Good morning!
I watched a live blog of the event at an Apple Store while getting the screen on my 6s Plus replaced. Here are my takeaways in terms of the specs on the new MacBook Pros.
CPUs
Apple really deviated from what they've used in the past. In parentheses is what they should have used if you extrapolate out a direct replacement for the Haskell-Based Mid 2015 rMPs.
The Late 2016 15" MacBook Pro is using the following:
Core i7-6700HQ - Base rMBP 15" - $2399.00 with 2.6GHz quad-core i7, Intel HD Graphics 530 (Core i7-6770HQ, 2.6GHz, Intel Iris Pro Graphics 580)
Core i7-6820HQ - Upgraded rMBP 15" - $2799.00 with 2.7GHz quad-core i7, Intel HD Graphics 530 (Core i7-6870HQ, 2.7GHz, Intel Iris Pro Graphics 580)
Core i7-6920HQ - Upgraded rMBP 15" - $2999.00 (+200.00) with 2.9GHz quad-core i7, Intel HD Graphics 530 (Core i7-6970HQ, 2.8GHz, Intel Iris Pro Graphics 580)
NOTE: For reference, the Mid 2015 15" rMBP used the Core i7-4770HQ (2.2Ghz), i7-4870HQ (2.5GHz) and i7-4980HQ (2.8GHz)
Note how Apple is moving away from the Intel Iris Pro Graphics that it used heavily in the past, especially with the entry level Mid-2015 rMBP 15" (Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200) that kept the price of admission at $1999.99. Apple has gone back to 2012, in essence, and said that the 15" version should only have discrete graphics.
The CPU updates for the 13" rMBP are more straight forward and linear. I'll follow up with those in a MUCH shorter post.
All the CPUs that Apple rolled out yesterday in the 15" rMBPs cost around ~$60.00 USD less than the CPUs I listed that Apple typically would have used if this had been a straight generational (Haswell-->Skylake)CPU upgrade. Since Apple never implemented Broadwell CPUs (i7-5700HQ, 5850HQ and 5950HQ, Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200) in the 15" rMBP, we can only speculate that Apple has most likely given up on Iris Pro as a GPU solution moving forward. Is this a good thing or a bad thing (given Intels non-commitmemnt to upgrading GTe graphics in Kaby Lake) remains to be seen, but it seems to indicate that Apple thinks Intel's mainstream iGPUs are good enough for user's daily productivity. It definitely helps increase Apple's gross margins, which I think is always the most important metric to Apple.
Graphics
The AMD Radeon Pro 450, 455 and 460 may have similar part numbers to the RX-series or the R7 Series Laptop Graphics (
http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/notebook/r7-m200), but after comparing the R7 and R9 Series Laptop Graphics specs, it's pretty clear that these have been created just for Apple. The R7 Series maxs out at 8 Compute Units (R7 M465X) and the R9 Series starts at 12 (R9 M470) and goes to 32 (R9 M485X). Neither the R7 or R9 series offers a model with 10 or 16 CUs. The aforementioned R9 M470 does offer 12 which is equivalent to the Radeon Pro 455. AMD's website offers no specs with regards to the 80GB/s of bandwidth mentioned in the MacRumors post.
Flash Memory
Apple's website mentions that the Flash Storage has sequential read speeds up to 3.1GB/s, which tells me that they're most likely using Samsung's SM961 SSD, which features up to 3.2GB/s sequential read speeds. This is a PCIe 3.0 x4 drive like the one found in the Mid 2015 rMBPs (SM951) and forms the basis for the consumer 960 Pro and 960 EVO Series that was just announced by Samsung on September 21st (
https://news.samsung.com/global/sam...performing-960-pro-and-evo-solid-state-drives ). This is NVMe storage and from what information I can find, it doesn't look as though it comes in an AHCI version at all.
RAM
Apple decided to stick with LPDDR3 DRAM in both the 13" and 15" rMBPs, with the 15" getting a bump to 2133Mhz. I simply assumed that DDR3 was passé now and that DDR4 would be included by default. Doing cursory research led me to conclude that it's definitely the manufacturer's choice with some choosing to use DDR3 (Dell XPS 13) and others to use DDR4 (Lenovo IdeaPad Y700). My beef with Apple is that they once again put thinness over leaving enough space for an optional upgrade to 32GB. Maybe that's unrealistic, but for a Pro machine, the ability to upgrade to 32GB should at least be an option.
How the inclusion of native Thunderbolt 3, USB-C Gen 2, NVMe and AMD Polaris-based GPUs will affect Hackintosh users is too early to tell, as others on this forum have stated, it too early to tell. I'm glad to see these updates to the MacBook Pros as it's way overdue, but for me, the price tags are just ridiculous. Time will tell whether or not prospective buyers think so too. The lack of updates to the mini, iMac and Mac Pro, as well as the quiet death of the beloved MacBook Air doesn't seem to be sitting well with many people on this forum, nor any of the Mac-focused news and rumor sites.
I know some of this is strictly my opinion, sorry I was so long winded.
