Speed Comparison?

[IgnatiusTheKing]

I'm trying to compare a 1.6GHz MacBook Air (with 2GB RAM and the 80GB 4200 rpm PATA HD) compare to a 2.1GHz White MacBook (with 2GB RAM and everything else stock).

How would they compare in terms of speed doing regular things like email, internet, etc. and how would they compare when using Adobe CS3?

I have the MacBook but am considering giving it to my wife and grabbing the Air instead. Would I notice a dramatic drop-off in speed or would it feel pretty much the same?

Thanks

 

[mhnajjar]

CS3 would show a huge difference, unless you are willing to pay the extra money for revB

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

CS3 would show a huge difference, unless you are willing to pay the extra money for revB

Well I was looking at a used Air that's quite a bit cheaper than the current models (or anything likely to be released soon).

So the .5GHz difference would mean a huge speed loss?

 

[Consultant]

Barefeats.com
and a lot of publications have benchmarks and comparisons.

 

[justit]

It's not CS3, but I compared my macbook to a Rev B for encoding video.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/610234/

A faster processor is a faster processor, so you have to decide if you are willing to wait roughly 1/3 of the time longer using the MBA.

Are you working with large files or smaller website size files? If the latter you should be fine.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

It's not CS3, but I compared my macbook to a Rev B for encoding video.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/610234/

A faster processor is a faster processor, so you have to decide if you are willing to wait roughly 1/3 of the time longer using the MBA.

Are you working with large files or smaller website size files? If the latter you should be fine.

It would be a secondary computer, so I wouldn't use CS3 on it all that often (just when traveling, etc.) but I'd like to know that it could handle Photoshop and InDesign. Rarely would I need it for a file bigger than 50MB and usually I would be working files less than 10MB.

Video encoding seems to take a lot more juice than CS3. Photoshop seems to be more dependent on RAM than processor speed, but that's just me.

 

[justit]

Photoshop seems to be more dependent on RAM than processor speed, but that's just me.

So if 2 MB of ram in your macbook works for you the MBA should be fine.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

Yeah I just did some more hunting and found these. Seems like I would be okay.