No love for the 13" Macbook Pro

[Dan--]

[I decided to cross-post here as my other thread wasn't gaining any traction]

The benchmarks are coming in on the mid-2012 13" Macbook Pro, and they seem to be a little, err, underwhelming.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/chart?q=model:"MacBook+Pro+(13-inch+Mid+2012)"

I'm not entirely sure how to translate the linked scores into a single number, but they seem to show the following:

Model           Chip    Cores  Threads   Speed    32-Bit Score
New 13" MBP   i5-3210M    2       4      2.5GHz      6822
New 13" MBP   i7-3520M    2       4      2.9GHz      7883

This is not much better than the ultra low power Airs, despite the same numbers of cores, threads, and significantly higher clock speeds:

11" Air       i5-3317U    2       4      1.7GHz      5784
13" Air       i5-3427U    2       4      1.8GHz      6175
13" Air       i7-3667U    2       4      2.0GHz      6928

And hardly any better than last years 13" MBP:

'11 13" MBP   i5-2435M    2       4      2.4GHz      6128
'11 13" MBP   i7-2640M    2       4      2.8GHz      7219

Any idea why we're not seeing a corresponding bump in speed over the Air's based on clock speed? I was expecting/hoping for scores about 25% higher on the new 13". (I need a machine for Aperture, and can't afford any of the 15" MBPs.)

 

[angelsguardian]

Well, I'll tell you that I'm very happy with my new '13. More than enough for my general needs; and while it's not a huge update over the older ones, (If I had a 2011, I would not get the newer one) it is faster and is still a great machine.

Well I changed the 13 I bought last Friday for a new one yesterday (gotta love that 14 day exchange) and it is noticeably quicker. Also when converting video the machine runs a lot cooler (around 30 degrees) with less fan usage too. And that's before a memory upgrade arrives so just 4Gb.

 

[DougFNJ]

I had a Mid 2010 13 inch with a 2.4 Core2Duo that I upgraded to 8GB RAM and an SSD, it was very fast, but for my video editing, I needed something a little faster. I know the best option for this is a 15" but I need portability.

So I decided to upgrade to the 2.9 Ivy Bridge, and my transfer and rendering times have easily been cut in half. I was looking forward to this exact upgrade since they rumored it last week, and I am 100% satisfied....plenty of love here

 

[ssn637]

I had a Mid 2010 13 inch with a 2.4 Core2Duo that I upgraded to 8GB RAM and an SSD, it was very fast, but for my video editing, I needed something a little faster. I know the best option for this is a 15" but I need portability.

So I decided to upgrade to the 2.9 Ivy Bridge, and my transfer and rendering times have easily been cut in half. I was looking forward to this exact upgrade since they rumored it last week, and I am 100% satisfied....plenty of love here

Can you give us an idea of whether or not the HD 4000 Intel graphics is faster than the NVidia 320M on your previous system? The CPU upgrade between the two is significant; I'm not sure if the graphics performance difference is worth purchasing a 2012 model. The games I play in Windows x64 tend to tax the graphics card, not the processor, so any performance increase in the IGP is welcome. Otherwise I'll just wait til Haswell arrives.

 

[Braniff747SP]

Well I changed the 13 I bought last Friday for a new one yesterday (gotta love that 14 day exchange) and it is noticeably quicker. Also when converting video the machine runs a lot cooler (around 30 degrees) with less fan usage too. And that's before a memory upgrade arrives so just 4Gb.

No question it's quicker--it certainly is, noticeably so. For me, it's a huge upgrade--my previous machine was a early-'08 BlackBook.

 

[DougFNJ]

Can you give us an idea of whether or not the HD 4000 Intel graphics is faster than the NVidia 320M on your previous system? The CPU upgrade between the two is significant; I'm not sure if the graphics performance difference is worth purchasing a 2012 model. The games I play in Windows x64 tend to tax the graphics card, not the processor, so any performance increase in the IGP is welcome. Otherwise I'll just wait til Haswell arrives.

I don't really do gaming, but from what I was reading, it should be comparable, I am thinking of trying this Diablo game I keep reading about, Ill download it and give results this weekend.

 

[mikeo007]

Can you give us an idea of whether or not the HD 4000 Intel graphics is faster than the NVidia 320M on your previous system? The CPU upgrade between the two is significant; I'm not sure if the graphics performance difference is worth purchasing a 2012 model. The games I play in Windows x64 tend to tax the graphics card, not the processor, so any performance increase in the IGP is welcome. Otherwise I'll just wait til Haswell arrives.

I'd be interested in this as well. Benchmarks are all over the map, some say the HD4000 is slightly slower, some say significantly faster. The 320m was a pretty fantastic IGPU the still be keepin up after 3 generations though.

 

[hkim1983]

Well, I don't know how relevant this is to everyone, but I did my own little "real world" test between the two models today at the store. Keep in mind that I don't remember the exact numbers, so I could be off +/- 5%.

I thought of the most demanding cpu task that a "normal" person would be likely to engage in, and that was streaming flash video. I tested a 720p and 1080p stream on both machines and ran the stream for at least 10 minutes. If things change beyond 10 minutes, well, I wouldn't know that, since I couldn't spend all day at the store, lol, but it did give me a rough idea on things.

I used activity monitor to watch the cpu usage of both, and obviously, I used Safari as my browser because Chrome is not installed by default. Through my experiences, Chrome handles flash video better than Safari (maybe this has changed), so results should be better on Chrome.

The Air used up about 50-60% cpu usage on the 720p stream, and about 80% on the 1080p stream. The MBP used about 40% on the 720p stream, and about 60% on the 1080p stream. Both computers ran surprisingly cool, and I could not hear either fan get audibly loud (to be fair however, the apple store is pretty loud itself). Neither computer dropped frames on the stream because of the computer itself.

As a baseline, my current Alu MB '08 goes fan crazy on even 480p streams...

In terms of power, I think either computer would be satisfactory now for the majority of "normal" users. The biggest surprise was how cool both computers ran even under load (well, not really "under load", but probably one of the hardest things "normal" people do on their computers). With that said, unless you need one of the few things that the Pro offers...the Air really is the better machine this generation in almost every shape and form.

 

[Slivortal]

You hear about as much about the 13" MBP as the 15" non-Retina MBP - mainly because
A. It's a Pro without the Retina technology
B. You can get an Air for the same price, same size, and about the same specs except the lighter weight, thinner design, and SSD.

 

[mnsportsgeek]

You hear about as much about the 13" MBP as the 15" non-Retina MBP - mainly because
A. It's a Pro without the Retina technology
B. You can get an Air for the same price, same size, and about the same specs except the lighter weight, thinner design, and SSD.

No... you can't. to get a 500gb drive in the air it would cost you 2 grand after tax. It's 2012, I'm not carrying around an external hard drive. I'll upgrade my 2012 13" Macbook pro to 16gb ram and an ssd when i don't have to sell my soul to buy one. Try doing that on the air. Not to mention it'll be 700mhz faster, have more ram, and a larger ssd after those upgrades. Oh... and i'll have room for a 2nd ssd or keep my optical disc.

And let's not even mention how much the resale value will skyrocket when it is soon to become the last model of apple laptop with a disc drive.