New Benchmarks Show 13-Inch MacBook Air Rivaling Its MacBook Pro Counterpart

[guzhogi]

because it does not support Flash

I take it your kidding. But either way, just remember it does not ship with Adobe Flash. That's a big difference than not supporting Flash. Kinda like saying it doesn't support printers because they don't ship with any in the box.

 

[Žalgiris]

I'm not sure how the final benchmark score is calculated, but it seems the tests that the MBA got the best scores are dependent on the SSD. "Duplicate 1GB file" is fully dependent on the HD/SSD, while the "Unzip 2GB folder" seems to depend on both HD/SSD and CPU.

So for the MBPs replace the 32 by 13 and 68 by 29, say, and recalculate.

Unzip 2 GB of data won't make a difference whatever CPU is 1.4, 1,6, 1,8 or 2 Ghz.

 

[Jaro65]

Well, I certainly did not expect the 11.6" MBA to offer an 80% performance of 13" MBP. If the tests are representative of actual usage, this is simply impressive.

 

[Nicky G]

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People... Little thing called L2 cache. NOT an unimportant spec! Compare how much the 13" Air has compared to the 13" MBP. Air has twice as much! This is HUGE, and a large part of why it benches so well.

Looking VERY forward to the 13" fully-maxxed Air I have on order. *grin*

 

[Caliber26]

Getting the13 incher.

That makes two of us. Initially, I'd wanted an MBA because I love its form factor and I really don't need a machine that's going to require heavy lifting but opted for the 13" Pro because it had just been updated (May this year) and I knew the MBA back then was in dire need of an update. This, however, changes things. Selling my MBP and getting an MBA-13 now.

 

[KiraDouji]

They were going for price point comparison, mainly. Don't complain about apples to apples when the main point of running the tests is to show what you get for the money. Oi.

 

[Drew n macs]

Macworld history for benchmarks is not the best for accuracy. They allways seem to have a lot of misprints and mistakes. This time it appears the flash storage seems to boost the MBA performance. As like many macrumor users allways say the biggest upgrade you can do for 13 MBP is SSD.

 

[schlibs]

Comparing the MBP with an HDD and the MBA with an SSD is complete BS. You can't even compare them, because it's so blatantly obvious the SSD will be hands down faster.

It's a perfectly acceptable comparison if your looking at these results from the perspective of a potential buyer. The 13 MBA with 128 SSD and the 13 MBP with 250 ATA drive are approximately the same price (~$1200). So if you are looking to purchase you might go with the MBA since it's just as fast. You put a SSD on the MBP and it's a $1600 machine. Sure it's faster but it's way more expensive. There's your apples to oranges comparison!

 

[cvaldes]

Does this particular benchmark take disk I/O speed into account?
If so, then it's Apples/Oranges since standard config MBP's don't use SSD -- although SSD is an option. If disk I/O speed *IS* a factor in this benchmark then they should try against MBP with SSD option.

You should read the linked benchmark results from Macworld to learn if/how disk I/O is taken into account.

Macworld focuses on testing standard configurations since that's what most people will buy.

 

[Hattig]

So the mid 2010 MacBook Pro 13" gets 33 fps in Call Of Duty.

The 1.4GHz MacBook Air gets 37! The 1.86GHz higher-resolution Air gets 40!

Were all these machines tested with identical versions of the OS and software?

Or is the 320M in the Airs running faster than the 320M in the relatively new MacBook Pros?

 

[pixelbart]

Come on guys. Please compare Apples to Apples and rerun the test with a 64GB SSD in the 13" Macbook Pro. The model they tested it against has a 5400rpm HDD.

CPU-wise, the MBA is no match for any current MBP.

So? There's more to performance than the CPU. Apple found out that a slower CPU and an SSD results in a smaller package with higher real-life performance for the intended use of the machine. The intended use for an MBA is pretty light on the CPU. Unless you want to run full screen flash video, that is. An MBA isn't made for Final Cut Pro, a 100+GB Aperture library or other cpu and disk space intensive tasks.

When I see these benchmarks and the difference a fast SSD could make, I really start to hope that the Seagate Momentus XT I just ordered is a worthy last upgrade for my 2007 SR MacBook

Ps. They forgot to test the thing against a higher-end Atom-based netbook

 

[franswa za]

I take it your kidding. But either way, just remember it does not ship with Adobe Flash. That's a big difference than not supporting Flash. Kinda like saying it doesn't support printers because they don't ship with any in the box.

i'm kidding!

the new MBA is the way of the future notebook- i would be surprised to find any spinning HDs in portables in 5 year's time, ssd techology will improve and prices will come down, and personally i do not mind the omission of an internal optical drive, it is expensive (and inconvenient) to replace.... a "throwaway" external optical drive is inexpensive and easy to hook-up WHEN needed

as with the ipad the mba apple has a winning trendsetting product

 

[SidewaysTakumi]

I still find these numbers useful especially in helping someone choose between the two--it just shows that you can have a similarly performing machine with a lighter form factor. Meaning, it's really not hindered very much in terms of usage ability.

I want to see more tests and a bit more mba user input but with my needs, a mba may be more suitable especially considering the performance.

Now, if they update the 13 mbp processors, etc in the coming months (Marchish?) then I may have an additional dilemma. I bet a 13 mbp with 8gb ram and an ssd would fly. But will still be pricey (even considering a few price drops) against the mba, I reckon. I wish they would have tested a mbp with ssd but then that blows the price comparison.

 

[Shanpdx]

$1299 MBA 13.3" best bang for the buck

PERIOD.

 

[skeep5]

I love my new MBA 13 I have had a big goofy smile on my face for 3 days now. I don't miss my MBP 13 one bit. I can't remember ever using the DVD drive.

Ah man now i have to get one....

 

[cky880]

This comes as good news to me. I'm trying to figure out if the upgrade to an 11" 1.6GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM is worth it, or even necessary/noticeable. Otherwise, I'd go to the store and grab one of the base 11" 1.4 GHz 2GB models today. Any thoughts?

 

[NickK1066]

Why not? Most people don't have SSD drives in their Macbook Pros. Are you just mad that your MBP almost got beat by the Air?

The 320 is system memory sharing rather than dedicated VRAM. I don't think these figures give the whole story.

 

[Jcoz]

Help me out guys, so is the immediate future of Macbook pros a 2 HD array with onboard SSD for Operating System and some applications and a HDD to retain storage space at a reasonable price?

Is this a technical nightmare or a reasonable possibility?

Could someone with more technical experience juxtapose this for me?

Thx in advance

 

[Speedy2]

People... Little thing called L2 cache. NOT an unimportant spec!

True, it is actually a VERY unimportant spec.

 

[plinden]

Unzip 2 GB of data won't make a difference whatever CPU is 1.4, 1,6, 1,8 or 2 Ghz.

That's not what their benchmarks show.

And of course it would. Compared to file duplication, you're actually doing a lot more work with the CPU.

 

[flopticalcube]

From the article:



You’ve made it clear that you commented without reading the article.

These are Speedmark results here which include the flash. As the original article states, the flash storage makes all the difference. Geekbench was the previous report. You would have known that if you read the article.

 

[Žalgiris]

That's not what their benchmarks show.

And of course it would. Compared to file duplication, you're actually doing a lot more work with the CPU.

I just checked myself. Difference is ~0.5 second. Two identical Hitachi 1 TB green drives and CPU 2 Ghz vs. 2.8 Ghz (iMac7,1 - 20" vs iMac8,1 - 24").

 

[Speedy2]

They were going for price point comparison, mainly. Don't complain about apples to apples when the main point of running the tests is to show what you get for the money. Oi.

The MBP and the MBA don't share a price point.
Also, the problem of this comparison is that you can't buy a MBP with a cheap 64GB SSD. However, you can put one in for 100 bucks and get a device that is a lot faster than any MBA.

So this comparsion merely shows how much an SSD would speed up your computer.

It would be interesting to see the numbers of the old MBA with SDD.

 

[reezer]

True, it is actually a VERY unimportant spec.

Agreed that is important for unoptimized code, i.e., the "real world". This large (shared) cache difference is what made the C2D smoke the AthlonX2 despite the AX2 having higher clock speeds in the early adoptions of Conroe.

On my machines I've seen that GHz wins out on tests running highly optimized code like LAPACK, BLAS, etc.

 

[SR2]

Why not? Most people don't have SSD drives in their Macbook Pros. Are you just mad that your MBP almost got beat by the Air?

You guys fighting over outdated hardware performance are funny. Geekbench and Speedbench are a joke somebody needs to throw Windows on one of these things and run some real benchmarks, but then the scores would pale in comparison to $500 Windows laptops.