current air vs 2.4 core 2 duos

[mentaluproar]

My current 24 inch imac and mac mini use 2.4 Ghz core 2 duos, as well as radeon 2600 HD and 320m (respectively). They perform fabulously, and other than a handful of issues with the imac, have been very reliable machines.

I understand the current sandy bridges are very efficient, so they don't need to the clock speed of a core 2 duo to reach the same performance. I also know the SSD in the air really makes for an agile laptop.

Ignoring the SSD, how does the 11" air compare in CPU and GPU performance to the two aforementioned machines? I understand the 320m and intel 3000HD are identical in performance, but I dont know how they compare to the 2600 HD, nor do I know how the sandy bridge i5 in the air compares to the core 2 duo.

I'd imagine hyperthreading would help with the occasional run in handbrake, but thats all I can imagine.

 

[alust2013]

The HD 3000 in the MBA isn't quite up to the 320m standard, although it's pretty close. No idea with the 2600HD though, that's pretty old. The i5 will outperform the 2.4 C2D with more efficient architecture, turbo boost and hyperthreading. The i7 Air benchmarks somewhere near the 2010 2.66GHz i7 MBP, to give you an idea of how powerful sandy bridge is.