Well you're comparing this year's low end to last year's high end. Compare the 2013 i7 to the 2012 i7 if you want to be fair.It seems like it is going to be really hard to recommend an upgrade to Haswell Macbook Air, for those who are sporting the Ivybridge model.
Anandtech results are showing a 2.46 multi cpu score for the new i5 compared to a 3 from last year's i7. Higher is better.
Also laptopmag benchmark on the HD5000 in the new i5 Air result in a lowly 21 fps compared to 22.6fps in HD4000 in Ivybridge i7 Air. Higher is better.
Perhaps the lower tdp is the cause? Greater battery life at the cost of performance.
Well you're comparing this year's low end to last year's high end. Compare the 2013 i7 to the 2012 i7 if you want to be fair.
In any case Haswell MacBook Air are the best yet, since performance are about the same as last year model give or take 5% with the added benefit of much longer battery life.
Not at all daunting for those of us who want 7+ effective battery hours. And you are comparing i5s to i7s. the MBA 2013 i7 should be ~3 just like the MBA 2012 i7 and MBP 2011 i7.
It is amazing for us.
Jon
Cine bench GPU scores are not a reliable indicator. I would wait for some more benchmarks before making final decision and absolute statement.
Cine bench has been my goto Mac benchmarking tool for years now. So far it has been a pretty accurate standard of comparison, as far as I can tell at least.
Yet I do see the wisdom in what you are saying, hopefully we see more benchmarks(As of this moment i can't say I know of any specifically that runs on the Mac besides Cine bench for GPU, I must say I am pretty ignorant in this area though. Perhaps 3DMark in a windows environment, not that it has much bearing unless the intend is to dual boot.) and also actual gaming performance test in the near future.
Thanks for this reminder, stirs a glimmer of hope that HD 5000 might actually be a worthwhile upgrade.
Cinebench CPU benchmarks are ok, but the GPU ones on OS X don't work very well. This has been proven on the Mac Pro forum with high-end cards not benching anywhere near where they are supposed to, hence my reservations.
There are some serious misunderstandings of how a processor works going on in this thread.
For a start, turbo boost means that even if the BASE clock speed is lower, the current processors can just amp up the clock speed to match the 2012 models and be as powerful that way. Kinda how turbo boost works, and means judging a processor by it's base clock speed isn't really the way to go any more.
Secondly, much like how an i5 outperforms a Core 2 Duo at the same clock speeds even without HT, the Has well processor is faster than the Ivy at matched clock speeds, and even still faster at lower ones.
Another factor is the graphics boost - HD5000 is far more powerful than 4000.
So yes, the new MacBook Air is more powerful than the last one. To believe anything else is just ignorant.
You can't compare both processors with its clock frequency alone. 2012 is an Ivy Bridge [tick] processor and is one year old. 2013 on the other hand uses Haswell [tock] processor. Tick is shrinking of process technology of the previous microarchitecture, while Tock is a new microarchitecture. This would mean another level higher than the previous one.