Just before Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June, rumors were swirling that the Cupertino company would introduce an updated line of MacBook Pro laptops.
There were multiple sources hyping the arrival of all-new Retina MacBook Pros with Intel's Haswell chips at WWDC, but the event came and went without a whisper of the revamped machines.
However, all hope is not lost. A new benchmark discovered by Geekbench for a 15-inch MacBook Pro comes complete with the ballyhooed Haswell processor.
Even if the benchmark doesn't make it very clear if this was a Retina-equipped laptop or not, there are definitely some impressive new specs to get excited about for the next iteration of the MacBook Pro, if the benchmark proves true.
All's well that Haswell
According to the benchmark, the refreshed 15-inch MacBook Pro features a 2.4GHz Core i7-4950HQ chip with 16GB RAM, as well as Intel's integrated Iris Pro 5200 graphics processor.
With an Iris Pro 5200 chip, Intel claims the graphic performance can increase up to 2.5 times that of the current Retina MacBook Pro with the Core i7-3840QM processor with HD Graphics 4000.
Typically, 15-inch MacBook Pros feature a separate dedicated graphics chip, but the benchmark seemed to allude to Intel's Iris Pro being the only GPU on board.
Interestingly enough, even with the new Haswell chip, this new MacBook Pro generated the same 12497 score on Geekbench's metrics as the current model.
However, the real key to Haswell is the increased battery life it offers, as was noticeably improved with the new MacBook Air, which now boasts a 12-hour battery time.
Currently, you can expect to get about seven hours out of the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro's battery, but Geekbench didn't have any new information about the potential benefits Haswell could offer the latest model.
The benchmarked MacBook was running its own custom version of OS X Mavericks, which shouldn't tax the battery much more than the existing OS X build. However, until we learn if this supposed MacBook will feature a Retina screen, it'll be tough to tell just how much better battery life will be with the Haswell chip.
When and where we'll see more of these supposed laptops is up to Apple, but the frequency of detailed information seems to indicate new MacBook Pros might be here sooner than later.
Via MacRumors
