The new MacBook Pro impresses with its performance

As I mentioned in my previous article, I decided to buy the 13″ Core i5 (base model) MacBook Pro. It meets my needs as a travel workstation, but how does it perform? I decided to benchmark it against my other Macs to see how it stands up.

Benchmark Details

The following benchmarks were performed using Xbench and Geekbench, running on a freshly-booted machine. Xbench is outdated but solid and universally-accepted as the standard Mac benchmark. Plus, I had historical data from all of my machines. Geekbench is a great cross-platform CPU test, but it doesn’t measure as wide a variety of system parameters as Xbench.

Each Xbench test was normalized against the new MacBook Pro, which always shows as “100%” in these charts. This should help get a feel for how much slower or faster it is than the other machines.

The test subjects are as follows:

This probably seems like an odd and motley assortment, but they all have one thing in common: I own them. Although everyone’s performance baseline will be different, I was interested in how the new MacBook Pro compares to my other machines, and my 15″ machine in particular. So there you have it!

The CPU, graphics, and memory tests were performed running the latest version of Mac OS X “Snow Leopard”, version 10.6.6.

The disk tests, however, were run under either 10.6.6 (in the case of the 13″ MacBook Pro and iMac) or the version of Mac OS X that came with the machine originally (in the case of the 15″ Santa Rosa MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini). Since I am a storage guy, I have long-since upgraded the hard disk drives in both machines, and felt it was unfair to compare the OEM drive in the new MacBook Pro to these upgraded drives. So I used the original Xbench tests I performed when the machines were new.

Performance Overview

The new 13" MacBook Pro performance admirably

As others have reported, overall performance is solid. Even though it is the absolute base model in the line, the new MacBook Pro matches or bests my old machine in every respect. It clobbers the Santa Rosa MacBook pro in CPU, Thread, Memory, Quartz, UI, and disk tests, and ties in OpenGL performance. It even matches the high-end desktop in most tests, only falling behind when it comes to Disk, Thread and OpenGL graphics performance.

The fact that it achieves all this with a base price $600 less than my old MacBook Pro and runs for almost 7 hours on a charge is simply amazing. Moore’s law ought to allow new machines to outperform old ones, but one is still surprised to see it so flamboyantly displayed.

Performance Details

Now let’s dig a little deeper into these performance numbers!

CPU Performance Details

The base-model 13″ MacBook Pro uses a 2.3 GHz dual-core CPU, which hardly sounds better than the 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo chip used in my old MacBook Pro. And it shouldn’t hold a candle to the mighty 2.66 GHz quad-core “Nehalem” Core i5 in my iMac.

The "Sandy Bridge" Core i5 performs very well - it's nearly twice as fast as the old Core 2 Duo!

The detailed CPU tests tell a different tale, however. The architectural improvements made between Merom/Penryn and Sandy Bridge are evident, with the new chip almost doubling the old in floating point math and (thanks to hyperthreading) solidly throttling it in thread tests.

The most impressive feat is its performance relative to the quad-core Nehalem Core i5 in the iMac, however. Looking past the thread tests, which are greatly helped by two more full cores, we see nearly equal performance between laptop and desktop. This suggests that the Sandy Bridge architecture does a solid job of reducing electrical demands without sacrificing performance. The quad-core desktop CPUs in this family are shockingly strong, as we will see in a moment!

Geekbench Results

Since it is a cross-platform benchmark, I was able to add a ringer to the Geekbench test: My new lab workstation. Built around a Sandy Bridge Core i5-2400, Asus P8H67-M PRO motherboard, and speedy OCZ memory, this is a seriously-fast desktop for very little money. All in, we’re talking about under $500 for this guy!

The Core i5 and i7 processors walk all over the old Core 2 Duos

The two Sandy Bridge Core i5 CPUs are neck and neck in most of the tests, which is really shocking given that the desktop has two more cores, can ramp to 95 Watts, and runs at 3.1 GHz. It is also impressive that the older Nehalem Core i5-750 can keep up in Geekbench tests. Unsurprisingly, the old Core 2 Duo machines aren’t in the same league, not managing even half the performance of these three.

I previously talked about the performance-per-dollar ratio of the various MacBook Pro machines, noting that the base models were much more attractive by this metric. Although it’s definitely not an apples-to-apples comparison (for starters, my desktop is harder to use on a plane…) I will admit that one can get roughly three times the Geekbench score by building a Sandy Bridge system at home. With a score of 7350, my desktop delivers almost 15 Geekbench points per dollar, compared to 3.5 to 5 points from the new MacBook Pro line.

Memory Performance Details

Both the MacBook pros sport 4 GB of RAM, while the Mini still has just 2 GB and the iMac has been upgraded with 8 GB. The old MacBook Pro uses 667 MHz PC-5300 RAM, while the Mac Mini and iMac use 1066 MHz PC-8500 SODIMMs. The new machine steps up to 1333 MHz PC-10600 memory.

The "Sandy Bridge" platform really shines when it comes to memory performance

The Nehalem series integrated the memory controller with the CPU, and this is continued in Sandy Bridge. This allows really amazing memory performance across the board – the old CPUs are stuck with 30% to 40% of the new machine’s memory access capabilities.

The new chipset even manages to beat the iMac in many tests, with only the thread-sensitive System Copy test showing a real loss.

Graphics Performance Details

Graphics performance is the one area I was most concerned about. All three older machines use discrete graphics controllers of various sorts, from the wimpy Nvidia GeForce 9400M in the Mac Mini to the Nvidia 8600M GT in the Santa Rosa MacBook Pro to the more-impressive ATI Radeon HD 4850 in the iMac.

Intel's integrated HD 3000 graphics do a fine job, generally keeping up with the discrete GPUs found in the other machines

As expected, the discrete graphics cards are much more competitive with the new HD 3000 engine integrated into the Sandy Bridge Core i5. Yet once again, the new machine is able to match or beat the old machines in nearly every test.

OpenGL performance seems to be an issue for Intel’s new chip. Perhaps a driver update might improve the situation? But it’s still solid – matching the older machines and only throttled by the big desktop. Most of the Quartz graphics tests show the iMac and new MacBook Pro tied with the old machines trailing far behind. Perhaps they are CPU-bound?

Hard Disk Performance Details

Finally we turn our attention to the question of storage. Hard disk drive performance depends on many factors, and Apple’s machines have historically varied quite a bit. Every one of the new MacBook Pros come standard with a mundane 5400 rpm Hitachi hard disk drive, so one cannot expect it to match the performance of the full-size 7200 rpm desktop drive in the iMac.

Although it's nothing to write home about, the 320 GB Hitachi drive performs adequately

Density improvements should give the new MacBook Pro a leg up on the old Mini and ‘Pro and, our tests bear this out. None of the disks are really all that impressive (sequential reads and writes in the 65 MB/s range aren’t impressive) but it’s not bad.

Stephen’s Stance

The Sandy Bridge MacBook pro really shines in terms of performance. It soundly beats my old laptop in nearly every test, and even gives the desktop a run in some tests. In all, I’d say the hard disk drive ought to be the first thing to get an upgrade. Throw in a speedy SSD and we’ll be looking at some really earth-shattering performance and battery life. And yet, we’d still be looking at a sub-$2000 machine!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Benchmarking the 2011 13″ Core i5 MacBook Pro
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The 27" iMac is simply gorgeous, and it has the technical chops to match!

Last week I bought my third (modern) Mac, a new Core i5-powered 27″ iMac desktop. My new iMac has become a video editing workstation, running Apple’s Final Cut Studio software to process the video footage from Gestalt IT‘s Tech Field Day. The massive display and speedy quad-core CPU and graphics continue to impress: This new iMac is a keeper!

Purchasing Genius

The 5th Ave NYC Apple Store is truly amazing (it's downstairs!)

The Tech Field Day video was recorded in DVCPRO 720p60 format with four tracks of 48KHz audio. The project was so large I had to make a Fry’s run and buy a new 1.5 TB hard disk drive just to move it around! After casting around for an inexpensive way to process the video, I realized I would have to bite the bullet and buy Apple’s professional Final Cut Studio suite.

I’ve long wanted to learn Final Cut, but the US$999 list price is certainly quite steep. I thought to use Bing Cashback to find a discount and rebate, but time pressures meant Amazon.com would have to do. Amazingly, Amazon was able to arrange same-day delivery in New York City, and the total price tag was more than US$100 cheaper than the local Apple Store.

Final Cut was way too much for my MacBook Pro or Mac Mini to handle, however, and my old 20″ 1680×1050 screen wasn’t much help either. I decided that the 27″ iMac would be the perfect editing station, especially with a the impressive new quad-core Intel Nehalem CPU. Luckily, I chose the perfect store (the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York) and day (Tuesday, November 17) to go shopping: This store received one of the first shipments of Core i5 iMacs just that morning! In fact, the helpful Apple dude mentioned that I was the first i5 buyer – could my new Mac be the very first Core i5 iMac in consumer hands?

I cabbed the (huge) iMac back to my (tiny) hotel and headed over to the Interop conference where I was presenting – I would have no time to play with my new toy for much of the week.

Initial Impressions

Later that evening I did get a chance to unbox it and was amazed by a few things:

How to attract attention: Lug this box around!

• The shipping box is huge – much larger than the iMac itself. At 30″x25″x10″, it’s small enough to be checked as baggage (more on that later) but does not fit in a Mazda MX-5 Miata (ditto!)
• Although it only weighs 30 lbs, the 27″ iMac is not easy to handle. It balances nicely on its pedestal, tilting with a soft touch, but this thing is a beast made of aluminum and glass!
• It’s not as tall installed as you might think (20.5″ is enough headroom), but it’s almost 26″ wide and more space is needed on the right for the Superdrive and SD card slot.
• Apple hates cables. The only “wire” in the box was the power cord! The keypad-less BlueTooth Keyboard and Magic Mouse look positively tiny next to this giant computer.
• Also in the box were glossy white Apple stickers, a slim book, iLife and Snow Leopard DVDs, and an inexplicable package containing some kind of black cloth.

Initial setup revealed more about The Beast:

• The power button is hard to find by touch: It’s so nicely integrated into the left rear panel that your finger can brush right over it.
• It has even fewer ports than my Mac Mini: Audio in and out, 4x USB, FireWire 800, Mini DisplayPort, Gigabit Ethernet, and power.
• The ports appear impossibly tiny since they are flush with the back. I have trouble finding the right port and orientation since they all look too small to fit my cables!
• BONG!!! The startup chime is very loud!
• It takes much longer to boot than my other Macs – the Apple logo, “circular file”, and desktop all wait long enough for me to wonder if something is wrong.
• The (removable) screen glass is a fingerprint magnet. Every touch leaves a smudge.
• The system is quiet and cool, even with 5 fans, a 7200 rpm hard disk drive, and server-grade CPU and graphics.
• The iSight camera is concealed at the top of the display, but the microphone is invisible. I have no idea where it is – I just talk to the computer!
• Two of the four RAM slots are empty with 4 GB installed, and Apple actually gives instructions on expanding the system RAM! But everything else (hard drive, CPU, Superdrive, etc) are totally inaccessible behind the LCD.
• The IPS LCD panel is so bright and beautiful, especially with the new darker Snow Leopard gamma, that it attracts attention from anyone nearby.

Up and Running

Now that I’ve been using the iMac for almost a week, I can safely say it is the best Mac I have ever used. The gorgeous screen alone was worth the price, and it came with a speedy computer built in! Sadly, the giant iMac was in New York and my home office is in Ohio. Holding my breath (and applying lots of extra bubble wrap), I checked it as baggage for my flight home. AirTran must employ non-gorillas, because the iMac made it in perfect shape. It was actually much more difficult to get the box into my car, but opening the top gave plenty of room.

Final Cut is simply brilliant with this much screen real estate: I can view 720p video at 100% scale with plenty of room left over for the Timeline and Browser windows. Even 1080p would fit with a slimmer timeline, and the Core i5 CPU and ATI 4850 graphics have no trouble keeping up. Rendering and compressing is quick, though it could always get quicker, and Snow Leopard seems to do a good job allocating work to the four CPU cores.

One interesting anomaly is the CPU load graphs: The “Lynnfield” Core i5 CPU has an effective “turbo mode“, allowing cores to ramp from 2.66 GHz to 3.2 GHz if others are unused. It appears that iStat and Activity Monitor leave “room” for this additional speed, so intensive CPU activity always leaves about 10% idle time. Or perhaps some system bottleneck keeps the CPU from being totally saturated. Regardless, the Core i5 iMac is easily three times as fast at media encoding as my 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo Mac Mini. MacWorld’s benchmarks agree, with this Core i5 iMac being “the fastest standard configuration Mac (they’ve) ever tested.”

The Core i5 iMac is much faster than my other two Macs, and this is even evident with the outdated Xbench suite

Although it’s not much of a benchmark, Xbench shows the relative performance of my systems clearly: The iMac is 1.3x to 3.5x faster than my 2009 Mac Mini and 2008 MacBook Pro at just about every CPU and graphical task! This is to be expected of course, since there are twice as many cores and each is faster, but it validates the seat-of-the-pants feel of using this machine.

What’s Next

I plan to keep posting about the iMac over the coming weeks and months (as I have with the Drobo, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and iPhone) so watch this space for more:

• The 27″ iMacs (and not the 21.5″ models) have a bi-directional Mini DisplayPort connection, allowing other computers with DisplayPort output to use the screen. I’ve got my Mac Mini hooked up this way and will be talking more about that.
• As I dive into Final Cut Studio, I’ll probably be posting more about that on this site.
• I’d like to do more comprehensive benchmarks on the machine.
• I’m also considering the (limited) upgrade possibilities.

Let me know what you’d like to hear by leaving a comment below!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Quad-Core 27″ iMac: First Impressions
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" deliveries begin on August 28!

Although Apple’s web site clearly states that Snow Leopard “Delivers on August 28th,” it is unclear if other sources will be so punctual. We definitely expect Apple Stores to have plenty of stock on Friday morning, but what of Amazon.com pre-orders? Will they also deliver on Friday, or will those of us who pre-ordered there have to wait a few days for this undercover upgrade?

Who Gets What

Snow Leopard is really a major jump forward in terms of advanced hardware and software integration. It brings Grand Central, OpenCL, full 64-bit mode, and QuickTime X along with Exchange support and many tweaks. But many of these features are highly hardware-dependent, so not all Mac users will get everything.

Here’s a cheat sheet I put together based on Apple’s documentation:

This table is based on the following facts:

1. Snow Leopard only supports Intel-based Macs. PowerPC Macs need not apply.
2. Booting Snow Leopard in 64-bit mode requires 64-bit EFI, and many pre-2007 Macs have only a 32-bit EFI. You can check your Mac (and help me fix my table) by typing “ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi” in a Terminal window. If it says “EFI64″, your system is capable of running 64-bit Snow Leopard (though it can still run 64-bit apps). But Snow Leopard defaults to 32-bit mode on ALL Macs other than the Xserve at this point, and no one is sure why!
3. Grand Central Dispatch requires a multi-core CPU. This eliminates the original base-model 2006 Mac Mini, since it used a single-core CPU.
4. OpenCL requires newer Nvidia or the ATI graphics chips. This leaves out many pre-2008 models and some iMac and Mac Pro configurations. Check Apple’s list if you’re not sure.
5. QuickTime H.264 Hardware Acceleration only works with the Nvidia 9400M chipset. This leaves out many pre-2008 machines and even the latest Mac Pros, though they probably have enough horsepower on their own.

Finally, if you’re excited about the new Microsoft Exchange support in Mail.app, iCal, and the Address Book be warned! In order for any of this to work, your server must be running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Update Rollup 4. And most companies still aren’t updated that far!

Update: Check my follow-up post on 64-bit Snow Leopard for more about this controversial aspect!

I’m Updating!

I held off on Amazon and placed my own order this morning with Apple. I’m with Mark Twomey:Upgrading to Snow Leopard is a safe day-1 activity. Most of the updates amount to new under-the-hood features and the OS has been through round after round of testing. Unlike the massive shift from Tiger to Leopard (which I missed, being a late switcher), Snow Leopard ought to be a lesser upgrade.

Why make the update at all? Here are a few of my reasons:

1. It’s cheap: Just $29 to update a single Mac, or $49 for up to five. Compared to Microsoft’s (expired) “limited-time-only” (and incredibly complicated) Windows 7 upgrade, Apple sets out a red velvet carpet.
2. It’s easy: There’s just one version of Mac OS X, and any system running OS X 10.5 “Leopard” can update to full-on Snow Leopard. There are no editions and no conflicts updating from 32-bit to 64-bit (like Windows 7).
3. It future-proofs your (Intel) Mac: Mac developers have a long history of quickly leveraging new OS X features since Mac users have a long history of quickly upgrading. Snow Leopard adds cool stuff like Grand Central and OpenCL that my Intel- and Nvidia-based Macs ought to be able to leverage. See below if your Mac can use these, too!

Sure, there aren’t any amazing features like Time Machine to set the world on fire. But the Snow Leopard update is still a slam-dunk for any Intel-based Mac user! My Late-2007 MacBook Pro will get everything but H.264 acceleration and my 2009 Mac Mini is all set to go!

Updated with Mac Mini and Xserve information. Keep the suggestions coming and test that EFI! Picked up, colorized, and reused (with permission) by the excellent Ed Bott in his ZDNet column!

Note: Some of these links include affiliate codes that help pay for this blog. For example, buying an Amazon Kindle with this link sends a few bucks my way! But I don't write this blog to make money, and am happy to link to sites and stores that don't pay anything. I like Amazon and buy tons from them, but you're free to buy whatever and wherever you want.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”: In Our Hands August 28!
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.