The 2013 MacBook Air: Core i5-4250U vs. Core i7-4650U
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 4, 2013 8:00 AM ESTBoot Performance
Although boot performance doesn't change substantially with the faster CPU, I did notice that the new system was posting better boot times than what I had previously recorded. My guess is all of my SSD torturing hadn't been TRIMed away before I presented the previous results. Either way the new MBA seems capable of a sub-12 second boot time. I even recorded some boots as low as 10.8 seconds. That PCIe SSD comes in handy for sure.
Single Threaded FP & 3D Rendering Performance
These next two charts look at single and multithreaded floating point performance using Cinebench 11.5. This test also gives us the rare opportunity of comparing to some older Mac Pro hardware as well from 2008 - 2010. Single threaded performance remains extremely important to overall system responsiveness, so it's always good to look at.
Oh man, the Core i7 upgraded seriously fixes everything. We get near perfect scaling here, showing a massive 27% increase in performance over the default Core i5 1.3GHz setup. The single threaded performance of the upgraded 13-inch MacBook Air is almost able to equal that of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Anyone underwhelmed by Haswell should keep this in mind. What we're seeing here is a combination of IPC improvements and awesomely aggressive turbo, all within a 15W TDP.
The multithreaded story is a bit less impressive, but still quite good. Showing a 17% increase in performance, the 1.7GHz Core i7 delivers nearly the same performance as the 2GHz Core i7 upgrade from last year's MBA. The rMBP15 distances itself from the MacBook Air though - there's no replacement for more cores.
Video Transcoding Performance
Video transcoding is really best suited for the higher end machines, but that doesn't change the fact that it's done on MacBook Airs as well. We'll start by looking at performance under iMovie. Here we're importing 1080p video from a Nikon D7000 and optimizing it during import.
We're showing ~25% reductions in import and export time here over the base configuration. In both cases, performance equivalency with last year's upgraded configuration seems restored.
Final Cut Pro X falls on the professional end of the video production spectrum. The test file is the same here, but the workload is far more strenuous.
The same is true for our FCPX test. Last year's 2.0GHz model is about 5% quicker than this year's 1.7GHz Haswell ULT system, but obviously with the newer machine you get much better battery life. The improvement over the base CPU configuration is over 20% again.
Photo Editing & Export Performance
Our photo editing & export tests agree with what we've seen elsewhere. The gains here are north of 20% and put the i7 system within range of last year's 2GHz model.
Xcode Performance
In our desktop review of Haswell I noted that performance in our compile test improved tremendously with the new architecture. As it's quite obvious that Haswell's IPC advantages don't surface all that much in our traditional suite, I wanted to see if perhaps things would be different in something that might lend itself better to Haswell's IPC improvements. I repeated our Firefox build test but under OS X. It's a multithreaded compile, with the number of threads set to 2x the number of cores (not threads) in a system.
When Haswell's IPC advantage can shine, the higher clocked configuration does even more so. Here the 1.7GHz Core i7-4650U is over 20% faster than the fastest MacBook Air you could build last year. Serious developers will still want more cores but if you need ultimate portability, Haswell ULT really can shine.
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KoolAidMan1 - Sunday, July 7, 2013 - link
Your post is filled with angry rhetoric. It is hard to take any of that seriouslyasianwolf - Sunday, July 7, 2013 - link
what an amazing amount of drivel from a single post. Let's look at the one word you have used against this product 'innovation'. Prey tell please any other manufacturer in this sector that has 'innovated' in any way using the same standard Intel/hardware components?I'm not saying that Apple have 'innovated' in any particular way in this product as opposed to the original MBA introduction, this is just another internal upgrade...like all of the followers around them.
Back up your thoughts with what you expect to see, rather than deriding a product that still excels amongst many of it's peers...not perfect...but neither are the components that its built from.
therodt - Thursday, July 18, 2013 - link
Guys he is completely right. Its not innovating if it is not new. Refining the same thing and calling it new does it make it innovative.pav1 - Sunday, January 19, 2014 - link
The trouble is there is a conflict between innovation & pricing/value. Innovation is costly, and may not be included for low end products. You'll find innovation at the low end only for competitive reasons. Apple has significant mind and marketshare.whosjohnny - Monday, September 23, 2013 - link
dsumanik - you're a cancer, stfu man. you know NOTHING about innovation. something as good as macbook air single body design and you're like what? "release this same junk!!!" go f die you imbecile!hasten - Thursday, July 11, 2013 - link
Unfortunately everything you have written is wrong. You are the problem - fanboys that believe anything they read on the internet. Apple has not "innovated" since the early 90s. They have done nothing but taken someone else's innovation and repackaged it in a well marketed shiny box. Claiming that they have "put fourth" the best hardware shows even more how little you know. Apple does not manufacture anything. They depend on true hardware companies to create for them. Yes they do assist in the design of the mobile, low end processors for their mass market products, but they do not manufacture anything.Amazingly the shroud is coming off and investors and the general public alike are realizing the game that Apple has been playing. Stock prices plummeting, market share decreasing. I'm sure that hard statistical facts won't mean anything to you though. I'm sure you work in the industry with your commentary, brilliance is spewing from them. The only people that should have respect for Apple are marketers. The bubble is bursting and the kiddies are sad.
purerice - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
JKflipflop98, while I do not wish harm on anybody, I share your disgust with dsumanik.I have no inclination of getting an Apple MBA but Anandtech's MBA articles are great for comparing IVB to Haswell and i5 to i7, at least in a GPU-limited scenario.
I am in the market for a new laptop and often see great deals on IVBs and the i7s are extremely tempting. However thanks to Anand's articles, I will wait for the full Haswell line of i3, i5, i7s to be out before deciding.
Also, considering the meager difference between i5 and 30% higher clocked i7, unless it is to do with thermal limits, I think I will stick with an i3 or i5 based Haswell. Though I would be curious in performance difference between these 15W i7s and the 47W i7s in Toshiba's laptops in performance, battery life, and temperature.
So yes, even if I now have no inclination of getting an Apple MBA, these 3 articles provided enough information to deduce what processor I want in a laptop. As laptop processors are not generally interchangeable, these articles have helped me to key in on which laptops to eliminate from my search. To that extent I am very grateful to Anandtech for these articles.
Furthermore, even if you don't like Apple, Apple generally has consistent hardware from generation to generation and often gets early editions of Intel processors (great for getting rid of deep sleep USB3.0 issues). Thus, with fewer variables from generation to generation, Apple computers make great test beds for testing out those few variables which are new. It is both amazing and sad that on a website with "tech" in its name you get people who think as unscientifically and biased as dsumanik that they cannot appreciate genuine research for the name behind the research.
Good day to you all and thank you Anand for your continued dedication to solid articles that give insight that is valuable even to those will not likely purchase the product reviewed. I salute you.
dsumanik - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
Stop turning the conversations towards apple vs whoever. My rant has nothing to do with apple being good or bad.Its ok for anand, you, me, or the rest of the general public to like apple.
it's NOT ok for him to tell you apple is good when he isnt thinking that inside his own head.
Why why... WHY would you ever tell someone to buy something you thought was inferior?
"Oh man, the Core i7 upgraded seriously fixes everything."
Ok so anand was thinking it was broken. Ok maybe not broken, but at the very least slow...a step down from last years performance. its plain to see in the numbers, the new proc isnt a flat win across the board.
Yet he still gave the original MBA a glowing review....then wrote a separate article recommending its purchase. Like that was the icing....why did he write that article lol? wouldn't you write that after apple had refreshed its entire line?
Why right now...all of a sudden do we need an article telling us to buy the only 2013 model.....no one here is stupid, we know not to buy the last years model of anything!!!!!
its so LOL wtf obvious if you just take a step back and ask why, especially that second "article", why it was written.....*advertising* cough cough cough
his true feelings were NOT reflected in the original article. End of story.
he WANTS apple to be viewed in a positive light, even if he isn't feeling it inside himself.
This isn't an isolated incident its been slowly happening for about 3-4 years now.
He is writing articles telling you to buy something, that in his mind he felt was subpar.
like seriously guys, don't you see a problem with that?
ask yourself why someone would make that recommendation?
Hate me all you want but the question still needs answering....why is it of PERSONAL interest for him to paint apple as rosey a picture as possible.
It has nothing to do with me, my attitude, my love or hate of apple, Microsoft, chocolate, vanilla, titty bars, democrats, gun laws, religion, or the color of your skin.
biasuz - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
I'm sorry sir, but your premise is false.I know nothing about Anand besides what's resides inside this website. That accompanied to a review of intel's pentium IV a real while ago turned me into a regular visitor.
On both of the very well written articles relating this subject matter, Anand has been clear to accurately explain the DESIGN CHOICES Apple took, when building a computer whose main focus is not a performance crowd.
Such design choices are:
- use of slower frequency CPU would for sure impact raw processing power, as has been perceived by the reviewer, who in fact went to the trouble of quantifying how much less raw power would you get when comparing a previous model. Now please, kindly take into consideration what sort of gains in term of battery life were achieved, WITH LITTLE TO NO IMPACT in consumer experience, because of such DESIGN CHOICES.
- The same philosophy can also be observed in using a lesser frequency in a MUCH LARGER GPU, demoed similar to superior performance with noticeable gains in used wattage.
This computer is all about mobility, no raw power.
In it's premise of existing, a mobile computer, this ones generation seriously outperforms it's previous generation.
Kind regards.
vFunct - Saturday, July 6, 2013 - link
lol.You DO know that Apple makes the best computers in the industry, and everything else is largely garbage, right?
THAT is objective fact. Do not attempt to spin it with your bias.