Benchmarks Confirm New MacBook Air Brings Decent Speed Improvements, MacBook Pro Less So

[Wahlstrm]

Uhm, comparing different brands and models is exactly what Geekbench does.

Yes, but the question was not about what geek bench does..

The question was about specs that look the same but don´t perform the same.
Why one 2GHz is faster than another 2GHz, and unless they are from the same brand and model /intel/haswell/ you can't compare the numbers just by looking at them since they won't represent the same thing.

 

[ScepticMatt]

~1

Why one 2GHz is faster than another 2GHz, and unless they are from the same brand and model /intel/haswell/ you can't compare the numbers just by looking at them since they won't represent the same thing.

Currently there are 3 factors controlling CPU performance:
* Thermal design power (TDP). The higher the power output, the higher a CPU can clock, unless it is limited by turbo clock rate.
* Instructions per clock (IPC). Depends on Processor architecture. Improves ~5% every die shrink (Broadwell "tick") and ~10% with a new architecture (Skylake "tock").
* Performance per Watts. Depends on processor architecture and voltage. Intels new focus. Intels new goal is to have 2% P/W improvement for every 1% IPC gain.

The base clock is just a measure of minimum guaranteed clock rate. A lower base clock means that either the TDP is very low and/or it can shift more power to an integrated GPU. For example, the HD6000 in the MBP/MBA has double the graphics executions units of the HD5500 in the XPS13, so the base clock in the MBP/MBA is lower.

The i7-5557U Broadwell-U in the Pro has a TDP of 28W and Turbo clock of 3.4 GHz, the i7-5650U has a TDP of 15W and Turbo clock of 3.1 GHz and the M-5Y71 has a TDP of 5W and a Turbo clock of 2.9 GHz.

So what does this mean in real-world performance? All of the above have the same IPC and are ultra-low voltage models. In the CPU-only GeekBench benchmark, neither the 5557u nor the 5650u reach their TDP limit, so scores track like their 10% turbo clock limit differene. The main advantage of the 5557u in the MPB is therefore the higher reserve power for the GPU.

The M-5Y71 on the other hand is limited by TDP in CPU only benchmarks, which is why the scores are only half of the 5557U. There isn't any reserve for GPU left, so CPU performance falls even lower as soon as you use the GPU in some way.

 

[Naimfan]

It's so frustrating: you can't have a fast processor AND light weight AND retina all at once. You have to pick two:

retina + speed: MacBook Pro
retina + light weight: MacBook
light weight + speed: MacBook Air

Given that in my middle age I could use a better resolution than my current MBA 11'', yet I don't want anything heavier as a I carry it everywhere, and yet I don't want something likely a step back from what I am using speed-wise, I am stuck.

I'd say you've created an artificial dilemma.

The rMBP is light and moderately fast - sorry, but a half pound more than the Air doe not make it heavy. As a matter of fact, the 15" rMBP isn't "heavy" either. If it is, more exercise is indicated. As another person in "middle age," and as someone who carries a 15" rMBP everywhere, the weight difference is trivial.

If you need something "fast" you need to move to a quad-core 15", because the differences from the top end Air to the entry level 13" rMBP will be indistinguishable in nomal use.

 

[theluggage]

Like others have said what's the point of an under powered expensive MacBook?

Remember when the MacBook Air was first announced? That's what people said then, and they weren't wrong, either (even down to the 'what use is a single USB port?').

This year, a lot of people will pay a premium to have the thinnest laptop in the room, and the Core M more than powerful enough for email and word processing.

Give it a year or two, prices and specs will move, the MacBook will be the new entry-level, the 13" rMBP will have adopted USB-C and/or the thinner TB3 connectors and shrunk to closer the size of the Air, and the Air will be gone.

Maybe, like the original air, the MacBook will sprout a second USB-C, too...

 

[theluggage]

Nope. Two different ports for two different purposes. Why do you people keep saying this. Makes less than zero sense.

Except TB was going to be the wonderful single port for disc drives, memory sticks, displays, docks and PCIe devices. USB3 could only do the first two.

Now USB-C is going to be the wonderful single port for any single-drive disc drive, memory sticks, displays and docks. TB may support honking great RAID arrays, any specialist A/V kit (that doesn't already have a USB3 port) and PCIe fibrechannel cards... but the question is, will there be enough demand for those things on a 13" laptop or would a pair of USB-C ports (and maybe retaining an old school USB A port or two) be more widely useful? Note that if there is demand, 'PCIe mode' can be implemented over USB-C (see the wikipedia page on USB-C).

Also, as soon as someone builds USB-C into a computer with a GPU that can support DisplayPort 1.3, USB-C will be able to carry it, drive 5k displays with a single cable, or run 4k alongside USB3.1 - whereas TB is waiting for TB3, Skylake and new TB connectors. So, what ports will you expect to see on new 4k and 5k displays?

12-18 months down the line, if the shops are full of USB-C displays, docks and drives, dropping Thunderbolt from the 13" rMBP would probably cause less fuss than when they dropped ExpressCard from the old Unibody 15" MBP.

 

[DrEasy]

I'd say you've created an artificial dilemma.

The rMBP is light and moderately fast - sorry, but a half pound more than the Air doe not make it heavy. As a matter of fact, the 15" rMBP isn't "heavy" either. If it is, more exercise is indicated. As another person in "middle age," and as someone who carries a 15" rMBP everywhere, the weight difference is trivial.

If you need something "fast" you need to move to a quad-core 15", because the differences from the top end Air to the entry level 13" rMBP will be indistinguishable in nomal use.

The 13'' rMBP is a full pound heavier than the 11'' MBA. I know it doesn't sound like much, but you notice it when you carry stuff around, especially when walking half an hour to work.

Regarding the processor speed though, I agree. Even the MBA's speed is good enough for me. It's the speed of the MacBook with its Core M processor that is dubious. Again, it's the combo of speed + weight + retina that is impossible to have. If they'd put a retina on the MBA I'd have no hesitation.

 

[Virinprew]

Out of curiousity how many ports do you (or anybody else reading this) use day to day on a notebook?

HDMI + USB Wacom Bamboo + Magsafe

 

[freddiecable]

i almost got 9-10 hours battery. hm - will probably don't rush getting a new laptop. thx for reply anyhow

Intel has been putting their resources mostly into power saving rather than all out speed. The new MacBook air isn't much faster than your 2012 ivy bridge, but the battery life is superior.

 

[Naimfan]

The 13'' rMBP is a full pound heavier than the 11'' MBA. I know it doesn't sound like much, but you notice it when you carry stuff around, especially when walking half an hour to work.

It's the speed of the MacBook with its Core M processor that is dubious. Again, it's the combo of speed + weight + retina that is impossible to have.

Oh my heavens - a whole pound? Seriously? I'm sorry, but that's absurd. And I say that as someone used to carrying 60-75 lbs 10-15 miles at a time.

If you're letting one pound dissuade you from a much better computer there is nothing to say.

 

[roadbloc]

Wut? Average consumers, they need more speed. But to hell with the pro users, they're fast enough? :s

 

[till213]

I wish in these updates that they would include more of the older PCs in their charts and graphs.

You want this:

http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

 

[TallManNY]

You want this:

http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

That's the good stuff. Then I can compare my 2011 iMac and my handed down 2007 iMac (still working fine as my Mom's main computer).

Looks like my 2011 iMac's performance will get nearly doubled by sometime next year. Maybe then I will treat myself to a new one and the Mac cycle of life will continue with the 2011 going off to some member of my family. The jump to a Retina screen and an SSD will be a huge upgrade as well.

 

[moderately]

It's so frustrating: you can't have a fast processor AND light weight AND retina all at once. You have to pick two:

retina + speed: MacBook Pro
retina + light weight: MacBook
light weight + speed: MacBook Air

Given that in my middle age I could use a better resolution than my current MBA 11'', yet I don't want anything heavier as a I carry it everywhere, and yet I don't want something likely a step back from what I am using speed-wise, I am stuck.

This is the world.
Artists have a saying, "It takes three things to make art. Money, time and space. Any two are easy."

 

[Derived]

Except TB was going to be the wonderful single port for disc drives, memory sticks, displays, docks and PCIe devices. USB3 could only do the first two.

Now USB-C is going to be the wonderful single port for any single-drive disc drive, memory sticks, displays and docks. TB may support honking great RAID arrays, any specialist A/V kit (that doesn't already have a USB3 port) and PCIe fibrechannel cards... but the question is, will there be enough demand for those things on a 13" laptop or would a pair of USB-C ports (and maybe retaining an old school USB A port or two) be more widely useful? Note that if there is demand, 'PCIe mode' can be implemented over USB-C (see the wikipedia page on USB-C).

Also, as soon as someone builds USB-C into a computer with a GPU that can support DisplayPort 1.3, USB-C will be able to carry it, drive 5k displays with a single cable, or run 4k alongside USB3.1 - whereas TB is waiting for TB3, Skylake and new TB connectors. So, what ports will you expect to see on new 4k and 5k displays?

12-18 months down the line, if the shops are full of USB-C displays, docks and drives, dropping Thunderbolt from the 13" rMBP would probably cause less fuss than when they dropped ExpressCard from the old Unibody 15" MBP.

TB is also going to get updated as it goes through life, and will always be faster than USB and more robust. If it's not for you, don't buy it. Also..again...it's perfectly reasonable to expect them to put USB-C and TB on the rMBP...but there's no logical reason to remove TB.

 

[theluggage]

TB is also going to get updated as it goes through life, and will always be faster than USB and more robust.

Or, to put it in another way, Betamax is dead, long live Betacam?

...but there's no logical reason to remove TB.

Yes there is... to make things thinner, squeeze in more batteries and leave room for new ports. If only 5% of rMBP13 users need to hook up superfast RAID or external PCIe devices, TB could easily disappear from 13" models. Remember when the 15" and 17" MBPs both had ExpressCard... then just the 17", then...

 

[JamesPDX]

Or, to put it in another way, Betamax is dead, long live Betacam?



Yes there is... to make things thinner, squeeze in more batteries and leave room for new ports. If only 5% of rMBP13 users need to hook up superfast RAID or external PCIe devices, TB could easily disappear from 13" models. Remember when the 15" and 17" MBPs both had ExpressCard... then just the 17", then...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/ap...lMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:2:Default

 

[Derived]

Or, to put it in another way, Betamax is dead, long live Betacam?



Yes there is... to make things thinner, squeeze in more batteries and leave room for new ports. If only 5% of rMBP13 users need to hook up superfast RAID or external PCIe devices, TB could easily disappear from 13" models. Remember when the 15" and 17" MBPs both had ExpressCard... then just the 17", then...

Exactly how much extra battery do you think you can put in by removing a thunderbolt port or two...maybe a couple extra milliamps? Enough to give you a few extra seconds of battery life? None of those reasons make any sense. An MDP connector is about as thin as I can see any MBP getting for the foreseeable future. It's certainly not the limiting factor currently.

They wouldn't be pro devices without TB, and again, there is no rational reason whatsoever to remove them.

 

[theluggage]

Exactly how much extra battery do you think you can put in by removing a thunderbolt port or two...?

Probably quite a bit - a port isn't just a hole in the case big enough to take the connector, you know - the connectors are bigger on the inside and need to be mechanically supported. Ports need controller chips and misc. other resistors, capacitors etc. Also, the computer needs enough power supply capacity to cope if every Thunderbolt port demands its regulation 10 W of power.

On one side of the rMBP the logic board runs alongside the edge of the case to support the TB and USB ports - on the other side there's a large-ish i/o board to support the ports on that side. Less ports mean more flexibility on positioning the logic board - so on the new MacBook it seems to be at the centre rear of the machine, where the case is thickest .

An MDP connector is about as thin as I can see any MBP getting for the foreseeable future

You do know that Intel are switching to new, thinner connectors for Thunderbolt 3?

They wouldn't be pro devices without TB

They wouldn't be pro devices without Ethernet, ExpressCard, Firewire, optical drives, SCSI, ADB, NuBus, floppy drives, LocalTalk, RS232, Centronics, IEE488, Kansas City, 20mA current loop, S-100...

Reality check: "Pro" is a marketing term meaning "more expensive than the version that doesn't have 'Pro' written on it.

 

[dealhunter2]

New mbpr

My first post on these forums! Really excited about the new 13" mbpr. I'm trying to decide if the bump from core i5 2.9ghz to core i7 3.1ghz is worth the extra price. It seems like a great machine, some say only a small upgrade, but more battery life, more powerful processors. SSDs with read/write speeds way higher than previous models. This seems like a bigger upgrade than some are saying. I agree that if you have a 2013 or 2014 it is not advisable to upgrade. I think the 13" mbpr will not get any updates with skylake this year. Quad core skylake will go to 15" mbpr. I have the 2013 15" mbpr for work and love it (overkill for my job, but who's complaining?). Great stuff on here guys!

 

[Derived]

Probably quite a bit - a port isn't just a hole in the case big enough to take the connector, you know - the connectors are bigger on the inside and need to be mechanically supported. Ports need controller chips and misc. other resistors, capacitors etc. Also, the computer needs enough power supply capacity to cope if every Thunderbolt port demands its regulation 10 W of power.

On one side of the rMBP the logic board runs alongside the edge of the case to support the TB and USB ports - on the other side there's a large-ish i/o board to support the ports on that side. Less ports mean more flexibility on positioning the logic board - so on the new MacBook it seems to be at the centre rear of the machine, where the case is thickest .



You do know that Intel are switching to new, thinner connectors for Thunderbolt 3?



They wouldn't be pro devices without Ethernet, ExpressCard, Firewire, optical drives, SCSI, ADB, NuBus, floppy drives, LocalTalk, RS232, Centronics, IEE488, Kansas City, 20mA current loop, S-100...

Reality check: "Pro" is a marketing term meaning "more expensive than the version that doesn't have 'Pro' written on it.

The fact is, TB is the go-to pro port now, it's not some outdated legacy port. Comparing it to FW or ExpressCard is silly. It's not going anywhere on the pro machines and I'll stake my life on it.

I of course understand that there's an IO board...but again...they're not going to just remove all its functionality to gain about 20 minutes of battery life. That would be pointless. If you want that, then buy an MBA or MB.

The port design switch is an even better argument for why it's staying...it'll get thinner, which means that it most assuredly won't be the "choke point" for thickness going forward, not for a while.

 

[theluggage]

The fact is, TB is the go-to pro port now, it's not some outdated legacy port. Comparing it to FW or ExpressCard is silly.

So? FW, ExpressCard and Gigabit Ethernet were go-to pro ports, too, when Apple dropped them from the MacBook Pro.

Next time Apple re-design the Macbook Pros, they're going to have to 3 ports competing for space: Thunderbolt 3 (...with a new connector, so they'll have to produce adapters new versions of their mini-displayport dongles), USB-C (probably with a huge range of peripherals and adapters by then) and USB-A (which is going to be around for ages, and it would be really annoying to need an adapter every time someone handed you a USB stick).

 

[Derived]

So? FW, ExpressCard and Gigabit Ethernet were go-to pro ports, too, when Apple dropped them from the MacBook Pro.

Next time Apple re-design the Macbook Pros, they're going to have to 3 ports competing for space: Thunderbolt 3 (...with a new connector, so they'll have to produce adapters new versions of their mini-displayport dongles), USB-C (probably with a huge range of peripherals and adapters by then) and USB-A (which is going to be around for ages, and it would be really annoying to need an adapter every time someone handed you a USB stick).

They really weren't, FW stayed long past its welcome. I have a 2012 MBP with FW for gods sake, there's no way more than a handful of people have ever used this port on machines from this generation. Expresscard was never going to last either. TB is the future. Again...the next pros should have no trouble with a couple TB ports, a couple C ports, and a single A port. There's more than enough room for that.

 

[theluggage]

I have a 2012 MBP with FW for gods sake, there's no way more than a handful of people have ever used this port on machines from this generation.

Nonsense. Your 2012 MBP was the first MBP to have USB 3 - prior to that FW800 (which beat the pants off USB 2) was the go-to interface for hooking up external drives, and many people upgrading in 2012 would have had existing FW drives. It was also widely used for A/V devices, and was the standard way to transfer digital video from MiniDV cameras (which certainly hadn't gone away in 2012 - the move to tapeless/h264 cameras had begun, but you don't junk a decent camcorder overnight). I don't think Thunderbolt has even had time to develop that kind of traction.

There was a huge wailing and gnashing of teeth on these forums when Apple dropped FW from the rMBP in 2012.

 

[penter]

http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-geekbench_3_multi_core-6

1.2 GHz Core M-5Y71 3727
1.2 GHz Core M-5Y70 3388
(5094/6251 for the i5/i7 air)

That's CPU performance. The GPU performance is hindered by the 5W limit, as seen in the Yoga 3 Pro Anandtech review:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9061/lenovo-yoga-3-pro-review/5

Edit:

The HD6000 in the MacBook Airs have double the graphics execution units of the HD5500 in the XPS13.

That's pretty lame, but somewhat expected, I guess....

 

[objectiveseeker]

I think the majority of the people in this thread are forgetting these benchmarks don't happen over significant time. It's a report of how fast the processor can go when it starts at zero.

You run something for a couple minutes instead of a couple seconds and you'll see exactly why the rMBP is faster than the Air (both CPU and GPU).

You want to, say, use a computer to DJ, process photo effects, run file batching operations, do video, run excel calculations (esp.) you're going to find airs are a lot slower in comparison.

The trick is not just how fast, but how long. That's what 28W vs 15W buys you.