MacBook Pro Benchmarks

[Frobozz]

A free MacBook for 'work'? you suck!

I ordered one for my personal use and my work is probably going to upgrade me, too. The work laptop may take a couple more months, though. You want to know why they're willing to do that? The IT guy tried my old TiBook 800 and switched to a Mac for all his personal use. Says he hates seeing Windows now and is like a kid in a candy store. Loves the UNIX / Linux portion and you can't beat the GUI. So, he said he'd be willing to get me a new MacBook Pro if he could have my relatively new 1.67 15" PB for work use. He hasn't ordered a new computer for himself in quite some time, so the timing of this announcement may be very beneficial in a couple months.... 2 MacBook Pro's! I can only dream ...

 

[Hattig]

The Core Duo tops out at 2.16 GHz. A simple google search would confirm that for you. That said large manufacturers need large supplies. Also I believe it is around a $200 price difference from 2 - 2.16 GHz, which isn't a huge performance gain. All of that makes it less attractive unless you want to target a performance oriented niche, which Apple never has.

Shame they don't make it an optional upgrade ($200 to 2GHz, $400 to 2.16GHz).

Still, we don't know if the processors are socketed in the MacBook, although they are on the iMac.

 

[avkills]

This was mentioned briefly above but I will make it more solid.

ATI says that the X1600 GPU does indeed have hardware accelerated h.264 decoding capabilities built into that GPU, that is a fact.

So in my eyes, the MacBookPro is not performing well above the dual G5 in that particular test because the G5 is doing all the work, where on the MacBook Pro the GPU is taking a ton of the load off the CPUs, which is obvious by the benchmarks.

What I propose is that the author test a Dual Core G5 with a X1800 when they become available, since they will have the hardware accelerated h.264 decoding as well.

Other than that one test, overall I think the MacBook Pro is a going to be one nice machine. I am going to be very tempted to buy one, but I think I may wait a few months after they start circulating.

-mark

 

[pizzach]

that MacBook is some laptop! I totally expected it to perform on that level. I hope they can even improve it more before they get released to the public.

And to think that some people were disgusted that Intel is going to be inside future Macs. tsk tsk tsk.

*blink blink* Aren't newer processors supposed to be faster anyway. What would have been the surprose/problem is if they were slower. The Duo is fresh off so the grill afterall.

 

[digitalbiker]

This argument is so academic so as to be funny. Why are people defending a bloody CPU for God's sake. Where do we draw the lines of emotional attachment? Would the Duo kick the G5s a*se in a straight fight? Who would win in a fight, Spiderman or Batman? Come on...

Those defending the laptop G5 are defending a fictional character. It never existed and never will.

I agree but I wasn't so much defending the fictional G5 laptop as I was pointing out how stupid it was to make baseless claims against it.

To say that the current MacBook Pro would have kicked an equivalent G5 laptops a** is just pointless and benefits no one. It just adds FUD to the divided Apple faithful and the intel faithful.

If someone wants to make fictional claims against then I can put up fictional defenses for all day long .

 

[bigandy]

ok so i want one now. HD playback on my powerbook has always upset me, mainly because it doesn't really happen. and on a par with a 2x2ghz G5? hell yeah!

 

[shawnce]

Really ? Pentium 4 being the competitor to G5 back a while had less instructions in flight than the G5, and yonah cores, single or dual has a lot less room for OOOE execution than the P4, how can you claim the PM core to be a wide core ? The whole design is centered around having a medium to narrow core that is always fed by having high efficiency from Macro-Op fusion and extremely low L2 latency.

Found the info for you:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/pentium-m.ars/2 look at the diagram for the execution units of the PM, basically the same as Yonah in Core Duo (Yonah x 2) Notice in particular that the most important port of the SIMD units is shared with the FP unit.
and I quote "You'll notice that the P6 core's floating-point and integer capabilities are weaker than those of the 970; when compared to the P4, its floating-point capabilities don't look too bad but its integer capabilities are much weaker."

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/ppc970.ars/2 check out how much wider the G5 core is, with no port sharing.

Note that the PowerPC ISA is uops like in comparison to IA32 ISA, so you can generally align number of in flight uops to in-flight instructions on the PowerPC.

The Pentium M (not knowing exactly what is in the Core Duo) is a wide core in comparison to the Pentium 4 and many prior CPUs. It has 9 or so functional units depending on how you count things. It also has the ability to dispatch 5 uops at once (if lucky). Not sure of exact in-flight numbers but the Pentium M is said to have up to twice the number of in-flight of the Pentium-III (review this).

The PowerPC has 10 or so functional units depending on how you count things (Apple counts it as having 7). It also has the ability to dispatch 4 instructions at once (if lucky, has a limitation of instruction mix that it can dispatch at once much like the Pentium-M's ports).

So what I am saying is the different between the PPC 970 and the Core Duo is likely less then the difference between the Core Duo and Netbusrt (Pentium 4) in terms of in-flight instructions and general width and depth.

 

[jacobj]

I agree but I wasn't so much defending the fictional G5 laptop as I was pointing out how stupid it was to make baseless claims against it.

To say that the current MacBook Pro would have kicked an equivalent G5 laptops a** is just pointless and benefits no one. It just adds FUD to the divided Apple faithful and the intel faithful.

If someone wants to make fictional claims against then I can put up fictional defenses for all day long .

You make a good point. I think the iMac Duo/Powermac tests that have circulated show that the G5 stacked up well against the Duo. Where the Duo wins it is usually due to the GPU.

Having said that, we should all concede the SJ made the right decision in moving to intel. I mean, there are debates here about when people should buy their new macs because there is so much in the intel pipeline that we can't decide when to jump on board. I have been following macs for 5 years now (still a newbie) and I can't remember the last time people got so excited about future power increases.

 

[MacinDoc]

The Core Duo tops out at 2.16 GHz. A simple google search would confirm that for you. That said large manufacturers need large supplies. Also I believe it is around a $200 price difference from 2 - 2.16 GHz, which isn't a huge performance gain. All of that makes it less attractive unless you want to target a performance oriented niche, which Apple never has.

Yes, the Core Duo tops at 2.16 GHz, but I cannot find a single manufacturer that is currently selling a notebook sporting one at this speed (although several have demo'd pre-production units, which Apple may also have, as far as we know, since Apple is more secretive about upcoming products than most other computer manufacturers).

 

[shawnce]

You make a good point. I think the iMac Duo/Powermac tests that have circulated show that the G5 stacked up well against the Duo. Where the Duo wins it is usually due to the GPU.

Having said that, we should all concede the SJ made the right decision in moving to intel.

Folks need to realize that the Core Duo (and its chipset) are targeted to laptops and small form factor computers. So it gives up some raw performance capabilities in the interest of saving power and lowering heat output.

If you keep that in mind the Core Duo does rather well when stacked up against a PowerMac G5, which is using a CPU and chipset targeted more for the desktop and workstation space, power/heat not a concern so performance can be maximized.

When Conroe and Woodcrest come around later this year Intel will relax the power requirements some in the interest of squeezing out more performance out of the Merom core which is a more capable sibling of the Yonah core used in the Core Duo.

Things do look good on the Intel road map for 2006 and 2007.

 

[skunkworks]

A million more tests will tell you the same thing that intel is a bit faster, obviously. I think people are wanting to justify still having a G5 so all this for nothing.

In the coming months when the pro apps are released you will see a difference in speed and any apps coming down the pipes. If you have a g4 powerbook keep it, its still good for at least another year or two but keep in mind that there will be a high depreciation value because eventually no more apps for G5. Be happy with what you have there will always be something better.

 

[iSee]

Photoshop to run slow on new intel mac's... why?

well the answer is quite simple.
a: Photoshop likes ram.... gimme gimme it says... but indeed one would expect Steve to use the biggest setup for the stevenotes ;-)
b: Photoshop is like all apple pro apps designed to take full advantage of the PPC... since that one is missing... rosetta can make it run on the intel's... but can't make it fly... therefor we need the Universal version wich will allow Photoshop to take full advantage of the intel processor's features...

steve clearly said that running photoshop trough rosetta would work for normal users but probably not for pro users (like me... who succeed in completly blocking all life out of his G5 when opening a scanned 4"x5" slide on 4800dpi (filesize app 1,2GB) wich probably wouldn't be such a problem if I put more ram in it (hence the photoshop ram eating feature...))

Your Dual 1.8 G5 PowerMac will be a better Photoshop box than any intel Mac for quite a while. On the few benchmarks I've seen, the Duo Macs are still significantly slower than a 2x2.0GHz G5 PowerMac, even on Universal apps. So you are going to have to wait for a UB Photoshop AND a chip from Intel that outperforms the G5 (and it might take a little time to get Photoshop as well optimized for intel as it is for PPC).

Also, if you use 3rd party plugins for Photoshop, you'll want them to be updated to UBs too. Otherwise you'd have to launch Photoshop in PowerPC mode under Rosetta to use them.

 

[g0gie]

Shame they don't make it an optional upgrade ($200 to 2GHz, $400 to 2.16GHz).

Still, we don't know if the processors are socketed in the MacBook, although they are on the iMac.

Actually I believe the macbook pro's have the LV (low voltage) version of the core dua which tops out at 1.83Ghz. I have seen 2.00Ghz core duos but obviously not the lov voltage version because they dont exist!

 

[JackAxe]

This results are totaly expected in my opinion. So basically new Intel chip runs clock for clock as fast as G5. That's actually a compliment to good ol' G5.

I however have issues with their playback numbers, my dual 2.0 G5 runs 1080p videos at close to 80% on each CPU - meaning 160-180% total - whereas they make it as if it's running at no more than 60% - that's not correct.

This was proably already replied to a dozen times in this thread, but I got lazy after 5 pages of searching. The Duo-Core is offloading the H.264 video to the x1600, which has hardware acceleration for H.264, this is why it's using less CPU.

<]=)

 

[50548]

Yes I totally agree with that. And other should too.

Playing Sacred on my Dell D600 gives me about 90 mins of game play time.

Thats pretty good for our current technology...

If you want CPU power and high FPS, and you want your laptop to perform like you were plugged in, then don't expect miracles here.

The more you drive your CPU the more power consumption it takes to drive it. Hence the low voltage CPUs that companies are trying to make.

Give it a few years are we will have 5 hours of hard core CPU usage.

That's really funny, and I knew Aiden would raise such quote anyway. The point is: we are talking about a much smaller notebook, with far less energy demands than a core Duo in 15" screen, and already topping out at the SAME "up to" level as a PB G4/MBP...which one is more efficient, the small guy or the big guy? Thanks very much.

As for the recommendation to use ONE program at a time, gimme a break, please...only newborn babies do that nowadays. If you have IE and Outlook open, it's already crossing that line...it's the same as telling people to use a notebook with the screen off, because it's gonna be on for 14 hours...useless advice.

 

[tduality]

Switchers

It's looking good for the MacBook Pro - if the tba battery life is good too, they'll be a lot more switchers coming I think

As I came to the office the day after the keynote two of my colleagues welcomed with:'Did you see, Apple as an Intel Duo Core laptop!' Both are not Mac users yet but considered the Mac Book as an 'Need to have' machine.

Only the missing battery life specs are holding them back.

Martin

 

[datoby]

Actually I believe the macbook pro's have the LV (low voltage) version of the core dua which tops out at 1.83Ghz. I have seen 2.00Ghz core duos but obviously not the lov voltage version because they dont exist!

i haven't seen yonahs 1,83ghz in the low voltage version, too. Except they have overclocked the 1,66ghz low voltage version.

 

[steve_hill4]

Those figures do look promising, even if the overall specs do lead to some misleading results. I doubt the 1GB ram between the Jan. 2004 PowerBook and MacBook would make that much of a difference, but if the x1600 is dealing with a lot of the encoding/decoding of video and the 9700 isn't, that can skew the results slightly.

Even so, playing back 720p at an overall 12.5% used is impressive. Hopefully that means no dropped frames when playing back at the same time as background apps running. I'm getting more excited by the day, the only thing that will kill this is if Apple announce the Merom based MacBooks the following day, (if a price drop was to follow within 28 days, I'm okay to get the difference refunded from where I'm buying it from, so not as bothered by that).

 

[g0gie]

i haven't seen yonahs 1,83ghz in the low voltage version, too. Except they have overclocked the 1,66ghz low voltage version.

There is an official 1.83 LV version.. go look on the intel webpage foo

 

[Airforce]

Actually I believe the macbook pro's have the LV (low voltage) version of the core dua which tops out at 1.83Ghz. I have seen 2.00Ghz core duos but obviously not the lov voltage version because they dont exist!

The low voltag Duos are 1.66 and 1.5 that use 15W of power. The macbook pros aren't using these. They are using the 31W versions.

http://www.intel.com/products/processor/coreduo/specs.htm

 

[g0gie]

The low voltag Duos are 1.66 and 1.5 that use 15W of power. The macbook pros aren't using these. They are using the 31W versions.

http://www.intel.com/products/processor/coreduo/specs.htm

Here is a more complese list :

"E Series" Extreme Edition (50 W+)

- Core Duo E2900: ?
- Core Duo E2800: ?
- Core Duo E2700: 2.33 GHz, FSB 667 (H2-06)

-------------------------------------------------------------
"T Series" Typical (25-49 W, 31W typical)

- Core Duo T2700: 2.33 GHz, FSB 667 (H2-06)

- Core Duo T2600: 2.17 GHz, FSB 667 (Q1-06)

- Core Duo T2500: 2.00 GHz, FSB 667 (Q1-06) -> iMac

- Core Duo T2400: 1.83 GHz, FSB 667 (Q1-06) -> iMac & MacBook Pro
- Core Solo T1400: 1.83 GHz, FSB 667 (H2-06)

- Core Duo T2300: 1.67 GHz, FSB 667 (Q1-06) -> MacBook Pro
- Core Solo T1300: 1.67 GHz, FSB 667 (H2-06)

-------------------------------------------------------------
"L Series" Low-Voltage (LV) (15-24 W)

- Core Duo L2500: 1.83 GHz, FSB 667 (H2-06)

- Core Duo L2400: 1.67 GHz, FSB 667 (Q1-06)

- Core Duo L2300: 1.50 GHz, FSB 667 (Q1-06)

-------------------------------------------------------------
"U Series" Ultra-Low-Voltage (ULV) (14 W)

- Core Solo U1400: 1.23 GHz, FSB 533 (Q2-06)

- Core Duo U2300: 1.06 GHz, FSB 533 (Q2-06)
- Core Solo U1300: 1.06 GHz, FSB 533 (Q2-06)


so i guess i was wrong :X unless they got this out earlier:
- Core Duo L2500: 1.83 GHz, FSB 667 (H2-06)

 

[jacobj]

Folks need to realize that the Core Duo (and its chipset) are targeted to laptops and small form factor computers. So it gives up some raw performance capabilities in the interest of saving power and lowering heat output.

If you keep that in mind the Core Duo does rather well when stacked up against a PowerMac G5, which is using a CPU and chipset targeted more for the desktop and workstation space, power/heat not a concern so performance can be maximized.

When Conroe and Woodcrest come around later this year Intel will relax the power requirements some in the interest of squeezing out more performance out of the Merom core which is a more capable sibling of the Yonah core used in the Core Duo.

Things do look good on the Intel road map for 2006 and 2007.

I never said otherwise.

 

[shawnce]

This was proably already replied to a dozen times in this thread, but I got lazy after 5 pages of searching. The Duo-Core is offloading the H.264 video to the x1600, which has hardware acceleration for H.264, this is why it's using less CPU.

This is assumed to be taking place but does anyone really know it is taking place? Just because the X1600 has H.264 decode support does NOT mean that Apple has mapped their H.264 QuickTime codec to use it. In fact since it is using significant CPU for playback it makes more sense to assume that it isn't offloading playback.

Just need someone to run Shark during playback to understand what is going on.

 

[shawnce]

I never said otherwise.

Was just adding to what you said...

 

[PHILLCOSBY]

I'm really curious to see what kind of performance gains Logic 7 will have. I use a 1.25 15"PB and it gets beaten into submission with Logic, even at the highest buffer settings...