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2020 i7 GeekBench results showing up.

Just going off clock speeds, I was predicting a 10% improvement. I remember benchmarks on the 12" MacBook, the i7 was hardly any faster.
 
Seems like the i7 is not worth it....I am considering selling my 2018 MacBook Air and buying a MacBook Air 2020 i5, 512 GB, and 16 GB RAM because of the more reliable keyboard and hopefully (a bit) faster performance. Might hold off until August/September and maybe a new MBP might come out by then too.

I do have some problems with extra spaces and random periods (goes away when I clean the keyboard with compressed air) with the 2018 Air... and it lags (spinning wheel) when I have too many windows and tabs open...could be a problem for when I start graduate school in Sept...
 
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I think for future-proofing reasons I will still go for the i7. I'm still sorta waiting until the new 14 inch MBP to be announced.
But I am also thinking for what I would spend on a nicely spec'd 14''MBP I could get a MBA and a refurbished iPad Pro 11''. Best of both worlds.
 
KB23 said:
Seems like the i7 is not worth it....I am considering selling my 2018 MacBook Air and buying a MacBook Air 2020 i5, 512 GB, and 16 GB RAM because of the more reliable keyboard and hopefully (a bit) faster performance. Might hold off until August/September and maybe a new MBP might come out by then too.

I do have some problems with extra spaces and random periods (goes away when I clean the keyboard with compressed air) with the 2018 Air... and it lags (spinning wheel) when I have too many windows and tabs open...could be a problem for when I start graduate school in Sept...
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What are the specs of your 2018 Air?
 
Would be interesting to know if the results are from freshly unwrapped MacBook Airs that are still doing indexing etc, imagine that affects the Geekbench score?
 
JackJoachim said:
I think for future-proofing reasons I will still go for the i7. I'm still sorta waiting until the new 14 inch MBP to be announced.
But I am also thinking for what I would spend on a nicely spec'd 14''MBP I could get a MBA and a refurbished iPad Pro 11''. Best of both worlds.
Click to expand...
I'm also in the same situation. I want to wait for a Pro 14" but even if that comes around WWDC a comparable i7/16GB/512MB spec will be at least 50% more expensive than the air and for what I use at least it isn't going to be worth it.
I just placed the order for the i7 before I saw these benchmarks.... dont know if I should change to i5 now. I feel like I should be sensible and do so.
 
intelligence said:
Would be interesting to know if the results are from freshly unwrapped MacBook Airs that are still doing indexing etc, imagine that affects the Geekbench score?
Click to expand...

I agreed, as we have seen this can affect heating and performance.

guicane said:
I'm also in the same situation. I want to wait for a Pro 14" but even if that comes around WWDC a comparable i7/16GB/512MB spec will be at least 50% more expensive than the air and for what I use at least it isn't going to be worth it.
I just placed the order for the i7 before I saw these benchmarks.... dont know if I should change to i5 now. I feel like I should be sensible and do so.
Click to expand...

I say just stick with it. Bragging rights are always nice.
 
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JackJoachim said:
I think for future-proofing reasons I will still go for the i7
Click to expand...

What future-proofing? It’s the same CPU, just with marginally higher clock. Buy it if you need a slightly faster CPU today - it won’t make any difference whatsoever for future software.
 
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KB23 said:
I do have some problems with extra spaces and random periods (goes away when I clean the keyboard with compressed air) with the 2018 Air... and it lags (spinning wheel) when I have too many windows and tabs open...
Click to expand...

I've found that pressing firmly down on the key and nudging it around in clockwise and counter-clockwise directions to work well. I do that and give repeating keys a few hard taps. My 2018 MBP starte getting skippy on me last month. It's stopped now and I'm hoping it stays that way. I had a 2016 that had keyboard issues intermittently in the first year of ownership but went on to work flawlessly for the entire second year I owned it.

My opinion is that sometimes the glitchy keyboards do better with a little breaking in. I never use compressed air. I can't see how that would even do anyting. The actual switch used is a sealed dome switch.

That won't help with the lag though. Have you gone through and tried to identify if you have a program or a start-up item that's bringing the pain? I got my wife a 8GB 2018 MBA and I've been surprised at how capable it is. She's not cutting video on it, but she has lots of tabs and other programs open at the same time.
 
leman said:
What future-proofing? It’s the same CPU, just with marginally higher clock. Buy it if you need a slightly faster CPU today - it won’t make any difference whatsoever for future software.
Click to expand...

More or less just thinking in terms of how extend the use of the machine for many years to come. I would likely be trying to get 5-7 years out of it. I don't use any heavy software or anything like that, just normal everyday things like web, email, Office, maybe some Lightroom/Garage Band/FCP. Just my thoughts on it.
 
JackJoachim said:
More or less just thinking in terms of how extend the use of the machine for many years to come. I would likely be trying to get 5-7 years out of it. I don't use any heavy software or anything like that, just normal everyday things like web, email, Office, maybe some Lightroom/Garage Band/FCP. Just my thoughts on it.
Click to expand...

Then get the i5. The moment your 1.1 ghz CPU is too slow for office, the 1.2ghz i7 will be as well. And these CPUs are inherently future proof since they come with AVX-512, allowing them to double their performance in some workloads (like image processing). In 2-3 years software utilizing these instructions will be more common, at which point you will see a nice boost.
 
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leman said:
What future-proofing? It’s the same CPU, just with marginally higher clock. Buy it if you need a slightly faster CPU today - it won’t make any difference whatsoever for future software.
Click to expand...
If you want any future-proofing you should wait for the ARM MacBooks later this year or next. But I'd guess 3-4 years before new Apps start being ARM only.
 
kreasonos said:
What are the specs of your 2018 Air?
Click to expand...

It’s the base model Macbook Air 2018.
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smirking said:
I've found that pressing firmly down on the key and nudging it around in clockwise and counter-clockwise directions to work well. I do that and give repeating keys a few hard taps. My 2018 MBP starte getting skippy on me last month. It's stopped now and I'm hoping it stays that way. I had a 2016 that had keyboard issues intermittently in the first year of ownership but went on to work flawlessly for the entire second year I owned it.

My opinion is that sometimes the glitchy keyboards do better with a little breaking in. I never use compressed air. I can't see how that would even do anyting. The actual switch used is a sealed dome switch.

That won't help with the lag though. Have you gone through and tried to identify if you have a program or a start-up item that's bringing the pain? I got my wife a 8GB 2018 MBA and I've been surprised at how capable it is. She's not cutting video on it, but she has lots of tabs and other programs open at the same time.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice, I’ll try it out!

It lags sometimes if I have like 5-6 Safari windows and a few Chrome windows open (with multiple tabs in each). I think I need 16 GB of RAM... but I think I’ll hold off on buying a new mac for now.

I also noticed that if I have my keybord cover on I rarely get the random extra spaces or periods...
 
The variation on the Geekbench scores is so huge that no meaningful comparison can be made. I'm guessing people were running Geekbench on laptops already running a ton of other software at the same time, or else in different stages of thermal throttling. Also remember that there are fundamental issues with Geekbench 5 that have been widely criticized - it doesn't represent processors as well as Geekbench 4 did.

Another case and point - I just ran Geekbench 4 - the good one - and almost the entire time my CPU speed was 1-3%. There were brief bursts to near 100% when a compute heavy benchmark hit, but those lasted a fraction of a second. So the obvious question is what aspect of an i7 would show up on Geekbench performance? As further proof of this, I reran Geekbench with turbo boost disabled, and only had a 10% drop in score.
 
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