New MacBook Pro Benchmarks Show Massive Improvement

[Popeye206]

Buy a Windows PC.

Follow my advice: buy *one* machine only, but a high end one. It will cost you more but last you so.much.more. Plus you won't have second thoughts.

Huh? Your response is cryptic!


Anyway... this is very cool. Although this was a "refresh" and not a completely new Macbook Pro, it's impressive. Can't wait to get down to the Apple store this weekend and play with one just to experience it first hand.

The only thing that's a disappointment is the lack of the rumored SSD drive for the OS. That would have been cool and really set the MacBooks apart beyond all the other goodies.

Now onto iPad2.... next week will be cool!

 

[yaxomoxay]

I guess Sunday I'll get my MBP 13"... It would be my first MBP.

 

[Popeye206]

What am I missing?

I keep reading posts about the screen resolution and I don't get it.

From what I see, it's in par with most high-end laptops.

So, am I missing something... a real valid reason for the disappointment, or is it that the iPhone has spoiled us with the Retina display?

I'd love to hear.

 

[jmcguckin]

I keep reading posts about the screen resolution and I don't get it.

From what I see, it's in par with most high-end laptops.

So, am I missing something... a real valid reason for the disappointment, or is it that the iPhone has spoiled us with the Retina display?

I'd love to hear.

I think it's moreso that the 13" MacBook Air (which is much lower-performing from a processor standpoint) offers the higher resolution we were hoping for... and yet their pro machine still offers the (somewhat crippled) 1280x800 resolution we've been stuck with for quite a few years now.

 

[atherrien]

I was wondering if purchasing the i7 model of the 13 inch over the i5 model would be a huge difference that I would ACTUALLY be able to utilize.

I'm upgrading from a 2.0 ghz Core Duo Gateway w/ 2gb ddr2 ram....so pretty much anything would be faster these days.

 

[Mistrblank]

Well, this just underscores to me that I'm not very interested in upgrading my first generation intel MacBook until there is a 13" quad core.

I don't need a step down by going to the Air and I don't need the larger screen (or price) by stepping up to a 15 or 17".

No USB3, no quad core, no dual hard drive option, no 13" upgrade for me then

 

[yaxomoxay]

I keep reading posts about the screen resolution and I don't get it.

From what I see, it's in par with most high-end laptops.

So, am I missing something... a real valid reason for the disappointment, or is it that the iPhone has spoiled us with the Retina display?

I'd love to hear.

The problem is that on this website most of us get excited. Everything started from a small rumor ("MBP will be refreshed") and the day before the actual refresh most people were expecting a MacBook Pro identical to a MacBook Air cheaper than a MacMini and powerful as a maxed-out Mac Pro 12 core and also nostalgic as an Apple II.
Personally, I would have been happy even with the old MBP.

 

[Thunderhawks]

Sorry, did they even read any of the negative comments here today?

Everyone knows this MacBook Pro refresh was totally underwhelming.

Really ? EVERYONE?

I guess you are not the consumer Apple makes these for.

Please publish what fine machine you have to offer and where we can buy it!

 

[Thunderhawks]

Well, this just underscores to me that I'm not very interested in upgrading my first generation intel MacBook until there is a 13" quad core.

I don't need a step down by going to the Air and I don't need the larger screen (or price) by stepping up to a 15 or 17".

No USB3, no quad core, no dual hard drive option, no 13" upgrade for me then

And we should care about that because.......?

 

[kahkityoong]

Really ? EVERYONE?

I guess you are not the consumer Apple makes these for.

Please publish what fine machine you have to offer and where we can buy it!

I believe Flame's comment was firmly tongue in cheek Thunderhawks.

I do wonder how many of the people who negative voted the announcement have voted positive in this post.
Personally I'm happy for Apple to put the cheapest hard drives into these as I'm going to put in an SSD of my choice anyway.

 

[gregoryalee]

I spent last evening installing Pro Tools onto my new 15" 2.3 high res matte and it is definitely unbelievably fast for a laptop. I went for the 750 GB hard disk as most of my heavy weight data is on an external drive (My sessions are running from a 10k RPM firewire 800 drive) Coming from a early 2007 2.33 MBP, this was the update that I was waiting for! Blistering!

 

[stockscalper]

But are the Benchmarks relevant? Do they reflect performance in real world conditions? They are geared to take advantage of the quad cores, so naturally the stats are going to get bumped. But what software does the average MBP user have that will read all four cores and take advantage of the new chip? And the answer is none.

 

[Thunderhawks]

I believe Flame's comment was firmly tongue in cheek Thunderhawks.

I do wonder how many of the people who negative voted the announcement have voted positive in this post.
Personally I'm happy for Apple to put the cheapest hard drives into these as I'm going to put in an SSD of my choice anyway.

I can't even imagine how anybody could vote negative. It didn't meet THEIR expectations? Apple will do what they do and it will never be the latest technology.

And who is to say that they latest technology is good and will become the standard.

At one point 8-track and BETA were the latest technologies.

These MBP's are fantastic machines and their sales success will confirm that.
Wish I had the $$ to buy several.

Having had Macs since 1984 the Apple development and what you get for the money is genius.

In summary, really always the same, if it's not right for these people don't buy!

 

[gregoryalee]

Really ? EVERYONE?

I guess you are not the consumer Apple makes these for.

Please publish what fine machine you have to offer and where we can buy it!

LOL I was told by a forum member a few days ago that I am not in Apples target market, but I guess some one else who IS in Apples target market needed a machine with the EXACT specs I spelled out. I am new to the forum but there seems to be lots of arm chair Apple experts here.

 

[Lesser Evets]

My 2.66 MacPro is around 5100 on Geekbench. ANYTHING above that is worth purchase. This is still a great computer for most everything; it'll probably still be quite good for another 3 years.

Can't wait to see the upcoming iMac specs. I'd ditch MacPro for an iMac on my next purchase, especially if an iMac is Geekbench rating twice this thing and it has Thunderbolt.

 

[JonTa]

Im still happy with my late 2008 13" MB alu-unibody (2.4Ghz, 8GB ram, 500GB/7200). I just hope that next year redesign gets the upgraded screen & dedicated gpu for 13" model. Im sucker for form factor and even 15" its too big for me. If I will need bigger screen I'll buy cinema display, but please Steve, keep the 13" in PRO line with 15"&17" models and dont cut the corners.

 

[gregoryalee]

But are the Benchmarks relevant? Do they reflect performance in real world conditions? They are geared to take advantage of the quad cores, so naturally the stats are going to get bumped. But what software does the average MBP user have that will read all four cores and take advantage of the new chip? And the answer is none.

I am not exactly an average user being an IT professional but Pro Tools comes to mind to name one and there are lots of guys with Pro Tools running on Apple hardware. Logic is another one. It's offered at the retail stores as well so it must be used by more than 0 people. Many VM vendors also use multicores.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

I spent last evening installing Pro Tools onto my new 15" 2.3 high res matte and it is definitely unbelievably fast for a laptop. I went for the 750 GB hard disk as most of my heavy weight data is on an external drive (My sessions are running from a 10k RPM firewire 800 drive) Coming from a early 2007 2.33 MBP, this was the update that I was waiting for! Blistering!

Congrats (from a fellow Gregory), but if "most of [your] heavyweight data is on an external drive", seems to me like you would've been a really good candidate for having put in a 128 or 256 GB SSD inside, to speed up the OS and Home folder accesses.

 

[alent1234]

Buy a Windows PC.

Follow my advice: buy *one* machine only, but a high end one. It will cost you more but last you so.much.more. Plus you won't have second thoughts.

ok

dell/hp you buy cheap and if it breaks you junk it and buy another one. one reason why i'm hesitant to buy anything other than ipad or iphone from apple. for the price of a MBP i can buy a dell and 2 ipads and probably an iphone as well and get another android phone free on contract

 

[alphaod]

Well I'm glad I made the upgrade. Work processing time has been cut down by more than half!

 

[CrackedButter]

Have you actually READ this article to the end? Seen the conclusion? What good is an SSD merely faster than good 7200 rpm drive?

If you think Apple SSD's are good, have a look at this:
http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld-BeforeAfter-AppleToshiba512.html

Ask anybody doing something more disk-speed dependant than word processing what they think of Apple SSDs and they'll tell the same...

We're not harping about TRIM - if MacOS X has similar function, then great. But it's not been documented and I'm not leaving my data to a chance, not to mention paying that much for a drive that might or might not retain it's speed after 12 months of use. If oyu don't care about it, fine - buy overpriced, slow dirve form Apple. I actually make money with the help of a fast hard drive, so I'll invest in something I know for sure will work.

Not only have I read it, I keep referring to it from when it was written AND there was a slashdot discussion about it.

Here's this line:

"Our test results appear just as conclusive as those in our original TRIM article: across the majority of our tests, there's very little difference between the clean SSD and the one that's been used. "

And this:
"It's very, very curious and absolutely not what we expected. While we know SSD performance is affected by the OS - after all, you need Windows 7 for TRIM support - but for OS X not to suffer from performance degradation when it's using an SSD seeming stunning to the point of being difficult to believe. So what's going on?"

Where have you read the drive is a fast as a 7200rpm drive? The bit where they are critising the drive used by Apple? That's a different issues and nothing to do with what I'm discussing about TRIM. Also your link is comparing an Apple SSD with the amazing OCZ drives, of course there is no comparison concerning speed.

Basically, if you missed the point of the link, I'm talking about the lack of TRIM in OS X and how it doesn't seem that important judging by the tests. I'm not talking about the drives used by Apple in OS X.

LOL I was told by a forum member a few days ago that I am not in Apples target market, but I guess some one else who IS in Apples target market needed a machine with the EXACT specs I spelled out. I am new to the forum but there seems to be lots of arm chair Apple experts here.

Too many.

 

[Yaboze]

Nice results, this goes to show that CPU Ghz isn't the deciding factor when you compare two different CPU generations.

The 15" is even more of beast now, TB, quad core and that new ATI GPU is an awesome upgrade over last years.

The only thing that needs to be tested with native Mac Apps is the 13" GPU performance.

Also, the Thunderport demo on the other MRumors link was awesome!

 

[gregoryalee]

Congrats (from a fellow Gregory), but if "most of [your] heavyweight data is on an external drive", seems to me like you would've been a really good candidate for having put in a 128 or 256 GB SSD inside, to speed up the OS and Home folder accesses.

I understand your logic and did consider the SSD option, but my MP3s, movies and data that I want to carry around with me require at least 300 gig. FYI: My external drive is only 36 gig to keep seek times ULTRA low which is also a big performance booster. I transfer my work to a NAS and also to my system drive for more redundancy and a live offsite backup. So I NEED the space more than I need the internal drive speed. It's always a tradeoff for me.

I will be able to upgrade to an SSD when I can get a 750 gb or even better a 1 TB SSD for a reasonable cost. Also that gives me an excuse to upgrade in a year or two if those options become available at a reasonable price

 

[kahkityoong]

I can't even imagine how anybody could vote negative. It didn't meet THEIR expectations? Apple will do what they do and it will never be the latest technology.

And who is to say that they latest technology is good and will become the standard.

At one point 8-track and BETA were the latest technologies.

These MBP's are fantastic machines and their sales success will confirm that.
Wish I had the $$ to buy several.

Having had Macs since 1984 the Apple development and what you get for the money is genius.

In summary, really always the same, if it's not right for these people don't buy!

Totally agree. Even before the benchmarks were released, I was very happy with the specks on the new machines. I've been waiting for Quad core on the MBP but didn't expect it this generation. I think it's a very significant step forward towards making the Pro in MBP ring true.

 

[dwarnecke11]

Sweet fancy Moses!