tests posts

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Macbook Pro, MacBook Air

MBP vs. MBA benchmarking showdown

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Apr 21st, 2008

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]

Tags: barefeats, benchmarks, cpu, gpu, graphics, intensive, macbook-air, macbook-pro, tests, timing

Filed under: Hardware, Troubleshooting, MacBook

Test your MacBook for random shutdowns

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Aug 28th, 2006

Some MacBook owners around the web are reporting a 'random shutdown' issue, where the machine will - as you might guess - seemingly shutdown at random; either during work or patiently idling for your next command. If you haven't experienced this issue yourself yet but are still concerned about it, The Apple Files has devised an unofficial test to see if you might be a victim.

The test involves entering a few simple commands into the Terminal and testing a few things over roughly half an hour of your time. Just to be thorough, the author recommends running this test two or three times to be sure, but it's really up to how paranoid you're feeling. Again, this is an unofficial test, and we haven't seen any official reports or announcements from Apple on this issue, its cause or how widespread it might be, but it's simply nice to have options, hey?

[via digg]

Tags: macbook, random, shutdown, support, test, testing, tests, troubleshooting, unofficial

Filed under: Hardware, Software, Mac Pro

Mac Pro benchmark roundup

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Aug 11th, 2006

Other sites are already getting their hands on Mac Pros and putting them through the benchmark ringer, and since we aren't done checking the couch for change yet, I figured a benchmark roundup would be the best way to let you sink your teeth into some cold, hard numbers. If you've been waiting to see how well these things perform in real world tests, your wait just might be over:

Macworld pits a 2.66 Quad Core Ghz Mac Pro against 2.5 Quad and Dual 2.7 G5 Power Macs - G5s run crying to mama in everything but Adobe Photoshop tests (hint: that will be a benchmark theme across the board)
MacInTouch posts some initial impressions as well as a wide variety of benchmarks, including some real low-level geek stuff like "multi-threaded scalar." Until now, I thought a 'scalar' was just a monster in Unreal
Bare Feats posts their own set of tests, including the only After Effects test I've found so far (AE still isn't a UB either; I guess Adobe misunderstood the phrase 'fashionably late to the party')
Geek Patrol, as you might glean from the name, also posts some extensive low-level tests in categories such as memory performance, floating point, integer and more
Apple's product page also seem to think pretty highly of their own new Mac Pros

That's it for now. Just don't blame us for the credit card interest if this pushes you over the edge to buy one.

Tags: benchmark, mac, Mac pro, MacPro, performance, pro, speed, test, tests

Filed under: Hardware, Software

PC World welcomes Apple to their charts

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Apr 17th, 2006

In a move that's causing many to check out their window to see if the sky is falling, PC World has laid out a welcome mat for Apple's hardware into their Top Power PCs testing charts, thanks to Boot Camp. So far, no Macs have made the charts due to some policy quirks (they typically only test stock PCs - Macs don't ship pre-installed with Windows) and test compatibility hiccups, but from a blog entry covering their initial tests, the iMac running Windows XP fared pretty well.

We certainly live in interesting times with Macs running Windows, rumors of virtualization in Leopard and now Apple's hardware being put to the test alongside its now (let's face it) PC brethren hardware. We'll keep our ears out for more results on just how well these new Macs stack up.

Tags: Apple, benchmarks, blog, hardware, iMac, Mac, PC World, PcWorld, post, speed, testing, tests, welcome, Windows, XP

Filed under: Hardware, Macbook Pro

MacBook Pro vs PowerBook 2.0 GHz benchmarks

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Mar 21st, 2006

No, that headline is not a typo. I found an extensive set of MacBook Pro benchmarks over at Bare Feats that pits the machine against a Dual Core G5 2.0 GHz, an iMac Core Duo 2.0 GHz, a MacBook Pro Solo 2.0 GHz (for good measure I guess) and a PowerBook G4 that has been upgraded to 2.0 GHz, thanks to Daystar Technology. Yes, from checking out their site it looks like it's possible to upgrade some PowerBooks to 2.0 GHz G4 chips, but it'll cost ya - the upgrade is $499.

Getting back to the benchmarks topic: Bare Feats ran the typical Cinebench and Photoshop tests between these machines, and as usual the iMac Core Duo typically won out, with the MacBook Pro pleasantly nipping at its heels. They also produced some pleasant frame rates when testing Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament 2004.

Bare Feats also tested whether matching memory pairs - such as two 1 GB sticks - made any difference in performance over a 1 GB 256 MB configuration. Fortunately, there was virtually no difference in their tests, save for small, single digit improvements in iMovie and Photoshop CS that aren't really anything to write home about.

[via IMG]

Tags: benchmarks, Cinebench, Core Duo, CoreDuo, Doom, MacBook Pro, MacbookPro, speed, tests, Unreal

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