Cupertino tech giant Apple Inc had a busy calendar year 2019 as it looked to upgrade all product areas in order to compensate for a revenue drop from the iPhone lineup. We saw upgrades made to the iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBook lineups. The MacBook, in particular, not only got a processor refresh in the form of eight-generation Intel processors launched a year back in Q2 2019, but Apple also introduced a new form factor to the lineup in the form of a brand new 16-inch MacBook Pro.
The latest MacBook refresh marked a small jump from the lineup's design language in the form of changes to the TouchBar control strip. Now, some folks speculate that this year Apple might also introduce similar changes on the more mainstream 13" MacBook Pros - which, mind you, are also speculatively headed to second-generation 10nm processors from Intel.
Today we've got a benchmark leak pegging the rumored 13-inch notebook with a variant of Intel's 10th-generation 10nm Ice Lake Core i7-1068G7 processor and comparing the device's TimeSpy score with those belonging to a 13-inch 2019 MacBook Pro with an eight-generation Intel Core i5-8279U.
Benchmark Shows 13-inch 2020 MacBook Pro Powered By An Intel Core i7-1068'N'G7 Processor Gain Aggregate 21% Lead Over Its Core i5 Powered Predecessor
The benchmark is the courtesy of Twitter user who has been very active in keeping in line with details for upcoming MacBook refreshes and upgrades. _rogame (a reliable source who accurately predicted the presence of Radeon 5500M on the 16" MacBook Pro. This fact was previously mentioned in an anonymous tip to MacRumors.) shares 3D Mark Time Spy benchmarks belonging to a rumored highest-end variant of Apple's 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro lineup. This variant, as per the details shared by the Tweeter through an earlier leak, will be powered by a tenth-generation Intel chip, 32GB of RAM and a 2TB solid-state drive.
The benchmark scores of this alleged 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro show that it is capable of gaining a 21% aggregate lead in scores over the top base-variant (non-customized) of its predecessor, the 13-inch 2019 MacBook Pro powered by an 8th Generation Intel Core i5 chip. You can see the scores below.
13-inch MacBook Pro 2020 should feature custom-packaged 10th generation Ice Lake Core i7 Processor
Today's leak is an important one as it hints at a 10nm processor upgrade finally making it to the smaller MacBook Pro form factor. It also makes us speculate on a possible chassis-refresh for the notebooks that might be headed our way later this year. While no concrete evidence related to such a shift has surfaced so far, it makes sense for Apple to make such a change as 2020 marks four years since the lineup's last such overhaul.
But, while the presence of a 10nm chip is welcoming, there isn't any evidence so far of AMD making its way onto the high-end macOS notebooks' smaller factor. While Radeon has made it on Apple's 15-inch and 16-inch MacBooks, the 13-inch form factor still does not have dedicated GPUs from AMD, as thermal constraints might still be a concern for Apple in the arena.
The tenth-generation Core i7-1068G7 CPU is the best performing mobility chip of the Ice Lake family of processors' U-Series. It features four cores, eight threads and 64 execution units courtesy of Iris Plus. The thermal design point of the chip is 28W, and it has a base frequency of 2.3GHz. The 1068G7 is also capable of achieving a single-core turbo clock frequency 4.1GHz, with all core turbo clock frequency standing at 3.1GHz.
The Core i7-1068NG7 chip mentioned in today's benchmark is likely to feature a different package than the i5-1068G7 CPU mentioned throughout this piece. Earlier benchmarks of an alleged 2020 MacBook Air refresh have also hinted at different packages for the ultrabook's CPU.
