New MB vs MBA Ultimate

[driphone]

Hi everyone,

I have an 11" mid 2011 MBA Ultimate i7, 4 GB RAM, 256 GB HD. I picked up the 1.2 GHz, 8 BG RAM, 512 GB HD new MB. I really love the "thinner than Air" form factor, the beautiful Retina display and the powerful built in speakers (always hated the weak MBA speakers).

My question is the following. Is my 4 yr old dependable MBA still faster than this new MB? Considering this is a $1600 machine, should I just wait for either the Retina MBA or a more robust MB?

TIA,
Sam

 

[neiltc13]

Run Geekbench on them both and find out

 

[MyopicPaideia]

Hi everyone,

I have an 11" mid 2011 MBA Ultimate i7, 4 GB RAM, 256 GB HD. I picked up the 1.2 GHz, 8 BG RAM, 512 GB HD new MB. I really love the "thinner than Air" form factor, the beautiful Retina display and the powerful built in speakers (always hated the weak MBA speakers).

My question is the following. Is my 4 yr old dependable MBA still faster than this new MB? Considering this is a $1600 machine, should I just wait for either the Retina MBA or a more robust MB?

TIA,
Sam

Nope. I had/have the exact same 2011 11" MBA as you. It is around 2475/4900 in the Geekbench single/multicore scores.

The MB with the 5Y51 you picked up gets around 2600/5375 on the same benchmarks.

 

[drjsway]

Plus a much faster GPU. The 2011 was the first year of Intel GPUs and wasn't faster than the 2010.

 

[Michael Goff]

I doubt there will ever be a rMBA. Also, the rMB likely has faster storage than your old Air. So it has a faster CPU, GPU, and SSD.

 

[danielwerner]

I doubt there will ever be a rMBA. Also, the rMB likely has faster storage than your old Air. So it has a faster CPU, GPU, and SSD.

I agree. I think Apples strategy is to have only the Macbook and the Macbook Pro.

 

[Michael Goff]

I agree. I think Apples strategy is to have only the Macbook and the Macbook Pro.

In a few years, that'll be great.

 

[J.C]

Hi everyone,

I have an 11" mid 2011 MBA Ultimate i7, 4 GB RAM, 256 GB HD. I picked up the 1.2 GHz, 8 BG RAM, 512 GB HD new MB. I really love the "thinner than Air" form factor, the beautiful Retina display and the powerful built in speakers (always hated the weak MBA speakers).

My question is the following. Is my 4 yr old dependable MBA still faster than this new MB? Considering this is a $1600 machine, should I just wait for either the Retina MBA or a more robust MB?

TIA,
Sam

I have the same two machines and the old MBA feels faster for everything. Simple things like scrolling in a browser, selecting text, click and drag, opening and closing browser tabs etc all feel like utter garbage on the new MacBook. It's infuriating to use and I'm not sure I can wait for a fix.

 

[Freyqq]

The performance is probably very close, but the rMB is driving a retina display and the 2011 is pushing a lot less pixels.

 

[driphone]

I appreciate everyone's comments. It appears that the new MB will be an overall improvement over my MBA which means I'll keep it and pass the MBA to my son.

Regards,
Sam