The 2013 MacBook Air Review (13-inch)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 24, 2013 12:01 AM ESTMore GPU Performance Numbers
The next set of benchmarks are taken from our 2013 Laptop Bench. Here we're comparing to HD 4000 and HD 4400, both using Acer S7s. Compared to HD 4400 the HD 5000 in Apple's 2013 MBA ends up being around 15% faster in most tests. Compared to Ivy Bridge/HD 4000 the gap ranges from lower single digits in thermally constrained environments to 25% or 40% in the best case scenarios.
3DMark GPU Performance
We close out our look at Intel's HD 5000 performance using a historical collection of 3DMark data. The comparison gives us some more data points to characterize Intel's HD 5000. The data here is all best case scenario for HD 5000 as there are no situations where we hit thermal limits.
On average, Intel's HD 4400 ends up being 18% faster than HD 4000, while Intel's HD 5000 is 31% faster.
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smilingcrow - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Says the person complaining about other peoples' immature posts.darwinosx - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Most projectors use HDMI, VGA is long dead. You could have taken two seconds to Google VGA adapter for MacBook Air to find there are many options though. Putting a VGA port an an Air would be idiotic. Actually on any modern laptop.SirPerro - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
VGA is dead already. LAN... Well, I haven't tried a WiFi connection that comes even close to wired. And that's not going to happen in the near future.Apple doesn't look to the future. Apple looks to the wallet. And certainly charging some serious money for cable adaptors which everybody else includes for free is a very good move towards their target.
And yes, if they removed RJ-45 because it was too thick, they could've used a 50c adaptor to a phisical smaller interface. But that wouldn't be so profitable.
Kevin G - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
There plenty of space to put in an RJ-45 jack into the Macbook Airs if Apple didn't care about ascetics: in the bezel of the LCD display. Part of the Cat5 cable would go through the the RJ-45 hole in the display. I'd only work with the screen open but for a wired connection it wouldn't be much of an issue I believe. The problem is that this is a pretty fugly solution.darwinosx - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Ah so you are a laptop engineer..no...an adapter is fine for those who need it.Kevin G - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
An adapter is easily lost.... the display only gets lost with the rest of the computer.AirieFenix - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Putting a RJ45 connector on the bezel of the screen... yeah, I prefer to not comment.Spoony - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
I work for a large corporation too. I know that projectors are all VGA, and everybody uses PowerPoint to show awful ugly presentations with slides just repeating what they say with zero value-add. Anything we can do to exit this model has my full support, and not shipping ANY laptop with VGA would be a great start.Don't make excuses for lame prehistoric corporate IT, demand better.
lilo777 - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Yeah. Marketing spin in this review was stronger than usual. Here are some examples."To hit an aggressive schedule, you have to mitigate risk." Really? Since when Apple's schedule has become aggressive? Launching 5 products per year which in most cases have very little changes. It's not like the previous version of MBA was released three months ago.
"We’re talking about TN panels (admittedly higher quality than most) and traditional pixel densities. Compared to the Retina Displays deployed across the rest of Apple’s product lines, these panels just aren’t as good. Compared to what you typically find elsewhere, they’re still among the best." "Typically find elsewhere"? Are they trying to compare MBA with $400 laptops? If you look at the same price range (Sony Vaio Pro, Samsung 9 etc.) you will find much better displays than what MBA has. It looks like being an Apple customer Anand has developed an attachment to the brand that interferes with the quality of his reviews.
darwinosx - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Everything you said is wrong and ignorant but the dumbest is accusing Anandtech of bias.