Done for 2009: The Holiday MacBook Pro Roundup
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 10, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Performance
Benchmarking under OS X is a bit of a pain. There aren't many good standardized real world benchmarks, and unfortunately the synthetic tests are often over used.
General OS usage is a difficult thing to quantify, but one measure of performance has always been the number of bounces an icon in the dock makes before an application loads. I decided to take it to the next level and write a quick script to launch 15 applications in a row, timing how long the entire process takes.
I launched, in order: Mail, Safari, Activity Monitor, iTunes, iCal, DVD Player, iPhoto, Photo Booth, Quicktime Player, Disk Utility, Preview, iMovie, Front Row, Garage Band and Aperture.
The entire process stresses both the disk and CPU, which is why we see a huge improvement when going to an SSD as well as differences between CPU speeds.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro performs the worst here by a large margin, not just because of its lowly 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, but also because it only has 2GB of memory. The 13-inch system takes nearly 30% longer to load all of the apps because of its limited amount of memory.
The 15-inch MacBook Pro uses a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo instead of the 2.80GHz chip in the 17-inch by default. The result is a 7% longer load time on the 15-inch system, not huge, but not insignificant. As always, I recommend getting the fastest CPU you can afford if you're planning on keeping this machine for a while.
The fastest machine here is actually the MacBook Air, because it comes with an SSD. Your best bet to improve overall system responsiveness and launch times is to get a good SSD. Even with only 2GB of memory, the current gen MacBook Air finishes the script faster than the 17-inch MacBook Pro. Paired with an Intel X25-M G2 the 15-inch MacBook Pro can run through our script in 16 seconds.
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Performance
The Retouch Artists Speed Test we use for our CPU testing under Windows also works under OS X. We're running the exact same benchmark here, basically performing a bunch of image manipulations and filters and timing the entire process.
Despite limiting Photoshop to not keeping any history, the 2GB 13-inch MacBook Pro takes around 40% longer to complete the test than the 15-inch MacBook Pro. If you're planning on doing any Photoshop work you'll want to upgrade the 13-inch system to 4GB of memory.
The slower CPU in the 15-inch system penalizes it by around 10% compared to the 17-inch MacBook Pro. For any sort of real performance work, it looks like a 15-inch MacBook Pro with the 2.80GHz upgrade would be a good balance of price/performance.
As I alluded to earlier, there's not much of a performance improvement from the early 2008 MacBook Pro to the current generation. Drive speeds have improved a bit but overall performance hasn't really gone up, it's why Apple had to rely on updated looks and much better battery life to sell systems this time around. Not a bad tradeoff if you ask me, you'll see the performance improvement next year with Arrandale.
Aperture 2 RAW Import
For my Aperture test I simply timed how long it took to import 203 12MP RAW images into the library.
Once again, 2GB isn't enough, the 15-inch and 17-inch are indistinguishable but the 13-inch system takes much longer here.
Cinebench R10
3D rendering performance is mostly CPU bound so the 13-inch system isn't penalized by its memory limitations. Here the 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo is around 11% faster than the 2.26GHz in the 13-inch MBP. The 2.80GHz CPU is another 11% faster on top of that.
In the multithreaded bench the performance advantages are about the same, a bit closer to 12% between chips.
Again we see that CPU speed hasn't really improved much since early 2008, the two 15-inch systems are basically equal performers here.
Quicktime H.264 Video Encoding
Our final benchmark is more consumer focused. Here I'm taking an XviD and converting it to an iPhone-supported H.264 format.
We're CPU bound here so the 13-inch system only takes 14% longer to convert our video clip than the 15-inch. The difference between the 15-inch and 17-inch is about another 10%.
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sprockkets - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
While in general their stuff just works better with OSX for the general public, and this issue will never affect any of them, still, this issue, plus the stupidity of having unlocked iphones legally purchased in other countries lose their ability to teather and other stuff makes for a big disconnect.They didn't handle the SATA issue well at all, and the efi update didn't help either when there was no easy downgrade option.
martinw - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Not really news, it's just the way Apple works, particularly towards developers. For some reason they do not admit to faults, they just go away and fix the problem in a future version. Not ideal from a developer angle as I'd prefer to get an acknowledgment that something is definitely wrong and that it will be addressed, but at least the problems do get fixed eventually.windspast - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
I was a bit disappointed with this article. In a technological website, an article like this with many pages only spent ONE single page on the actual TECH. This article only spent ONE PAGE talking about the spec and it wasn't even any comparison on how fast (or slow) this computer is. For a technological website, this article only talked about things that didn't matter.When it comes to comparing Mac and DELL or HP, the rest of it is irrelevant. Design is purely objective. I don't care if the MacBookPro is thinner by a tiny little bit. It's not that big of a deal. 2 pounds worth of difference? WHO CARES. I buy a computer for the power that it offers, not whether or not it's thin enough to be a coaster.
I don't care if the DELL is one or two pounds heavier if it cost half as much and is twice as fast. I don't care if the MacbookPro has a "stylish" design. I think it's plain and boring looking. I don't care if it has a longer battery life. That's not important to me. I want POWER out of my machines without having to sell a kidney to buy one.
This is a TECH website, not a style website. I bet if you spend one second showing how much the i7 blows the core 2 duo out of the water, none of the other stuff will even matter.
Mac isn't a BMW or a Lexus or a Cadillac.
Mac is a beat up Honda with a new paint job and a higher price tag.
jhl654321 - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link
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roxyland - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Anand, while the rest of your article seems like a very objective analysis, I couldn't agree less with your comment "virtually anything you can do in OS X can be done in Windows 7"...I don't even want to touch on the subject on UI capabilities on each platfrom, where it all comes down to user preference, but if you were more than the average desktop user, OSX give you all the power and flexibility of UNIX via a shell. It wouldn't even be fair to compare the far limited command line utility available on Windows to a UNIX shell.
Anyone with experience on either linux or any flavour of unix will tell you how invaluable this is for more serious work on an OS. On these terms Windows 7 is still more comparable to "buying a car with it's hood welded shut".