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This comparison seems to me at least a bit redundant. The same (?) CPUs are used in PCs, hence the comparative performances and rankings should be available already.

Are there Intel chips used only in MBPs? Is it OS dependent? I don't think so.
 
A 10% increase over a 2011 is very minimal would be crazy to spend money just for a 10%-15% on a 2012 model. Great if your coming from something lesser than a 2011 MBP or picking this up for the first time
Agreed. It was why I just bought a 2.3Ghz MBP rather than the 2.6. According to the GeekBench figures the 2.6 had a 9% higher speed for 20% more money.
 
I was under the impression that the MBA usually wins out here because of its SSD. Is this just CPU only?
 
Why is there a huge disparity between the 2012 Macbook Air i5 and 2012 Macbook Air i7?
 
10-15 percent are not much, but the performance per watt is much higher in the case of Ivy Bridge. So even if Ivy Bridge provides only 10-15 percent more computational power, Ivy Bridge processors run much cooler than their Sandy Bridge counterparts.
 
Here's the thing: performance benchmarks for laptops no longer matter. Or at least there's absolutely no reason to benchmark laptops that get super hot and loud when you take advantage of all the processing power that's available.

Remember, people were returning the high-end 2011 MacBook Pro because of heat and fan noise issues, exchanging it for the lower specced model (e.g., http://www.marco.org/2011/09/20/heat-and-fan-issues-with-2011-15-inch-macbook-pro).

Whenever benchmarks like these get posted, there should be a decibel level, ambient temperature, and battery life estimate that goes alongside them.


Great idea.
 
I'm a bit surprised that the Air so close to the Pro. Does drive performance have an impact on Geekbench scores?
I intended to buy a MBP 13", but now I think I'll go with the Air. Compared with the Air and Retina MBP the ordinary MBP seems so 2010...
Or maybe wait for a Retina 13".
 
Here's the thing: performance benchmarks for laptops no longer matter. Or at least there's absolutely no reason to benchmark laptops that get super hot and loud when you take advantage of all the processing power that's available.

Remember, people were returning the high-end 2011 MacBook Pro because of heat and fan noise issues, exchanging it for the lower specced model (e.g., http://www.marco.org/2011/09/20/heat-and-fan-issues-with-2011-15-inch-macbook-pro).

Whenever benchmarks like these get posted, there should be a decibel level, ambient temperature, and battery life estimate that goes alongside them.

Yes. My mom's 2007 17" MacBook Pro is powerful, but it's loud and gets very hot. The battery life on it is, of course, bad compared to newer ones. I'd take a new, slower, quieter MacBook over that thing. The 17" screen is also excessive.
 
Is it worth picking up the 2.9Ghz i7 over the 2.5 Ghz i5 for the difference in performance? I know it has an extra 250GB and 1MB extra cache.. But I'm going to put in a SSD. That should keep me satisfied, right? I only consider it because I'm run tons of applications at once, hardly any editing stuff like that.

Hard to justify the extra $300
 
I know, its mind blowing!!! :rolleyes: Gotta love slow news days at MacRumors :)

Yep, only 1 article in the past few days before this. I think the next article is going to be: "Apple begins seeding 10.7.x to developers" then "Apple begins seeding 10.7.x golden master to developers".
 
The biggest improvements are going to be in graphics. So far I have only seen comparisons for WoW and Portal 2 on the new Airs. Someone do more!
 
Pro vs. Air

Is it just me or is the difference in performance between the '12 air and '12 13" Pro pretty small.
 
hmmmmm... My Mac Pro does 21000 on GeekBench 2...
Apple doesn't realize a laptop will NEVER be able to keep up with a real Pro machine... This makes me even more disappointed that they don't seem to care about their fastest Mac...:mad:

I see what you mean. My 8-core Mac Pro will arrive at my house in 6-10 business days. It will destroy any of the new iMacs in speed tests, and it costs as much as the cheapest MacBook Air since it's used. I'm not even a big fan of new Macs anymore because Apple is removing all of the ports I need so that I'd have to use a high-priced Thunderbolt hub to get basic things like ethernet! And new Macs can't run (Snow) Leopard on them supposedly, which I need for some of my apps. Why did they trash Rosetta?!

Apple's Mac Pro update better be good.
 
Is it worth picking up the 2.9Ghz i7 over the 2.5 Ghz i5 for the difference in performance? I know it has an extra 250GB and 1MB extra cache.. But I'm going to put in a SSD. That should keep me satisfied, right? I only consider it because I'm run tons of applications at once, hardly any editing stuff like that.

Hard to justify the extra $300

No, it probably isn't. If you do a lot of virtualisation that 1MB of cache means a lot but if that isn't your biggest concern you'll be fine with the standard version. Make sure you get a decent SSD and maybe pump up the RAM to 8GB and you'll fly just fine.
 
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