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Early Benchmarks on the New 13-Inch and 11-Inch MacBook Air

0815 said:
Why wait for the next laptop? Upgrade yours now.

I did the upgrade to my Unibody 15'' MacBook and the difference is amazing. It is the best upgrade I ever did to a machine. No more bouncing icons until the application starts up - all applications start instant without wait (even Photoshop). SSD upgrade is so much better than any other memory/CPU upgrade (of course it is also the priciest upgrade) ... and thanks to CCC the upgrade is painless and fast.

Bottom line: the benchmark results probably havent changed too much, but it feels soooo much faster. I rarely wait for an app 'processing' something - but waiting for an application to start was always annoying.
Click to expand...

I concur that the Core i7 15 inch MBP is amazingly fast. It makes my mid-2008 MBP seem like a dog in terms of both performance and battery life. I was literally stunned by the difference.

That said, if you just want portability and great battery life doing light tasks, I think the new MBA's are a home run. I also concur that the benchmarks posted are of little worth in terms of real world usability. The 320M (also in my MBP) makes a huge difference and the SSD will provide for near iPad-like instant on and responsiveness.

All in all, a nice package. I ordered the 11 inch for my own use and will report back when I get it.

SB
 
HyperX13 said:
I have the 11 inch one on order, and I can still change the order. My biggest issue is I fly a lot, and the 13 inch MBA is too tall when a person in front leans back. I ordered the 11 inch with 4 gigs of ram and the 1.8 g processor. I hope its gonna be fast enough.
Click to expand...

I think you are going to be very happy. I ordered the same model for the same reasons -- lots of airplane time and portability is a must. I will run some benchmarks and report back when the 11 inch arrives.

Enjoy.
 
Elephant? What Elephant?

lilo777 said:
Is it possible that performance of SSD in your MBP has already degraded due to lack of TRIM support in OSX? Performance of flash in MBA will degrade with time too (Anandtech reported that the performance will eventually drop below that of HDD).
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing out the elephant in the room....
 
SB27 said:
I think you are going to be very happy. I ordered the same model for the same reasons -- lots of airplane time and portability is a must. I will run some benchmarks and report back when the 11 inch arrives.

Enjoy.
Click to expand...
I played with an 11" 1.4/2GB at the local Apple store over lunch. While I think it would be interesting to see how it performs following a reboot, I was quite surprised at the performance on the new MBA.

Apps started with very little delay, I played with iMovie for a bit and that was very, very responsive. They had a build of Microsoft Office 2011 on it, and those apps started nearly instantly, sooooo much faster that 2K8 on my MBP.

I think they're going to be perceived as a fine box for less intensive use, the performance will surprise people. I can definitely see this as a fantastic travel laptop.

I'd love to hear impressions from folks (a) using this as a primary system; (b) using it to power an external monitor, such as the new 24", and (c) How does it run WoW? Gotta be able to take along one's addiction.
 
psymac said:
Maybe, but not if Apple uses the appropriate software controllers, look at OWC's SSDs, they don't degrade over time.
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People tried but so far failed to find any indication of that (Apple using special controllers). Besides those controllers still do not substitute TRIM.
 
KPOM said:
It's entirely possible the MacBook goes the way of the dodo and there are just the MacBook Air and Pro lines. Right now, there is just one version of the MacBook, which is basically a plastic 13" Pro minus the SD card slot and limited to 4GB.
Click to expand...

it would be easy enough to put a SD card on it (flip the kensington slot to other side. )

The problem is shared price point more than anything else. Apple has kep the $999 "floor" on the laptop line for more than two years. (Oct. '98 is when dropped to $999). $899 is still technically separated from the top end of the iPad line ( $829). What the Macbook needs is a a price gap between it and the MBA 11".

If Apple wants to pretend that sub $999 laptops don't exist for a couple more years then... yeah the Macbook has no place to go. The only non-overlapping price point is $1099. Might as well come up with a lower entry model on the MBP 13" and shave $100 off. (like shave the memory to 2GB and pick cheapest CPU/GPU combo they can get away with. )

Staying above $998 means Apple just even going to try to compete for average computer users at all with Mac OS X. They are going to try to sell them on iOS and are willing to just let them buy Windows boxes in the sub $999 range without competing at all. Mac will have officially reached "cash cow" status.

I don't see Apple letting the MacBook and MBA 11" battle for customer attention at the same price. Sure they could decripple the MacBook. Bring back FW, add SD slot , etc. to let customers choose between different value weighting.
 
What about the macbook to the macbook air? those are the most similar in price
 
The problem I have deciding is simple. There are no Apple resellers near me that carry the air, so seeing one in person is impossible. Therefore all I can go on to ascertain performance is processor speed and these benchmarks. Whilst I love the 11.6" I just can't love the 1.4 processor. If it was a 1.83 like the 13" then I'd snap it up in an instant. But going on the $100 difference between 128gb versions - it's making me sway towards the 13" reluctantly.... My head says 13, my heart wants a 11.6 :(

never before has 1.9" meant so much... ;)
 
lilo777 said:
Is it possible that performance of SSD in your MBP has already degraded due to lack of TRIM support in OSX? Performance of flash in MBA will degrade with time too (Anandtech reported that the performance will eventually drop below that of HDD).
Click to expand...

I don't think TRIm has much of an effect. I use my MacBook Pro for internet surfing primarily and I am only using 15 GB of the 64 GB SSD. the performance has been pretty consistent since the day I installed the SSD.

I am concerned about the MBA flash drive losing performance over time. I will look for that Anandtech article.
 
psymac said:
Maybe, but not if Apple uses the appropriate software controllers, look at OWC's SSDs, they don't degrade over time.
Click to expand...
In addition, failure to support trim affects write speed only. Read speed doesn't degrade. It's to do with the need on SSDs to read-modify-write in certain situations where, with the same layout on a hard disk, you'd just write.
 
psymac said:
Maybe, but not if Apple uses the appropriate software controllers, look at OWC's SSDs, they don't degrade over time.
Click to expand...

lilo777 said:
People tried but so far failed to find any indication of that (Apple using special controllers). Besides those controllers still do not substitute TRIM.
Click to expand...

Controller software and drive firmware solutions are better than nothing, but neither can match TRIM for long term performance.

One way to come close to what TRIM will do is to reformat the SSD with a formatter that supports TRIM. Then install OSX into a smaller partition than the drive (say a 100 GB partition on a 128 GB SSD). Do not use the spare 28 GB - but do make sure that something sends a TRIM command or uses the drive utility to TRIM the spare 28 GB. (If you dual-boot with Windows 7, it's pretty easy - just create a filesystem from Win7 on the 28GB partition, then delete it - Win7 will TRIM the 28GB.)

Also note that some of the SSD drives that claim that they don't need TRIM in fact parse the NTFS filesystem metadata to find free space. This won't work with an Apple filesystem on the drive, of course.

<sarcasm>
I heard that Apple planned on TRIM support in 10.6.5 - but those engineers were reassigned to work on changing the function of the screen orientation lock button on the Ipad for IOS 4.2.
</sarcasm>
 
The main benefit of an SSD is the near zero access time. A lot of time is wasted moving the head around on a conventional drive. Although lack of TRIM will reduce write speed after a while, the read speed and zero access time are not effected.

One thing that really impressed me with an SSD is the speed of loading applications such as Dreamweaver, PhotoShop, MS Office and LabVIEW. I assume these packages open lots of smaller individual files as their load times were drastically reduced.
 
Thomas Harte said:
Probably not iPad or iPhone 4 just on account of screen real estate. I still regularly use my 2006 Core Duo MacBook Pro (about 2600 on Geekbench, I think, and just 2GB RAM) for iPhone and iPad development, but producing iPad apps is a real hassle because the iPad can be oriented to be 1024 pixels tall and the iPhone 4's display is similarly 960 pixels tall, whereas my screen is only 900 pixels tall. The simulator can display at 50% scale to squeeze everything on, but then you're not getting a brilliant preview and Interface Builder has no such provision, so you're often stuck laying out screens just a portion at a time.

I'm one of the last remaining users of Xcode in 'condensed' view (in which the project list is one window, every file you open is a separate window), but if anything I think that increases the amount of space I use because I end up arranging things unconsciously in complicated spatial patterns. Reports are that the pending Xcode 4 does a lot for better screen real estate usage, but it's still under NDA so I doubt anybody will directly comment.

In terms of build speed and memory availability, I've never had an issue. I've not even been close to having an issue.

It takes a couple of seconds more to build and launch on a real device than in the simulator, but if you have a real device and are happy to tether all day then it's actually quite an efficient working environment.
Click to expand...

MBA will be totally fine performance-wise for Xcode. Just for iPhone, the screen real estate will be enough, and for iPad, test on the tethered device until you get home and plug in to a big-ass monitor.

A real world benchmark:

I click to open new Word on my 1st Gen MacBook, it takes about 20 seconds to load. Xcode development runs fine.

People are saying new Word on new MBA is like click and its open, so Xcode should not be a slouch.
 
I have an 11.6" 1.4 ghz, 2 GB, with the 128GB flash storage. I have it running a new 27 Cinema Display at it's native resolution. Very smooth video playback. No hesitations at all. Very quick. I had a faster Macbook (2.2 ghz, 2 GB, with Intel X3100 graphics) and this seems much faster and way better for video. Not a gamer so can't comment on things like WoW. But for what I do, this machine is faster than my old 2.2 C2D MacBook (late 2007).

This machine will be my primary computer (I am a road warrior but at home mostly use it for checking emails and surfing). While the bench results are interesting, processor cycles are only a part of the overall "snappiness" of a computer on what I would call "office" tasks - email, surfing, document preparation, etc.

I have been very impressed with the speed actually ... I was a little worried about the 11 vs the 13 for that reason, but have not noticed anything.

And on the 2 GB RAM front, I am running Ubuntu in a virtual machine already, no issues with MBA performance. This little baby is a winner...

Cheers
 
SammySlim said:
I have an 11.6" 1.4 ghz, 2 GB, with the 128GB flash storage. I have it running a new 27 Cinema Display at it's native resolution. Very smooth video playback. No hesitations at all. Very quick. I had a faster Macbook (2.2 ghz, 2 GB, with Intel X3100 graphics) and this seems much faster and way better for video. Not a gamer so can't comment on things like WoW. But for what I do, this machine is faster than my old 2.2 C2D MacBook (late 2007).

This machine will be my primary computer (I am a road warrior but at home mostly use it for checking emails and surfing). While the bench results are interesting, processor cycles are only a part of the overall "snappiness" of a computer on what I would call "office" tasks - email, surfing, document preparation, etc.

I have been very impressed with the speed actually ... I was a little worried about the 11 vs the 13 for that reason, but have not noticed anything.

And on the 2 GB RAM front, I am running Ubuntu in a virtual machine already, no issues with MBA performance. This little baby is a winner...

Cheers
Click to expand...

Very interesting, thanks Sammy. I have the early 2008 white MacBook with the 2.4GHz processor but otherwise similar specs. It's falling apart (would never buy another plastic notebook) so am on the hunt for a new machine. The 11' MBA sounds pretty good, thanks for the account.

Shouting out to everyone now; what do you think is more 'worth-it' - the 4GB RAM or the 1.6GHz C2D?
 
gcliv said:
These benchmarks provide interesting discussion, but they are a very poor tool to help your average-to-semi-saavy user choose a model based on performance.

The vast majority of computer usage is a mixed bag. The "feeling" of speed is derived from subjective things such as how long a web page loads, how fast apps launch, boot times, etc. The SSD drive is the single biggest improvement in most of these instances, probably more so than even a jump between CPU generations (i.e. Core 2 to Core i). Whether or not it takes 6 minutes or 6 minutes and 30 seconds to render something in iMovie is really irrelevant to most users, which is what these benchmarks will provide better comparison for than the 'real world' usage.
Click to expand...


interesting. for a not very mac-savvy user like myself. I have a late 2008 unibody MacBook (just before they added the 'Pro' again), 2GB RAM and it often seems slow to me when it comes to opening applications.
 
fruitpunch.ben said:
can anyone compare these MBA geekbench results with a ~$500 netbook with Atom processor so I can see the difference?
I know that the better SSD and graphics card will also be a big improvement, but I'm just interested in the processor performance of say a 1.6GHz Atom vs the 1.4GHz core 2 duo ULV
Click to expand...

I ran geekbench on my MSI wind U100 with the atom n270 1.6 GHz, 2 gb ram and got a Geekbench score of 1006.

So half the score of the 1.4 MBA
 
nitropowered said:
I ran geekbench on my MSI wind U100 with the atom n270 1.6 GHz, 2 gb ram and got a Geekbench score of 1006.

So half the score of the 1.4 MBA
Click to expand...

Thank you. Good to know that you get at least double the performance, since you're paying more than double. Just helps that little bit more to justify the cost
 
Hackintosh Geekbench results

I am very interested in the MBA. They absolutely smoke netbook hackintoshes. Mine is an HP a year old but still..,I am impressed with the difference in performance not to mention quality of the hardware cramped feel of netbook etc.

My only question is to buy the air now or wait for the next MBP refresh with SSDs,etc. which might be just a couple of months away.

My Geekbench results:
 

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