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New MacBook Pro Benchmarks Show Massive Improvement

Soooo glad I went with the new base 13" rather than a refurb i5 15" for $200 more....My needs demand raw computational power and above all portability to sit on those tiny little lecture hall desktops. As long as the HD 3000 can play Civ 5 on low/med & maybe a little Starcraft 2 once in a while, I'm fine. Anything they have now is better than the 9400m I have in my '09 13" pro.


And.....just ordered 8gb of 1333ghz ram from newegg for 41% of even the new, lower prices Apple charges.
 
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AAPLaday said:
That's a huge improvement!!! The 13" is now a powerhouse! Really really wanna see gaming benchmarks soon. I think this is the best laptop upgrade they have had. (along with the updated Airs last year)
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Some one who bought one who had the 2010 already did his own benchmarks and found the 2011 blew the 2010 away in speed but was slightly worse than it in graphics (but not tellable to him while playing, just by the software he used to test it).

So, about the same as the 2010 for that but it will install and load the game quicker.

He also said he found the battery to be on par with the 2010.

So, now I will change my mind and say I'm jealous. But I'm not too upset I got the 2010, it still addressed the main reasons I wanted a new computer. But I sure wouldn't mind it being much faster or the potential of the thunderbolt connector.
 
I just went on YouTube and typed in intel hd3000 and got videos of gamers playing games like crysis, dirt2, and COD and the graphics look fine to me. For those who are worried about it the 13' mbp GPU go check it out and let me know what you think.
 
Holy cow, that's unbelievable.

A new 2.0Ghz (4 core) MBP beats my fairly new 27" iMac w/ i7 (4 core) @ 2.8Ghz!
 
tslewis said:
Wow, the new MBP 15 in with 2.3 ghz quad core is x3 faster as regards the CPU speed when comparing my late 2008 MBP with 2.8 ghz dual core.

Im seriously thinking of selling my 2008 and upgrading. Seems like a lot of upgrades when comparing to the late 2008 15 in model. Seems like a decent upgrade after less than 3 years. My original 2008 model cost around the same price.

2008: 2.8 ghz Dual core vs 2.2 Quad core in 2011, x3 speed improvement
2008: less battery life vs 7 hours in 2011
2008 expand memory to 6gb vs 8GB in 2011
2008: No Thunderbolt
2008: lower resolution vs 1690 hi res in 2011
2008 250 gb 7200 rpm hd vs 500gb 72000 rpm HD in 2011
2008 low res isight vs hi-res isight for 2011
2008: no SD slot vs one sd slot in 2011
2008 512MB NVIDIA card vs 1GB AMD in 2011

Seems like a good time to upgrade.
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How much can you make on your sale? I have a 2009 model and am thinking about switching.
 
Thares said:
Yesterday I ordered the top-end of the new MacBook Pro 13" with the 2.7 i7. But I'm feeling quite uncomfortable about my decision. Primary, because of the onboard-intel-graphics-thing. I am gonna use it for my study, but I also want to play actual games on it from time to time.
I was wondering if my choice was okay or if I rather should re-invest in the top-end MBA or the low-end 15".
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Depends on what games you want to play and how often "time to time" is for you. I would NOT go for the 15", as it will soon become a pain in the... when you have to carry it with you for your studies (too big, too heavy).

The MBA surely is superior for being carried around all day and the gaming performance not too shabby - but that again depends on your needs.

If your budget allows you could try to get a refurbished MBA (11,6") and use the rest of the money for building yourself a Windows gaming machine. That way you have more gaming power than with the 15" MBP and less weight to carry around.

If your budget does not allow, i think the 13" is a good compromise!
 
G4DP said:
Isn't this blatantly obvious?

Double the cores, double the results in CPU benchmark tests?
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You are so right! Keep in mind that a 4 core machine does not improve results in word processing over a 2 core machine.
 
Satanor said:
wow the 13' high end model got an insane speed bump. Same for the base model. Now only the gpu was a little bit better everyone would be happy.
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Picked up the new 13" 2.7Ghz Dual core I7 last night. All I can say is WOW as well. Very, very nice!
 
maccompaq said:
You are so right! Keep in mind that a 4 core machine does not improve results in word processing over a 2 core machine.
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To be fair, nothing has improved the speed of word processing since the late 90's. That workflow reached it's human factor threshold a long time ago.
 
WOW - these numbers are better than i thought they would be yesterday morning. that seals it for me, i have been waiting on this update for 4 months. Question is when there is my son 2009 MBP and a 2010 MBP sitting closed on the coffee table, how can i tell which one is my new 2011 one? :)

I can see one day driving off to work with the wrong model. lol
 
These results are pretty amazing. I am still trying to talk my wife into upgrading to the 13" MBP from a Late 2006 BMB... :eek:
 
So when are we seeing other kinds of benchmarks?

Graphics and system wide kind.
The CPU upgrade part was very nice indeed but I want to know about the rest also.
 
About Mac OS X Lion

Hi, im looking to buy one of the new macbook pros, but i was wondering if any of you know if i will be able to upgrade to the new Mac OS X Lion on the summer for free? or do they normally charge for that considering that they just released the new line and in a couple of months the OS will be old? do you know what happened before from leopard to snow leopard if you had bough a laptop just before the released? It would be a joke if after spending over £2000 they make me pay for the OS which will be free if i buy the same laptop in the summer
 
esaro said:
Hi, im looking to buy one of the new macbook pros, but i was wondering if any of you know if i will be able to upgrade to the new Mac OS X Lion on the summer for free? or do they normally charge for that considering that they just released the new line and in a couple of months the OS will be old? do you know what happened before from leopard to snow leopard if you had bough a laptop just before the released? It would be a joke if after spending over £2000 they make me pay for the OS which will be free if i buy the same laptop in the summer
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You will be charged full price.
 
I've never owned anything other than an apple laptop. My strategy has been to purchase the outgoing machines which are usually steeply discounted- If I recall correctly I got about 30% off my 2.5 core 2 duo.

Ideally I would like a desktop machine because I mostly use it for photo and video applications. The problem is I found I needed the laptop for shooting HD out in the field, especially when the storage cards for cameras like the HVX were $1000 for 16GB when they first came out and I needed to offload the footage thru the PCMCIA or express slot.

For the first time I find myself considering the latest greatest from Apple-with the irony being that I was looking to go with a desktop because I've got so many devices daisy chained thru the laptop.

EDIT: Whatever the discount was it was greater than my corporate discount which is pretty good since my company actually adds an incentive on top of the usual apple discount, and it was better than the student discount so maybe it was in the 20% range..
 
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danrees said:
It depends if you will use your laptop as your main gaming machine and what everything at the best resolution. For me I can't justify the extra £300 for the better GPU because I already have a PS3 sitting here that I don't use that much.
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So I'm not the only one then. I wish people wouldn't spout crap like "NO ONE cares about extra CPU power and EVERYONE wants better graphics".

I couldn't give 2 hoots about graphics, especially on a 13" laptop. The Quad 15 is enough for me as music production requires CPU and RAM. If the 13 had the Quad and no graphics I'd buy it, it's only going to end up through my Bravia anyway and the PS3 handles the gaming side of things.

Great update, especially coming from a 2006 iMac. Logic was crapping out on me all the time. This will scream.

Looking forward to Haswell :D
 
esaro said:
F.. that make me think to buy a cheap laptop and save money and wait for next year's update
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The upgrade at most will be $129, which will be worth it. Why should Apple give you a future OS upgrade for free. If you buy a Macbook Pro now, they are already including Snow Leopard. It doesn't make sense.

If you wait to buy it until the release date is announced, there will be a period where the upgrade will be free, or $10 for delivery fees.
 
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