Curiously, Apple did not employ a Core i3 processor for the 13-inch MacBook, which would seemingly be the obvious choice, given the Core i5 and i7 chips in the larger models. On the one hand, at the time we wrote this, clock rates on the Core i3 line topped out at 2.26GHz for notebooks, below the 2.4GHz rate in the Core 2 Duo chip Apple used. But on the other hand, Core 2 Duo doesn’t allow for multiple virtual threads, or Hyper-Threading. Hyper-Threading allows compatible software to divvy up tasks among twice the number of cores than are actually present in the chip. As a result, it's possible that a Core i3 chip might have presented better performance for Hyper-Threading–capable programs, such as Adobe Photoshop. For the average consumer, however, Core 2 Duo is plenty good, and it likely saves you a little cash at the outset. Plus, professionals who would likely be taking advantage of Photoshop or other Hyper-Threading–optimized software would probably opt for the 15- or 17-inch MacBook Pro instead.
To put the CPU (and 4GB of DDR3 RAM) through its paces, we started with our Cinebench test, which stresses all the cores of a given processor to gauge raw CPU performance. Compared both with the previous MacBook Pro and the average for thin-and-light laptops, this 13-inch MacBook Pro exceeded expectations, with a score of 5,039. The current average for the thin-and-light category is 4,544, and its predecessor managed a still-noteworthy score of 4,908. That’s not to say it knocked our socks off: The $1,269 Lenovo ThinkPad T410 scored 8,564 on this same test, but that’s the difference a processor makes. The ThinkPad T410 was equipped with a 2.53GHz Intel Core i5-540M chip, and its muscle clearly shows in this test.
