Filed under: Hardware, MacBook
MacBook performance boost
At first glance, last week's MacBook update did not appear to be anything to write home about. However, some benchmarks are starting to come out that show a non-negligible performance boost on the new 'Books. Macworld has found that the new top end 2.16GHz black MacBook bests previous top end white 2.0GHz white MacBook by an overall 12% (strangely, the different colors somehow tested differently). In fact, the new MacBooks are even giving the top end 2.33GHz MacBook Pro a run for its money in non-graphics intensive applications. MacLife also found an appreciable performance gain. So while it's not Santa Rosa, it is a nice little performance gain.Update: It's only the low end MacBooks that saw an increase in L2 cache.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ThunkDifferent.com said 9:38AM on 5-24-2007
About time. The cache increase will be nice as well as any sort of improvement Apple can make for the Mercedes of their laptop line.
http://ThunkDifferent.com
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Alex Mills said 9:45AM on 5-24-2007
How can it be an increase, I bought my core 2 macbook in december last year and it has 4mb of level 2 cache
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R. Cabell said 11:06AM on 5-24-2007
The older Core 2 MacBooks only had 2MB of L2 cache on the low end (1.83 GHz) model. The 2.0 GHz models always had 4MB of L2 cache...
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joe said 11:08AM on 5-24-2007
Newsflash 2.16ghz is faster than 2.0ghz. Thanks for staying on top of the hard news, TUAW.
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Leonard Nimrod said 11:23AM on 5-24-2007
• ≥ 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo chips have a 4MB L2 cache, ≤ 1.83GHz C2D chips have a 2MB L2 cache.
• Previous test results of the black and white MacBooks of equal processor and RAM configuration showed a slightly higher performance from the white model. This discrepancy is due to the black MacBook having a larger HDD.
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sam said 10:56PM on 5-24-2007
Okay, if two books with the same specs test differently, it means there is something wrong with your test. Black is not a faster color than white. Black and white aren't even colors, come to think of it.
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Jon said 10:36AM on 5-25-2007
Am I the only one on the internets who notced the 8x Dual-Layer SuperDrive???
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Leonard Nimrod said 1:24PM on 5-25-2007
sam said, "Okay, if two books with the same specs test differently, it means there is something wrong with your test."
• No it doesn't. There can be variances in hardware manufacturing or software configurations. But the black and white 2.0GHz MacBooks DO NOT HAVE all the same components.
Jon said, "Am I the only one on the internets who notced the 8x Dual-Layer SuperDrive???"
• No. This was one thing some people complained about as the 15" MacBook Pro has only a 6x speed SuperDrive. This screams new MacBook Pros at WWDC next month.
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Mark said 1:54AM on 6-27-2007
When might Apple release new MacBooks (not Pro) with the Santa Rosa chip? I've been dying to know for months!! O.o
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