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

[deconstruct60]

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

TRIM is about pass more information to the controller sooner. However, over the long term the drive controller still can make most of the same inferences; just at a different time. TRIM allows you to buiild a 'dumber' controllers that gets it homework done for it.

It also won't save you if you fill your drive up to the brim with data. ( It only passes info about 'discarded' blocks by the OS. If they are not discared then TRIM does nothing for you.

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.

In other words, if your drive controller vendor failed to implement a "overprovision" buffer create one yourself.

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.

A cheesy hack that will likely disappear just as quickly as it appeared since Windows 7 NTFS now supports TRIM (since Feb '10). But yeah... scratch any of those off your candidate list. It won't be hard to do in about a year or so; just select something recently build at that time.

This won't work with an Apple filesystem on the drive, of course.

won't work on Linux, Solaris , Netapp, EMC , Dell , .... and numerous other boxes that need fast IOPS boxes either. Nor it is particularly necessary since there are other more robust solutions.

 

[macduke]

There is absolutely no benefit to having a quad core CPU over a dual core one in a notebook. You are most likely not going to do any encoding or hard core rendering so you will see absolutely no performance gain provide that we are talking about the same generation CPU and the same frequency. Which is why Apple will most likely not opt in for a quad core CPU as a standard option. If anything it will be the top of the line model and even there I doubt that you will see a quad core option early next year. Quad cores simply drain your battery too fast. Actually I think even the automatic overclocking is disabled on the i5 and i7 that come with MBPs (or at least I have never seen it kick in).

This comment is incredibly dense. Actually, as a design student, that's exactly what I'll be doing with it. I don't have the luxury of purchasing a new Mac Pro and Macbook Pro at this point in my life. So since I need a laptop, I might as well get the best bang for my buck. We're also talking future proofing. Just because say half the apps I use can only use two cores doesn't mean that they won't be upgraded in the next couple years. When I'm at home, I plug my machine into a 26" screen. Works fine for me.

In addition Sandy Bridge is coming out Q1 2011 with a TDP of 45W for the lower end quad-core packages. I think that's a bit higher than Apple typically likes to use, but it isn't impossible. Especially with further power refinements (die shrink or similar, not sure where in the cycle they will be then) in a second version perhaps by the end of the year. Not to even mention battery enhancements and the use of SSD to bring down power requirements. It's not out of the question.

I am in no way a typical user. Rendering 1080p content on my current machine can be quite annoying. And that's only the beginning. Although for an older machine it has held up fairly well. I'm just looking forward to moving on next year.

 

[Jamie0003]

I don't know much about flash memory, but is flash memory that's used in the MBA faster than a standard laptop SSD? Or is it the same?

 

[MacKeeperFanMod]

After seeing these benchmarks, I'm much more inclined to get the 13" version over the 11". The 13" is over 33% more faster/powerful.

 

[MythicFrost]

I'm impressed with how well the A4 did:

A4 @ 1GHz (1-core) ~450
C2D @ 1.4GHz (2-core) ~2020

With a higher clock speed and two cores the A4 would be close to the performance of the C2D (~1300) which I'd say is pretty good for a mobile chip.

 

[Westside guy]

Thanks. I'll have to check out Firefox.

It's too bad because I prefer Webkit to Gecko - but the way Safari's memory usage ramps up bugs me.

Firefox isn't perfect, though - it's just the lesser of two (three?) evils, in my opinion.

 

[ReallyBigFeet]

LOL, man I hope I'm not totally underwhelmed by my new 13" maxed out Netbook, but since I'm coming from this, I'm setting my sights low.

 

[deconstruct60]

This comment is incredibly dense.
Actually, as a design student, that's exactly what I'll be doing with it.

It is not that dense. Conveniently you separated "that's exactly what I'll be doing with it" from "I am in no way a typical user." with alot of text. There is diminishing small reason why Apple should design their standard configs around an atypical user.

I don't have the luxury of purchasing a new Mac Pro and Macbook Pro at this point in my life. So since I need a laptop, I might as well get the best bang for my buck.

Again could be more clearly rephrased as " since I need both a desktop and laptop what I am looking for is a 'desktop replacement' style laptop. "
Apple is tragetting people who need laptops which can serve as lightweight desktop replacements if needed. However, they aren't going to give up sub 1" thickness and other weight/power reductions to claim the desktop market share. They have the iMac for that.

We're also talking future proofing.

On these forums "future proofing" can almost always be replaced by "I'm about to spend more than i should but ..."

There is no reliable "proofing" for the future. You can do planning for the future. For example, your laptop workload has been increasing by xx% over the last two years so projected will commonly have 8 concurrent thread workloads that run most of the day in two years.

There is no planning in "perhaps in some future universe there will be ...." . Nor in "I'm paid top dollar for this so Apple should support me longer than those other folks buying at same time".

In addition Sandy Bridge is coming out Q1 2011 with a TDP of 45W for the lower end quad-core packages.

Where you take a higher wattage hit( +10W which is large amount for a thin laptop to get rid of ) for slower clock speed, but more cores.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)#Mobile_processors

Note that the slowest new 2 core i5 is clocked just as fast has the fastest 4 core i7 "Extreme". You better have lots of embarrassingly parallel work to do to make that kind of trade-off

I think that's a bit higher than Apple typically likes to use, but it isn't impossible.

It is not impossible that Halle Berry won't call me and ask me to go to dinner tonight. I'm not putting that in the likely to happen category though.

I wouldn't even hold out a small likelihood for a MBP 17" with a quad core in it if they have to take a 10W hit. I can see over vendors in the 6+ lbs space taking it, but only a very small chance that think Apple will. That extra 10W creates heat problems and it tanks the battery life probably 40-80 minutes. I don't think they want a 'extra deluxe' 17" model that goes quad and has different battery stats and had a slightly different design cycle.

Especially with further power refinements (die shrink or similar, not sure where in the cycle they will be then) in a second version perhaps by the end of the year.

there is no second version at the end of year. They may be some very minor speed bumps but in the following year will get Ivy bridge which is a shrink. Intel is increasing on a 12 month cycle with only a small subset of "late season speed bumps". Even that I doubt you'll get much since there is just as much pressure for Intel to bump up the graphics clock as there is to activate the additional two cores. More folks will be moaning about graphics than cores most likely.

What you will more likely see is not more cores but bigger caches on the Ivy Bridge. Those 3,4,6,8 MB caches are awfully small for those high Turbo speeds. Ivy Bridge will also more likely get some clock speed bumps.

Not to even mention battery enhancements and the use of SSD to bring down power requirements. It's not out of the question.

apple's battery magic has been bigger batteries. MBP cases probalby aren't changing much so hard pressed to see where this battery expansion is coming from.

Likewise the SSD tend to drive up costs which would have already done since going for the four core i7s. Can't take two major cost components and drive them both higher. Apple doesn't do that. Their prices are already relatively high.

Apple putting two drives ( HDD and SDD) in 15" and 17" laptops would be a better move than just shrinking disk storage space across the board. A small SSD that is close to optical drive price would allow to trade off and not increase costs . (if Apple is going to declare the optical drive dead. )

 

[deconstruct60]

With a higher clock speed and two cores the A4 would be close to the performance of the C2D (~1300) which I'd say is pretty good for a mobile chip.

At 3GHz, it wouldn't be a mobile chip anymore. The RAM inside the package can't deal with that speed either. In turn that would make the caches on the A4 a problem too. You wouldn't see a linear speed up by cranking it up that high.

 

[twoodcc]

those aren't real benchmarks. they don't take in consideration the SSD drive. but still, those scores about what is to be expected

 

[aznguyen316]

I'm curious how the SSD benchmarks alone..compared to SSD's on the market, like the SF1500, Intel etc

 

[nitropowered]

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

Oh yeah I failed to mention the 1009 geekbench score was while running linux. I reran the test under windows XP home and got a pathetic 444

 

[daver3k]

I thought I might be able to add to this discussion a bit.

I've got a MacBook Pro (Late 2009), 13.3", 2.26GHz C2D. I've replaced the optical drive in it with a 40GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD which I use as a boot/apps volume. I've also got a new MacBook Air, 11.6", 1.4GHz C2D. The bone-stock $999 model. I bought it because I travel a fair bit and wanted something between my iPad and my MacBook Pros. Even the 13.3" MBP feels like a behemoth when you otherwise make it a point to pack light.

Anyway, the MBP is fast. Not the fastest MBP, but with the SSD, it is incredibly responsive. I've uploaded a few YouTube videos to demonstrate how quickly it boots and launches apps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjnBLKH2Mes - Boot from disk chooser screen and launch Quicksilver, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and iTunes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4R9tyBp9a0 - Power-on to usable desktop with Chrome auto-launched.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zUQzGHlYq8 - Boot from disk chooser screen and then manually launch Chrome and Safari.

I thought it would be interesting to see just how quick the MacBook Air was when compared to my MacBook Pro. I expected the MBP to run circles around the Air, but that's not exactly what happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZizRmnexDxA - MacBook Air and MacBook Pro booting simultaneously and launching Quicksilver, Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

I've also run the Xbench Disk tests on both SSDs. Both were run on a cleanly booted system with no other apps (besides Quicksilver) running. You can see the results here: MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

All in all, I am very happy with the performance of the MacBook Air. I'm not using it for Handbrake encodes (that's what the Mac Pro is for), but for web browsing, YouTube, word processing, spreadsheets and coding - basically, every day typical end-user tasks - it's very responsive and fast feeling.

I'm happy to answer questions, run more benchmarks or record more videos. If there's an app that's freely available and you want to see how it launches on the base 11.6" MacBook Air, let me know and I'll post a video for you.

 

[mrklaw]

might be an odd comment, but I feel that these MBAs make the case for refreshed Mac Minis with more power even more relevant.

- Previously all of the non-air MBPs were capable of being your 'only' computer, handing day to day tasks whether on the go or on a desk. Power wise they were roughly on par with a mini, so if you wanted 'portable' you went MBP, if not you could buy a mini.

- Now, with the MBA, you have a general purpose, ultraportable for on the go use. I can see a situation where that becomes your 'take away' device, but it doesn't have enough power for everyday use when on your desk (sure its enough for basic tasks but nothing heavy)

- this means that a great combination would be a MBA and a desktop for at home. If you don't want an imac, then you want a mini. But the mini is still a little underpowered.

- The perfect combination IMO would be a nice 11/13" MBA for on the go, and a mac mini at home with i5/i7 quad core innards.

 

[HagusofNWN]

Here are the scores for my early 2008 MBP

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/306239

Interestingly enough my Unibody 2009 MBP posts a geeckbench score of 3302 which is very close to the 2.13 MBA.

 

[aznguyen316]

thanks daver3k for the SSD benchmarks. nice =)

 

[sighhipster]

I don't have the luxury of purchasing a new Mac Pro and Macbook Pro at this point in my life.

Scroll.

__________________
Canon 7d w/grip / 24-105L / 100-400L / Lowepro Gear
MBP 2.4ghz / 6gb ram / 500gb / 3tb external / 26" H-IPS
32gb iPhone 4 / 32gb iPad / 8gb iPhone 6-29-07

Roughing it as a design student has a different connotation nowadays.

 

[braccoadv]

@daver3k

Can you confirm FullHD 1080p videos on YouTube are reproduced correctly with no lag or other issues?
Thanks

 

[justfine]

I feel compelled to run Geekbench on my Santa Rosa 2.2 GHz MBP to see how far along the Air has come... although spending well over a thousand bucks to end up with something that's likely about the same speed as what I already have seems a bit silly.

Edit: Oh wait, there it is in their results database. Score: 2891. Looks like I'll be waiting for a new 15" MBP with a quad core, because I'm sure as heck not downgrading.

This is comparing Apples to Apples, but not apples to apples. There is no point in comparing a MBA (current or new) with a 15" MBP. One weighs about 5 pounds and is twice as thick while the other weighs 2.6 or 2.9 pounds.

Nearly 3 years I bought the first iteration MBA to replace my 3 year old Powerbook G4 (Aluminum) and I've been more than happy. It fulfills all of my needs. As a tech savvy non-geek whose needs are not crunching numbers or storing a zillion movies (or editing same) or hacking, the MBA more than makes me happy every day. And carrying it from A to B is a joy.

After playing with just the base $1000 11 incher yesterday as well as the top of the line 13" (both with only 2G RAM) I've decided to buy the 11" with the slightly faster processor (1.6 --same as I have now- rather than 1.4) for an extra $100 and the 128G SSD for a total of $1400. Oddly, the same price as the 13" with 1.86 processor and 128G SSD and 4G RAM and a SD Card slot. Paying more for less, but that's miniaturization for you. Once you pick up the 11" you're sold. It's magnificent.

That's why your argument is nonsensical.

 

[daver3k]

@daver3k

Can you confirm FullHD 1080p videos on YouTube are reproduced correctly with no lag or other issues?
Thanks

Post one that you'd like me to test on.

Edit - I went to The Lonely Island's YouTube channel and watched "Boombox" in 360p to have a benchmark, so to speak. I then watched it in 720p and 1080p. 720p was perfectly smooth and looked great. 1080p played with some barely perceptible skipping. The audio was fine. I am not sure whether I would have noticed the skipping if I hadn't been looking for it. "Boombox" has ads on it and thus is played through their Flash player. I'll look for an HTML5 1080p video and see if that makes a difference.

 

[justfine]

sandy bridge, if apple can put 128GB Flash on a $1199 machine (MBA) do not you think eventually it is going to be in the 13.3" MBP ($1199 and $1499)?

enjoy guys! (until the time 13.3" MBP is refreshed with Flash and New CPUs, say March 2011?)

Only my gut feeling Macbook will be left with Mechanical Hard drive

if it reaches 4GB RAM/500GB HDD and $799 I would not mind (you can always upgrade the off the shelf SSD Drive upgrade yourself)

It's already available on the 13" MBP for a $350 surcharge. The standard 2.4 processor and 4G RAM with the 128G SSD is just over $1400 (Student pricing).

 

[HyperX13]

I thought I might be able to add to this discussion a bit.

I've got a MacBook Pro (Late 2009), 13.3", 2.26GHz C2D. I've replaced the optical drive in it with a 40GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD which I use as a boot/apps volume. I've also got a new MacBook Air, 11.6", 1.4GHz C2D. The bone-stock $999 model. I bought it because I travel a fair bit and wanted something between my iPad and my MacBook Pros. Even the 13.3" MBP feels like a behemoth when you otherwise make it a point to pack light.

Anyway, the MBP is fast. Not the fastest MBP, but with the SSD, it is incredibly responsive. I've uploaded a few YouTube videos to demonstrate how quickly it boots and launches apps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjnBLKH2Mes - Boot from disk chooser screen and launch Quicksilver, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and iTunes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4R9tyBp9a0 - Power-on to usable desktop with Chrome auto-launched.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zUQzGHlYq8 - Boot from disk chooser screen and then manually launch Chrome and Safari.

I thought it would be interesting to see just how quick the MacBook Air was when compared to my MacBook Pro. I expected the MBP to run circles around the Air, but that's not exactly what happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZizRmnexDxA - MacBook Air and MacBook Pro booting simultaneously and launching Quicksilver, Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

I've also run the Xbench Disk tests on both SSDs. Both were run on a cleanly booted system with no other apps (besides Quicksilver) running. You can see the results here: MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

All in all, I am very happy with the performance of the MacBook Air. I'm not using it for Handbrake encodes (that's what the Mac Pro is for), but for web browsing, YouTube, word processing, spreadsheets and coding - basically, every day typical end-user tasks - it's very responsive and fast feeling.

I'm happy to answer questions, run more benchmarks or record more videos. If there's an app that's freely available and you want to see how it launches on the base 11.6" MacBook Air, let me know and I'll post a video for you.

Thanks for that video!! Very cool of you to do that!! I have the 11 inch one on order and its coming with 4 gigs of ram and the 128 ssd. Can't wait!

 

[daver3k]

Thanks for that video!! Very cool of you to do that!! I have the 11 inch one on order and its coming with 4 gigs of ram and the 128 ssd. Can't wait!

I think you'll be very happy with it. I just got back from a cross-country trip (flew from VA to Albuquerque, drove to Phoenix, drove from Phoenix back to VA) and while my 13" MBP is easier to sling around than either of my 15" models, I found myself really wishing for something smaller and lighter. I typically pack very light, but the 13" MBP was too heavy and, more importantly, too big overall. It takes up too much room (for me) in my backpack, so I bought the Air.

I previously had a stock first generation Air (1.6GHz C2D, 80GB 4,200RPM HD) and the new one is much faster and more responsive. Watching YouTube 720p videos is actually possible now, which is nice. It doesn't take ages to boot. Apps launch when I want them too, not a minute later. (Office on the original Air was exceedingly painful.)

I am really fond of the 11.6" Air for what it is. I understand its weaknesses - again, I'll be doing my Handbrake encodes and media serving from my Mac Pro - but for most of the stuff I need to do every day, this is great.

 

[daver3k]

Whoops. Ignore this post!

 

[jeznav]

All in all, I am very happy with the performance of the MacBook Air. I'm not using it for Handbrake encodes (that's what the Mac Pro is for), but for web browsing, YouTube, word processing, spreadsheets and coding - basically, every day typical end-user tasks - it's very responsive and fast feeling.

I finally found someone who uses the MBA just like me.

People were argueing why I shouldn't get the underpowered MBA and instead recommending me a MBP. I have no use for a powerful laptop when I already have the most powerful desktop (MacPro). Though 20% of my overall computing time relies on Video Editing, AfterEffects, 3D modeling and rendering, the other 80% is just browsing, word processing, email and coding, why under-utilize the CPU workhorse for doing simple tasks.

By moving 80% of my not-so productive computer time on the MacBook Air, I save more energy by not having to turn on my MacPro and only use it for demanding applications.