Primate Labs Blog

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

Earlier this week Apple released new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. While the biggest changes are the new enclosures and the new graphics cards, the new laptops also have a new chipset (an NVIDIA chipset instead of an Intel chipset) and faster DDR3 memory. These last two features might improve processor performance even though the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros don’t really have upgraded processors.

So, do the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros have better processor performance than the old MacBooks and MacBook Pros? Does the new memory and chipset make a difference? Let’s find out!

Setup

I used Geekbench 2, our cross-platform benchmark, to measure the processor and memory performance of the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Here is the configuration of the eight test machines.

• MacBook Pro (Late 2008)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 @ 2.53GHz or
  • Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 @ 2.40GHz
  • 4.00 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
  • Mac OS X 10.5.5 (Build 9F2088)

• MacBook Pro (Early 2008)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 @ 2.60GHz or
  • Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.40GHz
  • 4.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.5 (Build 9F33)

• MacBook (Late 2008)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 @ 2.40GHz or
  • Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 @ 2.00GHz
  • 2.00 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
  • Mac OS X 10.5.5 (Build 9F2114)

• MacBook (Early 2008)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.40GHz or
  • Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.10GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.5 (Build 9F33)

Geekbench 2 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 1000 (which is the score a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6GHz would receive). Higher scores are better.

Results

Overall Performance

Integer Performance

Floating Point Performance

Memory Performance

Stream Performance

Conclusions

Somewhat suprisingly, processor performance is virtually unchanged in the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros; the new NVIDIA chipset and the faster DDR3 memory haven’t managed to help increase processor performance.

Why is this surprising? Well, with other hardware revisions Apple’s managed to make some modest gains in processor performance with chipset or memory upgrades without upgrading the processor itself. Here, though, performance is practically the same (and acutally down in some cases) with the new chipset and memory. I think NVIDIA has a ways to go (at least compared to Intel) when it comes to implementing chipsets.

Does this mean the new laptops are a bad upgrade? Hardly! While the NVIDIA chipsets might not be as good as the Intel chipsets when it comes to processor performance, they far surpass Intel when it comes to graphics performance. This increased graphics performance is a huge gain for the MacBook, and makes the MacBook a compelling machine for people looking for a smaller MacBook Pro.

Throw in the new, sturdier chassis and you’ve got a compelling upgrade for almost any Mac laptop user.

When I wrote about the performance of Apple’s recently-released MacBook Pros last week, I wanted to write about the MacBooks, too but didn’t have results for the differnet MacBook models. Well, now I do, so here’s a Geekbench performance comparison of the latest MacBooks against the previous generation of MacBooks.

Setup

Here is the configuration of the four test machines:

• MacBook (Early 2008)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.40GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C2015)

• MacBook (Early 2008)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.10GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C2015)

• MacBook (Late 2007)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.20GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C31)

• MacBook (Late 2007)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.00GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C31)

If you’re not familiar with Geekbench, Geekbench scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 1000 (which is the score a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6GHz would receive). Higher scores are better.

Overall Performance

Integer Performance

Floating Point Performance

Memory Performance

Stream Performance

Conclusions

Despite having a slightly faster processor, the smaller L2 cache of the Penryn processors means the base MacBook (Early 2008) is slower than the base MacBook (Late 2007). If you’re considering buying a base MacBook, you might want to shop around and see if you can snag an old one rather than a new one.

Of course, the high-end MacBook (Early 2008) is faster than the high-end MacBook (Late 2007); it seems the increase in processor frequency is enough to overcome the smaller L2 cache in this case.

Overall the new MacBooks, like the new MacBook Pros, don’t feel like an incredibly compelling upgrade. Sure, the MacBook Pro has a multi-touch trackpad, but the MacBooks don’t and sure, the new Penryn processors are cooler and use less power, but at an apparent hit in performance.

This update reminds me of the PowerBook/iBook updates right before the switch to Intel; slightly faster (but not that much faster) processors coupled with more memory and/or more hard drive space. Back then I got the feeling Apple released updates not because they wanted to, but because they didn’t want the product line to look stagnant.

The switch to Intel was supposed to stop this trend and provide fresh updates on a regular basis. I hope this latest update is just a hiccup and not a new start to an old trend.

Update Turns out I was wrong. Looking at the results from April’s Mac Performance chart it turns out the latest base-model MacBook is, in fact, faster than the previous base-model MacBook. After digging into the results from the Geekbench Result Browser I found that MacBook performance is poor with Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C2015) (the version I used) but improves with later builds.

One of the big concerns surrounding the MacBook Air is just how much will you give up if you switch from a MacBook (or MacBook Pro) to a MacBook Air. Some things, like the optical drive and FireWire ports, are obvious while others, like processor performance, are harder to measure.

Of course, now that the MacBook Air is shipping we can take a look at their processor performance with Geekbench 2 and find out just how fast (or slow) the processor in the MacBook Air is.

For context, I’m comparing the performance of the new MacBook Airs against a slightly older MacBook. This does give the MacBook Air a slight advantage (since the MacBook Airs use the new Santa Rosa chipset) but I think it’s still useful since people are more likely to upgrade an older laptop than a newer machine. If you’re interested in how more recent MacBooks perform, you can take a look at our Santa Rosa MacBook benchmarks, or our Mac performance chart.

Setup

• MacBook (Late 2006)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 @ 2.00GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.1 (Build 9B18)

• MacBook Air

  • Intel Core 2 Duo P7700 @ 1.80GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.1 (Build 9B2324)

• MacBook Air

  • Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P7500 @ 1.60GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.1 (Build 9B2324)

If you’re not familiar with Geekbench 2, benchmarks are scored against a baseline, where a score of 1000 represents the performance of a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6GHz. Higher is better.

Results

Overall Performance

Integer Performance

Floating Point Performance

Memory Performance

Stream Performance

Conclusions

The MacBook Air is slower than the MacBook, when it comes to overall performance and processor performance, which isn’t surprising considering the MacBook Air uses slower processors (1.6GHz and 1.8GHz versus 2.0GHz). Even if Apple released a MacBook Air with a 2.0GHz processor it’s obvious from the results it wouldn’t be as fast as a MacBook with a 2.0GHz processor.

That said, the MacBook Air isn’t really that slow; at 80-85% of the performance of the MacBook, you probably won’t notice much of a difference if you switch from a Mac laptop with Core Duo or a “slower” Core 2 Duo . And if you switch from a PowerPC-based Mac laptop the MacBook Air will feel a lot faster (and lighter, too).

Apple quietly released new MacBooks last week which feature (among other things) the Santa Rosa chipset and, for some models, a slightly faster processor. I thought it’d be interesting to compare two black MacBooks, the new model against the previous model, to see how performance has changed.

Setup

• MacBook (Late 2007)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.20GHz
  • 1.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5 (Build 9A3110)

• MacBook (Mid 2007)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.00GHz
  • 1.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5 (Build 9A581)

I’m reporting the baseline score, rather than the raw score, for each benchmark (where a score of 1000 is the score a Power Mac G5 1.6GHz would receive). Higher is better.

Results

Overall Performance

Integer Performance

Floating Point Performance

Memory Performance

Stream Performance

Conclusions

While the new MacBooks have only modest processor performance gains over the previous MacBooks, the Santa Rosa chipset helps the new MacBooks achieve much more impressive performance gains over the previous MacBooks; memory performance is up almost 15% while stream performance (which relies heavily on memory) is up almost 25%.

When you consider the fact that the new MacBooks also support 4GB of RAM (the previous MacBooks only “officially” supported 2GB of RAM) the new MacBooks are a treat for anyone who runs memory-intensive applications but doesn’t want to pay the premium for a MacBook Pro.