Apple already refreshed the Macbook Air by equipping it with Intel's 4th generation Core Haswell CPUs giving it a bit more performance and better battery life so it was just a matter of time before the Macbook Pro Retina gets the same treatment.

A leak on Geekbench database validation page revealed that Apple is currently testing the exactly same variation of the Macbook Pro Retina that will be equipped with Haswell-GT3 chip that feature four CPU cores, 6MB or L3 cache and a better graphics core with 40 execution units. This GPU will provide much more performance than Haswell-GT2 and Haswell-GT1 chips and will most likely put it in line with current Macbook Pro Retina with Geforce GT 640M while providing much better battery life and enough performance for that high-resolution 15-inch screen.

Macbook Pro Retina previously had to stick with dedicated GPU but it looks like that this one will be an exception as Geekbench should have seen it even if it was disabled for benchmarking. Apple might come up with different SKUs or Intel's Haswell-GT3 is actually good enough to give it enough graphics performance to drive that high resolution 15-inch screen.

The Geekbench validation page shows that at least one SKU might be equipped with Intel Core i7-4950HQ quad-core processor, Intel Iris 5200 graphics, 6 MB L3 cache, and up to 2.40 GHz of CPU clock speed.

The new Apple Macbook Pro Retina refresh will most likely target the "back-to-school" sale period and it should be unveiled by the end of this summer.





Source: Macrumors.com.