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Benchmarks for New 13-Inch MacBook Pro Beat MacBook Air, Previous MacBook Pro by 10-15%

Taipan said:
I intended to buy a MBP 13", but now I think I'll go with the Air.
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Apart from a small subset of people who need CPU speed over all else (but don't go for a 15" to get the discrete GPU), the only real selling points of the 13" MBP now seem to be the extra connectivity, the optical drive and the possibility of 500 or 750 GB of internal storage without a second mortgage.

No Ethernet and/or Firewire will be the deal-braker for some, especially if they also use an external monitor (only the one Thunderbolt port, which doubles as the external monitor port, and those Apple dongles don't look like they daisy-chain). That's not such an issue on the Retina Pro with two TB ports and HDMI as an alternative monitor out.

Of course, if you spring for an Apple Thunderbolt Display, that's your connectivity sorted out.
 
Kingofnima said:
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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I'm with you on the 2.5 GHz choice. You should know that you can "pump up" the RAM to 16 GB. Crucial has it for $173.
 
ppdix said:
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:
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that sentence makes no sense at all ... i dont think apple is trying to get the same performance out of a laptop :confused:

completely different target group
 
I just purchased the new 13-inch MacBook Pro and I'm very pleased with its performance. I've been doing a lot of video editing and the render times are much shorter when compared to my last MBP (Core 2 Duo). Rendering an hour long 1080p video hardly kicks on the fans and only takes a fraction of the time, whereas my last one it was blasting them. I'm also doing some 3D animation and I've noticed much smoother performance when working with high detail models.

This is a great, powerful little computer.
 
usptact said:
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.
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"New MBP should be 10% faster" vs. "New MBP is 10% faster". See the difference?


faroZ06 said:
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!
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Who says you need Thunderbolt to get an Ethernet adapter? If you want to get an Ethernet adapter for the Retina MacBook Pro, for example, I can get one on eBay for £1.29.
 
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I'm surprised the Air is so close to the MBP performance.

I have just sold my unibody MacBook. If I was looking to replace it at the moment (sticking with my iMac / iPad combination for now), I would definitely go for the Air as the advantages of that model are more important to me (size, weight, screen).
 
How about "refreshed" instead of "new"

Keeping up with inflation should be a requirement and not praised.

The fact that they still use that outdated resolution while both having a better option in use in the Air and being all about "retina" displays is just plain stupid and illogical. Are they looking to kill the MBP 13 or do they just figure people are stupid enough to buy it?
 
Moonjumper said:
I'm surprised the Air is so close to the MBP performance.

I have just sold my unibody MacBook. If I was looking to replace it at the moment (sticking with my iMac / iPad combination for now), I would definitely go for the Air as the advantages of that model are more important to me (size, weight, screen).
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There's a reason for that: If you look at the description on the store, the MBA has "2.0GHz Intel Dual-Core Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz". So the maximum speed is 3.2 GHz, but if things get too hot, the speed is reduced to 2.0 GHz (an interesting difference between Apple and Dell is that Apple sells this as "2.0 GHz" and Dell sells it as "3.2 GHz"). The fastest MBP is "2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz". So when there is little heat, it is 12.5% faster (3.2 -> 3.6 = 12.5%), but when both get hot and have to reduce the processor speed, it will be 45% faster (2.0 -> 2.9 = 45%).
 
StealthGhost said:
How about "refreshed" instead of "new"

Keeping up with inflation should be a requirement and not praised.

The fact that they still use that outdated resolution while both having a better option in use in the Air and being all about "retina" displays is just plain stupid and illogical. Are they looking to kill the MBP 13 or do they just figure people are stupid enough to buy it?
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While I just bought a new 13" MBP and am very happy with it, a sore point is that they didn't even update it to match the screen resolution of the 13" MBA.

And yes, they are either trying to kill it or at least let it atrophy.
 
Kingofnima said:
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.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much.
 
As others have mentioned this speaks volumes of the Macbook Air considering it scores so close to the pro...

The macbook air feels much much faster than the pro....Unless you're rendering video the air feels much snappier in doing just about everything.
 
I would like to defend this story. I put in an order with my university for a new 13" MBA a week before the announcement. I didn't have a choice, our budget cycle is not aligned with Apple's release schedule. I think I'll end up with the 2011 i5, although it has been several weeks since I ordered, so I'm hoping that I end up with the 2012. However, based on this chart, I'm not going to be disappointed over a 10% speed difference. Especially since this is replacing a 2008 MBP.

To answer those who are unfamiliar with GeekBench, it is ONLY CPU and Memory that are tested. No graphics, no drive access. So, it is a synthetic test for only those components. In real-world use, the SSD will make a huge difference in many operations. And depending on your usage scenario, the same might be true of the video. GeekBench is very useful but for only limited information. I use it when over clocking to see the end result, but I would never use it to make a decision between an MBA and and MBP as it only is hitting a small set of factors.
 
whitesand said:
As others have mentioned this speaks volumes of the Macbook Air considering it scores so close to the pro...

The macbook air feels much much faster than the pro....Unless you're rendering video the air feels much snappier in doing just about everything.
Click to expand...

And that snappiness to likely due to the SSD. I just bought a MBP instead of a MBA because I was unwilling to live with the constrained storage of the Air.

There is a solution, though: because the MBP is modular and expandable, it will be easy to install a SSD along with the HDD, giving me the best of both worlds. All I give up is the optical drive, which I was expecting to lose on this go-round anyway.
 
I wrestled with a buying decision and settled on the refreshed 2.9Ghz 13" MBP.

I wasn't interested in buying an early 2012 MBP since it lacked USB 3.

I also feel the graphics improvement is worth something, as is etherent (which is important to me but maybe not to everyone) and the clincher was I really need an optical drive. I rip a lot of CD's and will continue to do so for several years since I subscribe to a CD service for my mobile DJ business.

Retina display not as important for a laptop in my opinion and I wasn't willing to pay the premium anyway.

My only lingering doubt is whether I should have gotten the 2.5 GHz model instead and increased the amount of RAM. But in the end, I think I'll be very happy with my 2.9GHz MBP.
 
Does anyone know why the Pro doesn't geekbench much faster than the Air based on clock speed alone?

Air 2.0 GHz i7, 2 Core/4 threads, Geekbench 6785
Pro 2.9 GH7 i7, 2 Core/4 threads, Geekbench 7841

A difference in scores of 16%, but a difference in clock speed of 45%.

Why isn't the i7 2.9 pulling scores close to 10,000? (6785/2*2.9=9838).

I know they're different chips, but i7s with 2 cores and hyperthreading, and the one in the Air is ULV, which should have less power than the Mobile version, no?

What gives?
 
Dan-- said:
Does anyone know why the Pro doesn't geekbench much faster than the Air based on clock speed alone?

Air 2.0 GHz i7, 2 Core/4 threads, Geekbench 6785
Pro 2.9 GH7 i7, 2 Core/4 threads, Geekbench 7841

A difference in scores of 16%, but a difference in clock speed of 45%.

Why isn't the i7 2.9 pulling scores close to 10,000? (6785/2*2.9=9838).

I know they're different chips, but i7s with 2 cores and hyperthreading, and the one in the Air is ULV, which should have less power than the Mobile version, no?

What gives?
Click to expand...

Post number 59 answered this excellently.
 
I'm not being funny, but why does my base MBP13 (and judging by other results, most people with one), get a Geekbench score of around 7300? Yet in this article we're being told its not even 6700.

Checking the charts for the Air 13 and they don't suffer from this, neither do the Late 2011 MBPs.

It's as though they've artificially lowered the score of the MBP13 :confused:
 
I still can't understand why Apple didn't increase the resolution of 13 MBP to match MBA, there is really nothing "Pro" about the 13 MBP. Even the performance difference (CPU only, not to mention slower disk) over the MBA is minimal.
 
vikpt said:
just hoping here that the thinner, retina 13 in. MBP is real!
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I'd like one of those as well, but I think they will be a long time coming...the Air has the least amount of room to add more battery to power the Retina display, and it also serves as a differentiator from the Pro line.
 
Really hard to decide between the top model 13" Air and Pro. And with a student discount, the Pro is actually $50 cheaper than the Air. Performance over portability I guess.

riveting said:
I still can't understand why Apple didn't increase the resolution of 13 MBP to match MBA, there is really nothing "Pro" about the 13 MBP. Even the performance difference (CPU only, not to mention slower disk) over the MBA is minimal.
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Oh, is the screen worse on the Pro? I'm definitely going to have to go to a store and see the two first hand to decide. I wonder if Airs are less prone to malfunctions since they don't have all those moving drives that the Pro has. Wouldn't get as hot too I'd imagine.
 
The Core 2 in the Macbook Air 2011 is almost as good as the i5? I was expecting a bigger difference in performance.

[Edit] My mistake. It thought it was the older cpu.
 
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