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My day at the apple store...I see why the i series cpu's are so respected now!

T

The Final Cut

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Went to the apple store today (66th and Broadway New York), with the intention to but the 13" Pro . I was most concerned to look at the screens, which I was not able to because the store is designed awfully, its a glass dome box of extreme glare. The monitors looked very unappealing, really surprised apple would make their machines look so bad. So I figured I do a speed test, even though I thought I would be happy with the core 2. On the 13", I loaded 3 hd movie trailers in quicktime and played them all at once. They played pretty much flawlessly, but expose all windows lagged a bit, and slowed down the movies. I then opened 25 safari windows (with the movies still playing) and each loaded slower and slower. Realizing that this speed test, although way too extreme for realtime use, is a good test for 3D performance (as good as it could get in the store), editing, encoding, etc. I was sad...so I went to check out the 17" i5. OMG. I had the 3 hd movies up, 50 safari windows, and expose did not have ANY lag what so ever. I then opened another 50 finder windows and still perfectly smooth. I am blown away and I must say the only mac for me is the 17" MBP, I fell in love. I did not really notice the difference with the i7, but I am sure real testing would prove me wrong! I was tempted to buy it right there but realized I would rather go tax free/disucounted off ebay (sealed box) or amazon which is way better than the student discount.
 
The Final Cut said:
Went to the apple store today (66th and Broadway New York), with the intention to but the 13" Pro . I was most concerned to look at the screens, which I was not able to because the store is designed awfully, its a glass dome box of extreme glare. The monitors looked very unappealing, really surprised apple would make their machines look so bad. So I figured I do a speed test, even though I thought I would be happy with the core 2. On the 13", I loaded 3 hd movie trailers in quicktime and played them all at once. They played pretty much flawlessly, but expose all windows lagged a bit, and slowed down the movies. I then opened 25 safari windows (with the movies still playing) and each loaded slower and slower. Realizing that this speed test, although way too extreme for realtime use, is a good test for 3D performance (as good as it could get in the store), editing, encoding, etc. I was sad...so I went to check out the 17" i5. OMG. I had the 3 hd movies up, 50 safari windows, and expose did not have ANY lag what so ever. I then opened another 50 finder windows and still perfectly smooth. I am blown away and I must say the only mac for me is the 17" MBP, I fell in love. I did not really notice the difference with the i7, but I am sure real testing would prove me wrong! I was tempted to buy it right there but realized I would rather go tax free/disucounted off ebay (sealed box) or amazon which is way better than the student discount.
Click to expand...

The tests you are performing have more to do with RAM rather than the Processor.
 
The Final Cut said:
Went to the apple store today (66th and Broadway New York), with the intention to but the 13" Pro . I was most concerned to look at the screens, which I was not able to because the store is designed awfully, its a glass dome box of extreme glare. The monitors looked very unappealing, really surprised apple would make their machines look so bad. So I figured I do a speed test, even though I thought I would be happy with the core 2. On the 13", I loaded 3 hd movie trailers in quicktime and played them all at once. They played pretty much flawlessly, but expose all windows lagged a bit, and slowed down the movies. I then opened 25 safari windows (with the movies still playing) and each loaded slower and slower. Realizing that this speed test, although way too extreme for realtime use, is a good test for 3D performance (as good as it could get in the store), editing, encoding, etc. I was sad...so I went to check out the 17" i5. OMG. I had the 3 hd movies up, 50 safari windows, and expose did not have ANY lag what so ever. I then opened another 50 finder windows and still perfectly smooth. I am blown away and I must say the only mac for me is the 17" MBP, I fell in love. I did not really notice the difference with the i7, but I am sure real testing would prove me wrong! I was tempted to buy it right there but realized I would rather go tax free/disucounted off ebay (sealed box) or amazon which is way better than the student discount.
Click to expand...

Those are all simply RAM tests basically.
 
The Final Cut said:
Went to the apple store today (66th and Broadway New York), with the intention to but the 13" Pro . I was most concerned to look at the screens, which I was not able to because the store is designed awfully, its a glass dome box of extreme glare. The monitors looked very unappealing, really surprised apple would make their machines look so bad. So I figured I do a speed test, even though I thought I would be happy with the core 2. On the 13", I loaded 3 hd movie trailers in quicktime and played them all at once. They played pretty much flawlessly, but expose all windows lagged a bit, and slowed down the movies. I then opened 25 safari windows (with the movies still playing) and each loaded slower and slower. Realizing that this speed test, although way too extreme for realtime use, is a good test for 3D performance (as good as it could get in the store), editing, encoding, etc. I was sad...so I went to check out the 17" i5. OMG. I had the 3 hd movies up, 50 safari windows, and expose did not have ANY lag what so ever. I then opened another 50 finder windows and still perfectly smooth. I am blown away and I must say the only mac for me is the 17" MBP, I fell in love. I did not really notice the difference with the i7, but I am sure real testing would prove me wrong! I was tempted to buy it right there but realized I would rather go tax free/disucounted off ebay (sealed box) or amazon which is way better than the student discount.
Click to expand...

RAM+GPU. Very little processor work. You should change the title to 'I see why the 330M is better now'.
 
The Final Cut said:
Exactly, guess its the 330m that gave it the edge? What is processor intensive then?
Click to expand...

Converting, packaging, encoding, etc. Anything that involves a progress bar that is not too related with video. Some games are processor intensive. Most day to day tasks are not.
 
actually I doubt it was ram or graphics, because my imac 3ghz core 2, 4 gig ram, 8800gs (which is miles better than the 330m) lags like hell when I tried the samthing at home. it was the i5 at work I am sure. why would apple put an i5 in so 1% of users can convert video faster? what your saying is absurd.
 
I wish you people knew more about computer hardware.

Yes, these tests are Ram Heavy however, this is a good indication of processor performance.

The Core i5/i7's ability to process 4 threads of Data as opposed to the Core 2 Duo's 2 threads is significant.

Also, the Core i5/i7's on Die memory controller can fetch and write data to the Ram significantly quicker than the Core 2's old bottlenecked Front side bus system.
 
iBunny said:
I wish you people knew more about computer hardware.

Yes, these tests are Ram Heavy however, this is a good indication of processor performance.

The Core i5/i7's ability to process 4 threads of Data as opposed to the Core 2 Duo's 2 threads is significant.

Also, the Core i5/i7's on Die memory controller can fetch and write data to the Ram significantly quicker than the Core 2's old bottlenecked Front side bus system.
Click to expand...

Thanks iBunny, I Knew I was not a total idiot.🙂 The i5/i7 is a revamped structure from core 2...
 
The i5 series in the arrandales (mobile dual core nehalems) and clarkdales (desktop dual core nehalems) have hyperthreading.

Only the Lynnfield (desktop quad core nehalems) have it set up to where the i5 variants have hyperthreading disabled. It's all very confusing, intel should have done a better job naming their new cpus.
 
Oh geez, out come the self-righteous ********s.

Yes I am incorrect, didn't realize Intel decided to put HT back in for the mobile launch.

So basically the i7 has more cache and some additional clockspeed? That's it? I don't see how that deserves a separate naming convention.
 

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