect much argument that that's a general purpose computer, even though my last 2 phones far outclass its performance in every measurable way. Performance level doesn't have much to do with whether something's a real computer or not.

Why don't we ever read about more useful metrics, such as the amount of (floating-point) operations per second per $ of a given CPU?

Because the target market for this thing doesn't consider that a useful metric, and never has.

For some years now (at least back to the P4 era, if memory serves), Intel has always offered the mad-crazy-overclocker-must-go-faster-edition CPU at the top of their (desktop, sorry Xeon buyers!) price list, usually ~$1,000. This part is always an astonishingly poor value, unless what you want is the fastest x86 money can buy. Most of them go to gamer e-peen setups, they may sell some to compute customers who have some pathologically hard-to-parallelize problem and thus need the fastest single threaded performance they can get, rather than more cores with lower performance per thread but far lower cost.

If you are actually shopping for CPUs, you probably want something like CPUboss, or CPUbenchmark which allows you to do fairly easy comparisons of performance/price (albeit for performance as measured by one or more general benchmarks, if your workload is somewhat atypical, your mileage may vary).

So... how much extra do you pay per year than a more efficient and harder working intel variation in terms of energy consumption?
An i5-4670K is what, like 220$-250$? compared to your 8 core beast at 150$? Here: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4670K-vs-AMD-FX-8120
The i5 beats it hands down in almost every benchmark. Maybe i was a bit unfair. Lets look at the best amd has to offer, the FX-8350. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4670K-vs-AMD-FX-8350 . The i5 beats the AMD's 200$ top cpu in almost all categories including costing 1/2 the energy per year. That extra 20-30$ per year in electricity adds up.

Should i compare it to intel's top cpu? That's a kind of worthless comparison if it can't even beat it's mid line cpu.
Yes the bottom end is dominated by amds. I myself run a a10-5700 as a server because it's a cheap all in one solution with a better onboard graphics component than anything intel has to offer. But this whole discussions is amd's top line of chips vs intels and how much cost saving's you'll have and i just don't see it from any point of view.

So... how much extra do you pay per year than a more efficient and harder working intel variation in terms of energy consumption?
An i5-4670K is what, like 220$-250$? compared to your 8 core beast at 150$? Here: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4670K-vs-AMD-FX-8120
The i5 beats it hands down in almost every benchmark. Maybe i was a bit unfair. Lets look at the best amd has to offer, the FX-8350. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4670K-vs-AMD-FX-8350 . The i5 beats the AMD's 200$ top cpu in almost all categories including costing 1/2 the energy per year. That extra 20-30$ per year in electricity adds up.

Should i compare it to intel's top cpu? That's a kind of worthless comparison if it can't even beat it's mid line cpu.
Yes the bottom end is dominated by amds. I myself run a a10-5700 as a server because it's a cheap all in one solution with a better onboard graphics component than anything intel has to offer. But this whole discussions is amd's top line of chips vs intels and how much cost saving's you'll have and i just don't see it from any point of view.