Found this rather strange and had to share. A few weeks back, I got the new rMBP 13 (2.7Ghz base model) and was disappointed with the performance in both iMovie and CS6. I had a 4 minute video from my videocamera I wanted to edit. It was a 24Mbps, 1080i MP4 file. Playback was choppy in the preview window while playback in editing in iMovie and it took 7:12 to export the 4 minute video to the default medium 1920x1080 setting in iMovie. I returned it and got a used mid 2014 rMBP 15 (2.2Ghz integrated graphics) and that same clip was not choppy and only took a little over 4 minutes to export which I liked.
I decided to try out the new 2015 MBA 13 (1.6 Ghz base model) today, got it for cheap and wanted to see what it could do. To my surprise, it was actually better than the rMBP 13. The same 4 minute clip only took 6:22 to export vs the 7:12 it took for the rMBP 13. How is this possible? They are both dual-core processors but the one in the rMBP 13 has a much better clock speed. Although, they benchmark right around the same numbers. However, there must not be much difference between the Intel HD 6000 and the Intel Iris 6100?
I decided to try out the new 2015 MBA 13 (1.6 Ghz base model) today, got it for cheap and wanted to see what it could do. To my surprise, it was actually better than the rMBP 13. The same 4 minute clip only took 6:22 to export vs the 7:12 it took for the rMBP 13. How is this possible? They are both dual-core processors but the one in the rMBP 13 has a much better clock speed. Although, they benchmark right around the same numbers. However, there must not be much difference between the Intel HD 6000 and the Intel Iris 6100?