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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

...will it run Crysis?

Probably. Crysis was a game that required a Geforce 8800 to run suitably in 1080p, even with things sorta-high. However, the GPU in my current laptop mops the floor with it in specs, it wasn't the highest end GPU I could have chosen at the time, and it's over a year old. For that matter, the GPU of my last laptop largely outpaces it. I have no issues running Crysis at 1080p on ultra mode. Meanwhile, CryEngine has gotten more optimizations; the system requirements for Crysis 2 were similar but the performance was measurably better on similar hardware. Crysis 3 was a different kettle of fish.

So, unfortunately (or fortunately), we're at the point where even the higher end Intel Integrated GPUs can playably run Crysis (albeit at modest settings) - which is to be expected since the game is ten years old now. We need a new game that pushes the limits of GPUs again. My experience is that Mass Effect Andromeda has pushed my GPU pretty heavily, but I don't think it's quite 'it' yet.

...will it run Crysis?

Probably. Crysis was a game that required a Geforce 8800 to run suitably in 1080p, even with things sorta-high. However, the GPU in my current laptop mops the floor with it in specs, it wasn't the highest end GPU I could have chosen at the time, and it's over a year old. For that matter, the GPU of my last laptop largely outpaces it. I have no issues running Crysis at 1080p on ultra mode. Meanwhile, CryEngine has gotten more optimizations; the system requirements for Crysis 2 were similar but the performance was measurably better on similar hardware. Crysis 3 was a different kettle of fish.

So, unfortunately (or fortunately), we're at the point where even the higher end Intel Integrated GPUs can playably run Crysis (albeit at modest settings) - which is to be expected since the game is ten years old now. We need a new game that pushes the limits of GPUs again. My experience is that Mass Effect Andromeda has pushed my GPU pretty heavily, but I don't think it's quite 'it' yet.

That GPU isn't going to run games well at 4k.

I was wondering about that.

People have excoriating Apple for offering an RX 460 (with 4 GB GDDR5 RAM) in the 2016 MacBook Pro; yet this crappy little AIO, with an R9 M470X (with 2 GB GDDR5 RAM), is supposed to be God's gift to gaming.

I also looks like the RX 460 is indeed better in every way vs. the R9 M470X. Another example of unbridled Apple Hate, or is there a huge difference between the two GPUs? Because, it looks like the R9 M470X is based on the older "Bonaire" technology, whereas the RX 460 is the newer "Polaris" tech.

Dell charges $350 to go from HD to 4K on the same configuration so $600 for 6K isn't really that out of line. But another item you neglected to mention is that the SB comes with GTX 965M with 2GB dedicated graphics vs the MBP coming with Intel Iris Graphics 540 with shared memory. The GTX benchmarks are over twice the Iris.

It's REALLY hard to figure out exactly what's what on the Surface Book, PARTICULARLY with the GPUs.

It looks like the only one with the GTX 965M w/2 GB video RAM is the one with the "Performance Base", which is yet ANOTHER $100 more ($700 more total) than the non-touchbar MBP config, or $400 more than the touchbar MBP config.

Since I didn't spec the "Performance Base" model in my comparison, it looks like the i7-equipped model Surface Book has an NVIDIA® GeForce® dGPU with 1GB GDDR5 memory (doesn't say which NVidia GPU). FYI, the i5 model Surface Book has the Intel® HD graphics 520, with presumably shared memory.

But I will agree: If you spend the extra money on the Surface Book, the Nvidia 965M does whip all over the Iris Graphics 550 as far as benchmarks go.

But, as you said, if you pop for the top-of-the-line 15" MBP, with the Radeon Pro 455 with 2GB dedicated memory, the story is quite different, with each GPU having its stronger, and weaker, points; but overall, in the same ballpark.

I have a Mac Pro 2,1 with 32GB RAM, dual 3.0GHz Xeon Quad cores, and a Radeon 7950 Boost (which, according to GPU BOSS is so close to the R290 to claim one is better than the other, see http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-290-vs-Radeon-HD-7950-Boost) that I bought on eBay. Thatâ(TM)s right, a SECOND GENERATION MAC PRO, http://www.whitespacecg.com/Images/MacPro21spec.jpg. Now, tell me again why I cannot get an Occulus Rift? Not that I want one, but this strikes me as just plain lazy on the part of Rift developers. Anyone who would want one is going to have to buy an aftermarket GPU anyway, and they do exist for the older Mac Pro towers in the spec required.

windows-users are 20% more busy with OS/computer interaction than mac-users

I use both and I'm equally productive on both. I boot the system, launch my applications, and work. Thing is, my PC boots in 3 seconds (literally) while my newer (by 3 months considering release dates; the PC is actually newer to me) Mac takes 15, my PC starts my applications faster (the same applications), and my PC has a 4k display, compared to my Mac's 2.8k. Mind you, I'm also comparing 2 laptops, here. My PC has dial M.2 SSDs and a spinning disk for bulk storage, a high-end GPU (970M with 6GB GDDR5, not the highest-end, but better than the M370X with 2GB GDDR5 you can get in a MacBook Pro; don't take my word for it though), is .1mm thinner and .33lb lighter, and is user-serviceable (which came in handy when I dropped it, over-flexed the display bezel, and destroyed the display cable in the process; it was a $24 part, shipped, and about 20min to replace -- mind you it would have taken longer had I not already familiarized myself with the inside of the machine, maybe an hour in total).

Don't get me wrong, I love the direction Steve jobs had planned out for OS X, and was a huge fan of Snow Leopard. I skipped Lion and went straight to Mountain Lion, then Mavericks, then Yosemite, and I refuse to touch El Capitan. the hardware is great for what it is; it's just not what I need it to be and the OS hasn't really been since Mavericks came out. But for my daily work? For actually being productive? Both systems work just fine, the PC just does it faster and with more screen real-estate. In either case, once I've got my applications open, the OS stays out of my way... until it's time to install updates, then OS X nags me (and doesn't remind me to install them when I tell it to; it always waits 2 or 3 days, instead of reminding me the next day as the menu option states, and seems to know right when I've started being productive. Windows nags about updates, as well, but it usually doesn't start until my work day is through and I can actually deal with it.

In all, I've spent more time fighting with OSX this year than Windows, which is sad since I've only used the MacBook Pro (aside from waking it weekly to sync some files and install updates) for the 2 weeks I was waiting for the display cable for my PC to ship; and it's not lack of familiarity, I'd been using a Mac full-time for 6 years, right up until I bought this PC in mid-November. And yes, I'm also counting the trouble I had reinstalling Win 10 on a Lenovo tablet I got a couple weeks ago when a BIOS update wiped out the keys for the encrypted (from the factory, so no recovery key was available for me to have possibly recorded and used) drive and toasted all my data. Well, not all my data, I had gotten as far as installing Firefox, Chrome, and driver updates; the fault lies with Lenovo (or whoever refurbishes systems for them) on that one, though, not Windows. But, again, and in fairness, I'm still counting that in my "time spent fighting with Windows this year" for the sake of this comparison.

As for the PC having needed a repair, yeah, so? I dropped it. The Mac would have failed in some non-user-repairable way had it been dropped in the same manner and landed the same (very unlucky) way. And it still would have been down for two weeks, as well; the difference is that I would have been paying Apple an arm and a leg for the repair and, if the Genius taking it in for repair was having a bad day, been without my data for that time, as they would insist on having the drive left in place. Assuming the drive made its way back to me without having been wiped (or.. at all).

Computers are tools and I strongly encourage everyone to use whatever tools they work best with. When I was in school, that was a Windows PC because that was what was expected of me; for 5 years after, I stuck

I didn't mean to say try wee exact equivalent, just PC users have a tendency to turn up the graphic options that simply aren't on the consoles. Considering the current gen consoles are appriximately an ATI 7770, here's a decent comparison: http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon... scroll down to benchmarks and laugh. The 760 blows it away in every benchmark. Just do you don't have to click the provided link, ATI 7770 running crisis 3 @12FPS. 760 running crisis 3 @58FPS. That about sums it up.