Performance comparision ? : 13 rMBP vs Hackintosh Worksation

[Clovel19]

Hi all.

I currently own a Sandy Bridge Quad-Core Hackintosh Build (i5-2400, 3.1 GHz) with 2x4 GB of 1867 MHz Ram, and a 7k2 1 TB rpm boot drive. It tops at 9133 in 32-bit Geekbench 2.

Now, I am a student in Superior Maths prep classes in France, and I'd like to have a laptop to go to school, to my parents' place, to the library, Weekends out of home, etc.

I have been looking at the late 2013 13" Retina Macbook Pro in its 1499€ configuration and the educational discount. I'll use it for a little programming, video viewing, and a lot of media management (iTunes is heavy after 5 years of using it.) I will also be typing in my class notes. I'll also be dual-booting (Bootcamp-ing) to Win8.1 in a 60 GB partition. I use a USB 3.0 2TB HDD for data and Windows Games.

So I was wondering what would be the performance gap between my two machines as I'll only use one, and if the rMBP will, in your opinion, suit my needs.

Thanks,
Best regards,
Clovel

 

[yangchewren]

Hi all.

I currently own a Sandy Bridge Quad-Core Hackintosh Build (i5-2400, 3.1 GHz) with 2x4 GB of 1867 MHz Ram, and a 7k2 1 TB rpm boot drive. It tops at 9133 in 32-bit Geekbench 2.

Now, I am a student in Superior Maths prep classes in France, and I'd like to have a laptop to go to school, to my parents' place, to the library, Weekends out of home, etc.

I have been looking at the late 2013 13" Retina Macbook Pro in its 1499€ configuration and the educational discount. I'll use it for a little programming, video viewing, and a lot of media management (iTunes is heavy after 5 years of using it.) I will also be typing in my class notes. I'll also be dual-booting (Bootcamp-ing) to Win8.1 in a 60 GB partition. I use a USB 3.0 2TB HDD for data and Windows Games.

So I was wondering what would be the performance gap between my two machines as I'll only use one, and if the rMBP will, in your opinion, suit my needs.

Thanks,
Best regards,
Clovel

You will see imporvements in single core performance but would see an overall decrease in multi-threaded performance.

Geekbench lists the dual core 13" models as having a score of roughly 6700.

 

[Clovel19]

Thank you for your reply.

That's what I thought. But will I notice this difference in everyday tasks ? Because I am sure that the increase of read/write speeds from a 7k2 HDD and a PCIe SSD can be a factor. The most demanding tasks the computer will have to do is data management, saves, etc.

This is the impression I get when seeing "Yay PCIe SSDs !". I'm no newbie, but I can't discern wether this will speed up my experience compared to my desktop or if the slower CPU performance will slow down my usual tasks.

Thanks !
Clovel

 

[treyjustice]

You won't notice a huge difference. I had an i7 hackintosh build with nice video card and for my tasks I don't notice a difference.

 

[T-Bob]

Why would single threaded performance be better? This is a low voltage mobile chip vs a fairly mainstream desktop cpu which scores a lot higher.

 

[laurihoefs]

Why would single threaded performance be better? This is a low voltage mobile chip vs a fairly mainstream desktop cpu which scores a lot higher.

Take a look at the scores:
i5-4258U
i5-2400

Contrary to common belief, a low voltage processor performs equally well as a desktop processor, if they are the same clock speed and are of the same generation.

In this case the mobile part is actually two generations newer, so it will perform better per clock, and slightly outperform the desktop part in single threaded benchmarks, despite having a slower clock speed.

 

[MyMac1976]

No you won't any difference in raw Power will be made up for by the faster storage.

 

[T-Bob]

Yeah getting close but the desktop CPU is still beating it.

But no I have never seen a ULV/LV processor outperform a desktop processor at same clock speed and same generation.

Example:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4770K+@+3.50GHz&id=1919

vs

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4900MQ+@+2.80GHz

That isn't even a clock by clock turbo comparison, it is the very best mobile CPU on the market and it doesn't beat the mainstream i7. The hex cores up would be even more devastating.

 

[laurihoefs]

Yeah getting close but the desktop CPU is still beating it.

The i5-2400 scores include a large variety of systems, but look closely to the single threaded scores in OS X. The performance is very close, and in some cases the Haswell even very slightly outperforms the Sandy Bridge. Impressive, considering the difference in clock speed. The Haswell is more efficient, as they are two generations apart.

Different generations = different performance per clock.
Same generation + similar clocks = similar performance.

But no I have never seen a ULV/LV processor outperform a desktop processor at same clock speed and same generation.

Well, not surprising, as you shouldn't. Like I said earlier: Contrary to common belief, a low voltage processor performs equally well as a desktop processor, if they are the same clock speed and are of the same generation.

Same generation + similar clocks = similar performance.

Example:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4770K+@+3.50GHz&id=1919

vs

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4900MQ+@+2.80GHz

That isn't even a clock by clock turbo comparison, it is the very best mobile CPU on the market and it doesn't beat the mainstream i7. The hex cores up would be even more devastating.

Same number of cores, almost the same clock speed, and very similar scores. The 47W mobile part with marginally lower turbo speeds reaches roughly 93% of the performance of the 84W desktop part.

Same generation + similar clocks = similar performance.