MacBook Pro Benchmarks

[jacobj]

Was just adding to what you said...

Then may I say that you made an extremely prudent and pithy observation

 

[boombashi]

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).

If you have a money farm you can get one of those in a Dell Inspiron 9400 for a low-low price of $600 process upgrade from the 1.83.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=i9400lo&s=bsd

For those crying why Apple doesn't "keep up" with all the other manufacturers, they won't put that into a standard config yet...that processor is freaking expensive right now. My guess you may see those in a top-end version of the 17" MacBook Pro at a cool $3800...that's what the Dell will cost you in a comperable config. I wouldn't short-sell Apple quite yet they are just getting warmed up. You heard it hear first, or 324,453rd - or whatever.

 

[jacobj]

If you have a money farm you can get one of those in a Dell Inspiron 9400 for a low-low price of $600 process upgrade from the 1.83.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=i9400lo&s=bsd

For those crying why Apple doesn't "keep up" with all the other manufacturers, they won't put that into a standard config yet...that processor is freaking expensive right now. My guess you may see those in a top-end version of the 17" MacBook Pro at a cool $3800...that's what the Dell will cost you in a comperable config. I wouldn't short-sell Apple quite yet they are just getting warmed up. You heard it hear first, or 324,453rd - or whatever.

$600 for a minor speed bump. You'd have to be crazy! I agree with your post for the most part although I don't believe Apple will ever offer the top top end of the processor market. Contrary to what people believe, Apple offers good value for money. My 3 year old PB may not have the fastest CPU in it, but everything else is still up there with the latest Windows laptops. More than that, everything else just works perfectly.

My Windows machine at work falls over itself all the time even when not conntected to the LAN.

 

[Maxx Power]

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.

Pentium M is wider and deeper than the PIII, which began all this. But compared to the width of the P4 though, which has two double pumped ALU's and 1 shared execution port FPU plus independent issue SIMD units that are much nicer in implementation than that of the P-M, which may have changed in Yonah (Core Duo and solo), the P-M still has a narrower core. The original P-M anyway. It is very efficient in the usage of its functional units and has a very low latency access to its massive L2 (at the same latency as L1), thus it doesn't need as much bandwidth to feed it constantly. Those two things together, the efficient use of its functional units and the reliance on fast L2 access is suitable in mobile CPU design since it eliminates massive CPU cores with multiple redundant functional units and the need for extremely fast FSB access, which was the original design philosophy of the Israel-Intel team. The inflight instructions statement was supposed to signify the calculation capabilities of the G5, which as great as it is, for the past 2 years since the P-M's release, people generally agree that the P-M with its conservative design is capable of holding toe to toe with the G5 bandwidth monster.

 

[AidenShaw]

Choose CPU speed with BTO option, d'oh

$600 for a minor speed bump. You'd have to be crazy!

But if you're not crazy, you don't have to pay for it. It is very common for the fastest AMD or Intel chip to be much more expensive than the chips down one or two speed steps. There aren't as many of them....

Look at a price list like http://www.centralcomputer.com/products.asp?pline=HCPUI - a 3.2 GHz is about half the price of a 3.6 GHz....

When you buy an Apple, you don't get the option to choose the CPU speed independently. A mistake, IMO.

 

[ZorPrime]

- MacBook Pro Core Duo 1.83 GHz, 2 GB DDR2, ATI X1600 Mobility 128 MB @ 1440x900 - January 2006 Preproduction
- PowerBook G4 15" 1.67 GHz, 1.5 GB DDR, ATI 9700 Mobility 64 MB @ 1280x854 - January 2005
- PowerMac G5 Dual 2 GHz, 2.5 GB DDR, ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB @ 1680x1050 - July 2003
- PowerBook G4 Titanium 500 MHz, 768 MB SDRAM, ATI Rage 128 Mobile 8 MB @ 1152x768 - January 2001

Interesting that the DDR2, 128MB ATI, 7200rpm, 1.67GHz G4 PBs aren't mentioned... according to Apple's own website, performance on some apps are only 20% faster than the G4... I'm also interested why steve demonstrated Rosetta on the iMac and not the MacBook Pro... I'm glad I got a last gen G4 PB to ride out this transition.

 

[gammamonk]

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

I read on Core Duo whitepaper that the surface mount chip is for less than 1" thick computer use. If Apple had to cut corners with the optical drive, I'm guessing it's a tight fit in there. Probably surface mount. See p4

 

[jacobj]

I've missed this, but has anyone seen any iMac (maybe wrong thread here) benchmarks on iTunes/iPhoto configuring photos for the iPod?

I have a G4 1GHz and I can never be bothered to wait for the 1 hour + it takes to prepare the photos.

 

[jacobj]

But if you're not crazy, you don't have to pay for it. It is very common for the fastest AMD or Intel chip to be much more expensive than the chips down one or two speed steps. There aren't as many of them....

Look at a price list like http://www.centralcomputer.com/products.asp?pline=HCPUI - a 3.2 GHz is about half the price of a 3.6 GHz....

When you buy an Apple, you don't get the option to choose the CPU speed independently. A mistake, IMO.

It makes ordering extra RAM from Crucial much easier