New here and looking for advice on a new macbook. I'm looking at getting a new Macbook Air. Trying to decide between the 1.1 GHZ dual core i3. and the 1.1 GHZ Quad core i5. My old MacBook still works fine we just need an additional laptop for school. My old laptop is an early 2015 ( 1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, 251 GB Flash Storage). I really don't know much about these specs but it looks like my 5 yr old laptop would out perform the new one. How would these newer machines compare to my old one? Would i need to get the quad core i5 to see any performance improvements?
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New MBA Hardware Specs vs Old MacBook
- Thread starter Mr. Chumley
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A new i3 macbook air will most likely significantly outperform your 2015 machine.
The Ghz are less, but the CPU is around 30-50% more efficient clock for clock (and it boosts higher), and the GPU is around 2x faster.
If you go for the i5, the lead grows a lot more as it has double the cores as well.
Going for an i3 it wouldn't be a HUGE performance improvement unless you're doing video work where the gpu and quicksync can help (but there, it will be), but an i5 will be a significant step up. Like easily 1.5-2x or more.
edit:
just realized you said "macbook" (i had in my brain a macbook pro or air form factor machine) and mean the 12". The new air will totally smoke it. It won't even be close.
The Ghz are less, but the CPU is around 30-50% more efficient clock for clock (and it boosts higher), and the GPU is around 2x faster.
If you go for the i5, the lead grows a lot more as it has double the cores as well.
Going for an i3 it wouldn't be a HUGE performance improvement unless you're doing video work where the gpu and quicksync can help (but there, it will be), but an i5 will be a significant step up. Like easily 1.5-2x or more.
edit:
just realized you said "macbook" (i had in my brain a macbook pro or air form factor machine) and mean the 12". The new air will totally smoke it. It won't even be close.
It's really difficult to give an appropriate answer since you withheld all information about your specific usage case.
That said, my guess is that the base MacBook Air will be more than adequate at replacing your five-year-old MacBook.
That said, my guess is that the base MacBook Air will be more than adequate at replacing your five-year-old MacBook.
Thanks, I assumed it the i3 would be an improvement, it just didn't look like it by looking at the specs.
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We're pretty basic users. Word processing, web browsing, some powerpoint for school. Really nothing too intensive. I'm sure the i3 will do more than what we need. I was just curious if we would notice any performance improvement.
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We're pretty basic users. Word processing, web browsing, some powerpoint for school. Really nothing too intensive. I'm sure the i3 will do more than what we need. I was just curious if we would notice any performance improvement.
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Note that there are advantages that don't show up in the specs (which is an overly simplistic analysis).
Things like SSD I/O speed, better wireless networking, display quality. Stuff like H.265 hardware video encoding that the T2 Security Chip provides. Battery performance.
Basing a purchase decision primarily on specs or benchmarks like Geekbench is asinine. They don't accurate describe real world performance. More importantly they likely won't describe your individual usage case.
If you're that guy who runs egregious resource pig Google Chrome with 30 tabs, well, the Geekbench score means diddly squat and so do all the multi-processor benchmarks. You just need as much RAM as possible.
Things like SSD I/O speed, better wireless networking, display quality. Stuff like H.265 hardware video encoding that the T2 Security Chip provides. Battery performance.
Basing a purchase decision primarily on specs or benchmarks like Geekbench is asinine. They don't accurate describe real world performance. More importantly they likely won't describe your individual usage case.
If you're that guy who runs egregious resource pig Google Chrome with 30 tabs, well, the Geekbench score means diddly squat and so do all the multi-processor benchmarks. You just need as much RAM as possible.
Yup.
All those things as well.
But even if you're just looking at raw CPU throughput and graphics performance, even worst case the new Air will be significantly faster.
But as above... that's not the full story. That's worst case. In reality... some more things...
- h.265 video decode it will utterly destroy the old 2015 macbook (or any other older portable machine pre h.265 support for that matter). which as mentioned above, even if your macbook can currently struggle through it - the new machine will burn much less power doing it
- anything memory throughput intensive - the RAM is over 2x faster
- faster WIFI support
- faster bluetooth support
- Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C ports for faster IO
- AI/ML instructions are in the new chip so it will be much, much faster at that which new photoshop filters, tools, etc. may use.
list goes on...
How much faster really depends on your specific workload, but there are a lot of things that the new machine won't just be a little bit faster at - it will be a huge jump. Just depends if your use cases can make use of those new features or not. But new software will get even faster as it does make use of those new features.