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New Al MacBook: what is "fast"?

California

California

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Aug 21, 2004
3,885
90
So, the new unibody Al Macbook has a 2.4ghz processor, two gigs of ram and a better video card. I mean new. As in, purchased TODAY.

How come my 2.0 dual G5 with 3 gigs of ram plays the new South Park episode just as fast?

And how come it glitches?

I just don't get it. I sold my beloved PB 12" that was about the same?
 
I don't understand your question, but you shouldn't be comparing a PowerMac to a MacBook....A desktop is always faster than a notebook in most areas, and a desktop like a PowerMac (best of best) is always going to be faster for at least a couple of years....2.0GHz Dual w/ 3GB RAM sounds like a nice machine to me...remember, these MacBooks are low-end consumer products, where as you are comparing it to the most expensive, most high-end, desktop computer pointed at pros.
 
Did you expect the Macbook to play South Park faster than real time or something :confused:

It wont perform faster until you do something that requires the power. Try ripping a DVD on it using HandBrake (free), then do the same on your G5. The Macbook should smoke it.

It can't perform every day functions any faster, because there are various bottlenecks, the hard drive being one of them. For example no body noticed a speed increase from ATA 133 to SATA, despite one being 133 MB/s and the other being 3 GB/s, the reason being legacy hard drive technology cannot provide anywhere near this throughput.

When you mentioned South Park, where you expecting the video to download faster? If so that is your Internet connection, and has nothing to do with the computer. Sign up with a better service provider, ie. not AOL.
 
nick9191 said:
Did you expect the Macbook to play South Park faster than real time or something :confused:

It wont perform faster until you do something that requires the power. Try ripping a DVD on it using HandBrake (free), then do the same on your G5. The Macbook should smoke it.

It can't perform every day functions any faster, because there are various bottlenecks, the hard drive being one of them. For example no body noticed a speed increase from ATA 133 to SATA, despite one being 133 MB/s and the other being 3 GB/s, the reason being legacy hard drive technology cannot provide anywhere near this throughput.

When you mentioned South Park, where you expecting the video to download faster? If so that is your Internet connection, and has nothing to do with the computer. Sign up with a better service provider, ie. not AOL.
Click to expand...

haha thats what i was thinking!! is the video supposed to play double speed?! lol!
 
nick9191 said:
Did you expect the Macbook to play South Park faster than real time or something :confused:

It wont perform faster until you do something that requires the power. Try ripping a DVD on it using HandBrake (free), then do the same on your G5. The Macbook should smoke it.

It can't perform every day functions any faster, because there are various bottlenecks, the hard drive being one of them. For example no body noticed a speed increase from ATA 133 to SATA, despite one being 133 MB/s and the other being 3 GB/s, the reason being legacy hard drive technology cannot provide anywhere near this throughput.

When you mentioned South Park, where you expecting the video to download faster? If so that is your Internet connection, and has nothing to do with the computer. Sign up with a better service provider, ie. not AOL.
Click to expand...



How lonh does it usually take to rip a dvd to your mac with handbrake? I put a 2 hour movie on last night for the first time and it took over an hour. Is that normal, or do i have handbrake set up wrong?
 
Vikinguy said:
How lonh does it usually take to rip a dvd to your mac with handbrake? I put a 2 hour movie on last night for the first time and it took over an hour. Is that normal, or do i have handbrake set up wrong?
Click to expand...

it takes about an hour if you have the "2-pass encoding" option checked...otherwise its half

i only do a single pass when i rip, so it takes about 20-25 min for a typical movie
 
California said:
How come my 2.0 dual G5 with 3 gigs of ram plays the new South Park episode just as fast?

And how come it glitches?
Click to expand...

Were you streaming the episode off the internet? If so, then the bottleneck is your internet connection. Remember, any computer is as fast as its slowest link. You'll only see the improvement in your new computer if the previous slowest link is improved in the new hardware.

Also, laptops can be slower than desktops (of the same spec otherwise) because of the slower hard drives.
 
Hmmm... yes both computers (Powermac G5 and al Mac Book) are wireless off DSL router.

But still expected to see some speed performance. Maybe I should upgrade old 2WIRE wireless router to a new Apple airport station?
 
If you can, connect one of your laptops to the router with an ethernet cable. If there is an improvement, then you can think about upgrading your wifi. Otherwise, the data transfer is slow coming into your house, you need to upgrade your internet plan to speed it up.
 
You are not going to see any difference in movie playback. You could have a computer with a 10ghz 20 core cpu and it will play a movie just as fast as a single core 1ghz cpu.

You will notice a difference as others have said during things that tax the system. My quad core 3.2ghz pc plays movies just as fast as my 2.4ghz macbook. The thing where my pc blows the macbook out of the water is in games and other things that are very intensive. My pc can rip 6 movies at the same time in 15 mins, while the macbook maybe two in about 30 mins.

Also if your 2wire DSL modem is a G router/modem then that won't be your problem either. The theoretical limit of wireless G speeds is 54 Mbps. I used to have a 20 Mbps fiber connection running into a linksys wireless G router and running my macbook off wireless never had a problem with speeds.
 
Since this is my very first Intel Machine, (yes yes I know. I'm the PPC holdout) I expected fireworks. Or some speed gains. Or something.

I am missing my Powerbook 12" G4 last revision. I wish I was in love with this but I am not.
 
The processor bump helps with open applications, executing things, and the like, not playing movies faster. o_O
 
California said:
Since this is my very first Intel Machine, (yes yes I know. I'm the PPC holdout) I expected fireworks. Or some speed gains. Or something.
Click to expand...

You can still see fireworks, but on mainly on processor-intense tasks; e.g., ripping a movie with Handbrake, converting file formats. However, you won't notice much differences on things like browsing the web, mail (internet-limited), launching apps (HDD limited).

You should however notice that the new Al-MB runs a lot cooler that the older MBs.
 
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