Earlier this month Apple announced a lot of new hardware. While not all of it is available yet (in particular the Core i5 and Core i7 iMacs) most of it is and folks have been asking about how the new hardware performs compared to the old hardware. So, I’ve gathered Geekbench results for the new Mac models and compared them with results for the older Mac models (all results were gathered from the Geekbench Result Browser).
Geekbench is Primate Labs’ processor and memory benchmark where a score of 1000 means a system has the same performance as a PowerMac G5 @ 1.6GHz. Higher scores are better.
Mac mini (Late 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53 GHz (2 cores)
3563
Mac mini (Early/Late 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26 GHz (2 cores)
3056
Mac mini (Early 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 2.0 GHz (2 cores)
2783
Mac mini (Mid 2007) Intel Core 2 T7200 2.0 GHz (2 cores)
2617
Mac mini (Mid 2007) Intel Core 2 T5600 1.83 GHz (2 cores)
2400
Conclusions
The results are as expected; faster processors (of the same architecture) mean higher Geekbench scores. This shouldn’t be surprising since Geekbench is predominantly a CPU benchmark. What I’m interested in seeing, though, is how the Core i5 and Core i7 iMacs stack up; not only do they have a new processor architecture they also have double the number of cores. I wonder if the high-end iMac i7 will (finally!) be comparable to a low-end Mac Pro?
While it’s not something I talk about a lot, many of you already know that Primate Labs is not my full-time job. I have a full-time job (as a software developer) during the day and I work on Primate Labs during my evenings and weekends. Although I lose much of my leisure time, my day job gives me access to amazing technology and Primate labs constantly forces me to deal with new challenges. It is a “double life” that has made me a better developer.
You might wonder why any of this matters to you, my users. I have been fortunate that the companies that I have worked for in the past, including most recently RapidMind, have been willing to allow me to pursue Primate Labs projects. A few weeks ago RapidMind was acquired by Intel. This acquisition has forced me to question what I should do as the developer of a vendor-neutral cross-platform processor benchmark AND as an employee of the world’s largest semiconductor company. Can I remain neutral when it comes to my Geekbench work?
I have considered many options, including selling or open-sourcing Geekbench. Abandoning Geekbench was not an option since Geekbench has over 10,000 registered users, over 170,000 results submitted to the Geekbench Result Browser, and companies all over the world in different industries use Geekbench.
I have decided to continue to work on Geekbench. I will strive to provide a benchmark that remains vendor-neutral in spite of my daytime employment. It is just another challenge, but one that you as Geekbench users should be aware of and understand.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this please let me know. You can reach me via email at email hidden; JavaScript is required or by posting a comment below.
I’ve added a page to the Primate Labs website that lists the experimental builds (along with the official releases) of Geekbench. These experimental builds are, well, experimental (meaning things can and probably will break) and come with absolutely no support.
Right now there are experimental builds of Geekbench 2.1 for Solaris and Haiku available on the download page. I’ll update the blog whenever additional builds are available.
I’ve updated the Mac Benchmark chart with Geekbench results for the new MacBook Pros announced at WWDC earlier this month. I’ve included the results for these new MacBook Pros below, along with results for the previous generation of MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
Results were collected from the Geekbench Result Browser for Macs with standard processors (i.e., no processor upgrades or overclocked processors). I’ve reported the average overall score for each model and processor combination. A score of 1000 is the score a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6GHz would receive, and higher scores are better.
Results
MacBook Pro (15/17-inch Mid 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo T9900 3.06 GHz (2 cores)
3989
MacBook Pro (Late 2008) Intel Core 2 Duo T9800 2.93 GHz (2 cores)
3888
MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo T9800 2.93 GHz (2 cores)
3872
MacBook Pro (15/17-inch Mid 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 2.8 GHz (2 cores)
3764
MacBook Pro (Late 2008) Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 2.8 GHz (2 cores)
3652
MacBook Pro (15/17-inch Mid 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo P8800 2.66 GHz (2 cores)
3580
MacBook Pro (Late 2008) Intel Core 2 Duo T9550 2.66 GHz (2 cores)
3548
MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53 GHz (2 cores)
3437
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53 GHz (2 cores)
3436
MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo T9550 2.66 GHz (2 cores)
3405
MacBook Pro (Late 2008) Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 2.53 GHz (2 cores)
3293
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo P7550 2.26 GHz (2 cores)
Apple released a lot of new hardware this month, and while I was able to post Geekbench results for the new iMac and Mac mini fairly quickly, it took a little while longer to get Geekbench results for the new Mac Pro.
While other folks, such as Rob-ART over at BareFeats, have done an excellent job compiling benchmark results for the latest Mac Pros, I still wanted to post Geekbench results for not just the latest Mac Pros, but all of the Mac Pros that Apple has produced.
Setup
I’ve gathered Geekbench scores for the all of the Mac Pros that Apple has released. Scores were collected from the Geekbench Result Browser for Mac Pros with standard processors (i.e., no processor upgrades, overclocked processors, or Hackintoshes).
I’ve reported the average overall score for each model and processor combination.
If you haven’t used Geekbench before here’s how it measures performance. Geekbench compares a computer’s performance against a “baseline system” (currently a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6GHz in Geekbench 2). A computer that has the same performance as the baseline system scores 1000 in Geekbench. A computer that’s twice as fast as the baseline scores 2000 while a computer that’s twice as slow scores 500.
Finally, Geekbench 2 only measures processor and memory performance which is why models with the same processors but different video cards have roughly the same score.
Mac Pro Benchmarks
Mac Pro (Early 2009) Intel Xeon X5570 2.93 GHz (8 cores)
14904
Mac Pro (Early 2009) Intel Xeon X5550 2.67 GHz (8 cores)
14458
Mac Pro (Early 2009) Intel Xeon E5520 2.27 GHz (8 cores)
11803
Mac Pro (Early 2009) Intel Xeon W3540 2.93 GHz (4 cores)
9112
Mac Pro (Early 2008) Intel Xeon X5482 3.2 GHz (8 cores)
9039
Mac Pro (Early 2008) Intel Xeon X5472 3.0 GHz (8 cores)
8737
Mac Pro (8-core) Intel Xeon X5365 3.0 GHz (8 cores)
8629
Mac Pro (Early 2008) Intel Xeon E5462 2.8 GHz (8 cores)
8319
Mac Pro (Early 2009) Intel Xeon W3520 2.67 GHz (4 cores)
8144
Mac Pro Intel Xeon 5160 3.0 GHz (4 cores)
5538
Mac Pro (Early 2008) Intel Xeon E5462 2.8 GHz (4 cores)
5438
Mac Pro Intel Xeon 5150 2.66 GHz (4 cores)
4975
Mac Pro Intel Xeon 5130 2.0 GHz (4 cores)
3884
Conclusions
What’s interesting is the performance of the 2008 and 2009 entry-level Mac Pro; both Macs have roughly the same performance, but the newer Mac Pro has a lower processor frequency and fewer cores. The new Nehalem architecture is clearly better than the older Core architecture. While it would be nice if the new entry-level Mac Pro was faster than the old entry-level Mac Pro, the new Mac Pro is cheaper, a change that makes more sense given the state of the economy.
The new mid- and high-end Mac Pros, on the other hand, are insanely fast (and insanely expensive). Currently it’s these models that are dominating most of the top spots in the Geekbench Result Browser. The only computer that can beat the Mac Pros’ score is a 32-core server from IBM.
Yesterday, Apple updated its entire desktop lineup. This update had been a long time coming, especially since the Mac Pro hadn’t been updated since January 2008 and the Mac mini hadn’t been updated since August 2007!
However, a lot of people were disappointed with the updates, since it felt like an incremental update rather than a substantial upgrade. Now that Geekbench results are coming in for the new iMac and Mac mini, we can look at one aspect of the updated hardware — processor performance — and see if the upgrade is incremental or substantial.
Setup
I’ve gathered results for the latest iMacs and Mac minis and compared them against previous generations (note that results for some hardware configurations aren’t available yet; I’ll update the post when they are available). Results were collected from the Geekbench Result Browser for Macs with standard processors (i.e., no processor upgrades or overclocked processors). I’ve reported the average overall score for each model and processor combination.
If you’re unfamiliar with Geekbench and how it measures performance, a score of 1000 is the score a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6GHz would receive. Higher scores are better. Also, Geekbench 2 only measures processor and memory performance which is why models with the same processors but different video cards have roughly the same score.
Mac mini (Early 2009) Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 2.0 GHz (2 cores)
2768
Mac mini (Mid 2007) Intel Core 2 T7200 2.0 GHz (2 cores)
2583
Mac mini (Mid 2007) Intel Core 2 T5600 1.83 GHz (2 cores)
2379
Mac mini (Early 2006) Intel T2300 1.67 GHz (2 cores)
2139
Mac mini (Early 2006) Intel T1200 1.5 GHz (1 core)
1391
Conclusions
Processor performance hasn’t increased substantially in the latest hardware; the performance increase seems to scale with processor speed. This isn’t surprising, since neither the iMac nor the Mac mini moved to a new processor architecture.
You might want to keep this in mind if you’re looking for a new Mac; you might be better off getting a discontinued (or refurbished) previous-generation Mac rather than one of the new Mac models.