According to geekbench scores, the base model 2010 iMac scores higher than the 2.67ghz i7 model of 15" MacBook Pro. This seems at odds with what one would think. I know the iMac has a greater ghz rating, but I thought the superiority of the i7 chip would more than make up for that. Is the iMac faster, or Is there more to these geekbench scores than meets the eye?
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Is 15" i7 actually slower than base iMac?
- Thread starter skiltrip
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I was thinking of this recently and thought would a 2.8ghz core 2 be faster than than a 2.4ghz i5
i7 doesn't make the CPU any special. Both chips are based on the same Nehalem microarchitecture, thus the clock speed and amount of cache are the only things separating them. It is true that the base iMac is faster due to its clock speed.
Thanks for the response. It's hard to keep it in perspective when general statements get thrown around all the time like "the i3 is a budget CPU" and "the i7's are screamers!". Lol.
Well, you are looking at two different class of CPUs. MBPs use mobile CPUs with TDP of 35W. The i7-620M and 640M are the best CPUs with TDP of 35W, that's why they are called i7. iMacs use desktop CPUs and the i3s have TDP of 73W. They are considered to be low-end for desktops as they are one of the cheapest and slowest CPUs available atm. There are plenty of much faster CPUs (mostly quad core) that are called i5 and i7.
The Sandy Bridge Mobile Quad-Core i7 2630QM will be able to crush any of the current iMac desktop i3 offerings. Just wait a few months.
By comparison, my 3.33GHz 6-core Mac Pro is 16,107 
Look at the 12-core models and you are talking Geekbench scores of 25,000+
I will have to see what my single-threaded scores look like.
EDIT: The 3.33GHz 6-core Mac Pro is only 7-8% faster than the 2.66GHz i7 MacBook Pro at single threaded tasks, about 5% faster than the 2.8GHz i7 at single-threaded tasks. The Geekbench scores are only so much higher because of the multithreaded tasks, because the Mac Pro here had THREE TIMES as many cores as the MacBook Pro, which is a dual-core machine.
Look at the 12-core models and you are talking Geekbench scores of 25,000+
I will have to see what my single-threaded scores look like.
EDIT: The 3.33GHz 6-core Mac Pro is only 7-8% faster than the 2.66GHz i7 MacBook Pro at single threaded tasks, about 5% faster than the 2.8GHz i7 at single-threaded tasks. The Geekbench scores are only so much higher because of the multithreaded tasks, because the Mac Pro here had THREE TIMES as many cores as the MacBook Pro, which is a dual-core machine.
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so an i7 versus a core 2 duo is still a competition between clock speeds?
Well, this solves my dilemma concerning which macbook to buy
By comparison, my 3.33GHz 6-core Mac Pro is 16,107
Look at the 12-core models and you are talking Geekbench scores of 25,000+
I will have to see what my single-threaded scores look like.
EDIT: The 3.33GHz 6-core Mac Pro is only 7-8% faster than the 2.66GHz i7 MacBook Pro at single threaded tasks, about 5% faster than the 2.8GHz i7 at single-threaded tasks. The Geekbench scores are only so much higher because of the multithreaded tasks, because the Mac Pro here had THREE TIMES as many cores as the MacBook Pro, which is a dual-core machine.
I would imagine this will change pretty quickly as more and more tasks become multis and the multi-core CPU gains the abilities to do things which were not thought possible and through this increases the speed on single threaded tasks.
No. They use different microarchitecture so comparing clock speeds is more or less useless. i7 supports things like Hyper-Threading and Turbo while C2D does not. You should look at benchmarks such as GeekBench and some real world stuff like HandBrake