Is it me or are the new macbook air's slower than the last generation?
My i7 2.0GHz outperforms the base macbook pro retina 13" (with turbo mode on both models active) and is on par with the higher spec one (again, with turbo mode active on both models).
Did apple reduce the speed of these processor's to save battery life and market it as an ideal laptop for somebody who is constantly on-the-go?
I am interested in the answer to this question as well. I have the 2012 2.0 I7 with 8gb RAM and was looking to upgrade but after the very disappointing WWDC offerings I probably will have to wait until the Retina MBP gets slimmed down and gets Haswell.
Will the i7 1.7 Haswell generally be faster than my i7 2.0 Ivy? Looking forward to tests of course that will give real world results.
Am in the same situation as you guys.
Talking about just CPU speed, clock for clock haswell is faster. Unfortunately this time around we are not seeing a direct increase in clock speed like the last update(sandybridge to ivybridge). Here are some of the know results.
Geekbench 2 Results
MacBook Air 2013 i5 4250U = 6043
MacBook Air 11" 2012 i5 = 5758
MacBook Air 13" 2012 i5 = 6120
MacBook Air 2012 i7 = 7024
On the processor front
- slight upgrade going from 11" 2012 to 2013 base processor
- very slight downgrade from 13" 2012 to 2013 base processor
- noticeable downgrade from i7 2012 to 2013 base processor
- unconfirmed but most likely results i7 2012 to i7 2013 should be a slight upgrade
The main focus seems to be on battery life this year. Last year was probably a really special case, seeing how it was a tick plus. Yeah a nice jump in both cpu/gpu performance in one generation is pretty awesome. core2duo to sandy was a huge leap for the cpu as it was a multi-generation leap. Coming back to the topic of i7 3667u vs i7 4650u, from the i5 results we can guesstimate i7 4650u would probably be slightly faster, my guess less than 5%. I might skip this year update as battery life is not a major concern for me, the 40% increase in gpu isn't really going to change the way i use my MacBook Air. I will still have to leave the games i play at the same settings, the jump is not noticeable enough for anything drastic, remember depreciating returns are in order here. Going from 8fps to 22fps on benchmark is not the same as going from 22fps to 29fps. 8fps to 22 fps changes the whole playability of the game, the next noticeable jump would be from 22fps to something like 60fps, at least that's how I understand it. Furthermore, while I do enjoy some more eye candy, the greater need is more cpu bound for me, like 25 man raid in WOW, 4 way multiplayer in SC2 and multiplayer in D3. The bottleneck in these scenarios are mostly CPU base, which is completely not addressed in this update. Hopefully next year we see a good increase in both cpu/gpu along with the already awesome battery life from this year.