MBP vs. MBA benchmarking showdown

Bare Feats continues to pit Macs against each other in a no-holds-barred, up-against-the-wall benchmarking breakdown, and this time around it's the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air in the octagon together. And things go about as planned -- while the solid state drive in the MBA has its advantages, the processor and GPU (what little there is of it) in the MBA don't even really compare to the MBP. Sure, it's a small, super thin, super portable computer, but not only are you paying in cash for the portability, you're paying in performance, too.

This doesn't mean the MBA is a bad computer at all -- for most tasks, it'll work just fine. But complicated 3D graphics (both Halo and Unreal Tournament 2004 were tested) will be almost unplayable in games, and there will be a substantial wait, sometimes up to minutes more, for certain processor intensive tasks. If speed is a high priority (at least higher than portability), the MBA isn't for you.

I would like to see how the MacBook compares, though. It's not surprising that the MBP is a fast machine, but where does the MBA line up compared to the cheaper model?

[Via IMG]

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Source: http://www.barefeats.com/macair2.html

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Analysis / Opinion Odds and ends Macbook Pro MacBook Air

Bare Feats continues to pit Macs against each other in a no-holds-barred, up-against-the-wall benchmarking breakdown, and this time around...

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Glad there are some voices of reason .. next they'll be comparing Mini-Cooper's against Tesla's.

April 22 2008 at 3:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Peter Payne

While I am happy with my Macbook Pro, my wife also enjoys her MPB. It's light, can run (barely) Parallels, and is awful fun to use. And the screen is so bright, it's too bright -- I have to turn it down to use it.

April 22 2008 at 2:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

pagod

incidentally, has anyone seen a (good?) comparison between an MBA and an MB? i think the MBP is too much for my needs (my old dual G5 is doing great in every respect :-) ), but i'd definitely need a portable solution, and i'm still wondering which would be better...

April 22 2008 at 3:19 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Have I missed the point here? What is the use of comparing these two machines - apart from the fact that they are both a notebook, they are completely different. What have we learnt from this? Absolutely nothing.

I don't see the reason for running the test, nor why TUAW would blog about it.

April 22 2008 at 2:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

(01)

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this...Sure, the MBA isn't slow computer, but compared the MBP of course it isn't going to stack up. Are we going to pit the Mini against the Pro next?

April 21 2008 at 9:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jason

Nice touch using the "octagon".

April 21 2008 at 9:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Justin

My Air replaced a pretty loaded MacBook Pro, and honestly I haven't seen any major differences in performance. They exist, totally, but I just haven't run into them. If I have run into them, the difference has been negligible.

In fact, the only time I really notice the difference is when copying songs to iTunes. iTunes is a dog on any machine when it comes to copying into its Library though. ;)

April 21 2008 at 8:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

robogobo

ok, look, I'm so sick of these guys benchmarking game performance, as if I look like someone who pays thousands of $ to play games.

(oh, you can't see me)

Anyway, another TUAW pointless tidbit.

April 21 2008 at 7:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Erik

The MacBook Air is rather underpowered when compared to a MacBook Pro with respects to the processor and GPU?! Thank you for this late-breaking information!!!!!!!!

April 21 2008 at 5:13 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kenji F

Isn't that a big "Duh!!"?
Comparing a MBP (Pro/sumer laptop) to a MBA (Ultra-Portable) is like comparing apples to oranges. I'm getting sick of this non-stories.

(Yet, I still carry a PBG4 to do everyday work)

April 21 2008 at 5:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply