MacBook Pro Performance Analysis

Excellent and interesting report - thanks, Mash. I guess I won't be selling my Dual 2.7 G5 just yet ... oh wait a minute, it's owned by the company I work for anyway!

WTF??!?!?!? He compares the MacBook Pro Core Duo 1.83 GHz with a PowerMac G5 Dual 2 GHz! How unfair is that! I mean if u want accurate results dont u compare with something that is equal. For example, The PowerMac G5 Dual 2 GHz has 2.5gb ram while the macbook pro only has 2gb! Thats BS!

Did you read the whole thing? He was hardly pitting them against each other - the quad scores are just there as an indication of relative speed!

Exactly.

WTF??!?!?!? He compares the MacBook Pro Core Duo 1.83 GHz with a PowerMac G5 Dual 2 GHz! How unfair is that! I mean if u want accurate results dont u compare with something that is equal. For example, The PowerMac G5 Dual 2 GHz has 2.5gb ram while the macbook pro only has 2gb! Thats BS!

why is it unfair 2gb and 2.5gb of ram dont do much difference as for the 1.83ghz compared to the 2ghz its the same thing it doesnt mean much either, my Athlon64@ 2.35ghz offers about the same score as a pentium4@ 3.4ghz in most benchmark test

Yeah, most people should know these days that simply because one box has slightly more Ram or processing power, does not mean that it is necessarily worse! Many factors can contribute to results...

And yeah, those results are good news!

Thanks for the great info, Craig!

I am glad that Craig's report is finally getting some attention here. I posted a link to it in the hardware forum last week:

http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?sh...lter=all&st=120

But very few people seemed to notice. My point here is that we need to reorganize the hardware subforum so useful information like this does not get buried by n00b threads.

MacBook Pro Performance Analysis

by Craig Wood

Introduction

 

On the last day of Macworld 2006 I revisited the prototype MacBooks and performed a series of tests to measure the new system's performance. I conducted four media-related tests on the new MacBook Pro and previous G4/G5 systems, including audio/video encoding and HD video playback. The goal was to evaluate the performance of the new MacBook Pro and compare it to previous Macs.

 

 

Test Systems

 

Four systems were tested to provide results for a broad range of Macs, including various generations of Mac laptops and desktops. Each system was running off its AC power adapter and used the "Better Performance" power management setting. Only the primary display was active and it was set to its native resolution. Exact specifications for each test system and their introduction dates are as follows:

 

MacBook Pro Core Duo 1.83 GHz, 2 GB DDR2, ATI X1600 Mobility 256 MB @ 1440x900 - January 2006 Preproduction

PowerBook G4 15" 1.67 GHz, 1.5 GB DDR, ATI 9700 Mobility 64 MB @ 1280x854 - January 2005

PowerMac G5 Dual 2 GHz, 2.5 GB DDR, ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB @ 1680x1050 - July 2003

PowerBook G4 Titanium 500 MHz, 768 MB SDRAM, ATI Rage 128 Mobile 8 MB @ 1152x768 - January 2001

 

...

See the full report here:

http://www.craigtheguru.com/reports/MacBoo...ce_Analysis.php

Craig did note that he wished he could perform more accurate testing, but it's doubtful he had access to the boxes. I think he should have left the desktops out of that comparison, though, since the performance of a desktop is not limited for power issues like laptops are. Using equal or similar RAM values is also necessary in every test.

What I'd really like to see is benchmarks of the production intel iMacs vs all G5s and all the other G5 iMacs.