PC World: World's Fastest Vista Laptop (Update)
01 November 2007 04:59 EST
Kenn Marks
PC World's latest review of laptops has discovered the fastest laptop to run Microsoft's latest incarnation of Windows - Vista. The ironic antithesis of it all, the laptop happens to be a 17" 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro.
The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year--or for that matter, ever--is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro's PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway's E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook's score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn't care less whether you run Windows.
Unfortunately, the flip side of this article is not quite as glowing. Reporter Carla Thornton promotes several false observations:
-No memory card slots - There are two and they are filled when purchased. As with all Core 2 Duos, the memory must be installed in pairs since there are only two slots, a memory upgrade consists of removing (trading) the original DIMMS and replacing with the larger 2GB version (4GB max on 17" MBP).
UPDATE: Thanks to a astute reader and my not apparently knowing the notebook community.
The Macbook/Macbook Pro doesn't have any memory card slots, actually. It has two RAM slots, but she's talking about memory CARDS ? SD, CF, xD, etc.
-Only three USB ports - It's a 1" notebook meant to be portable, why do you need more USB ports? Carla back-burners the fact that there are also two Firewire ports, something really necessary for a high-end professional computer.
Click the jump for the full story...
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Category: Benchmark
Buy from: Apple
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Macworld Runs Benchmarks for 17" Santa Rosa MacBook Pro
18 June 2007 08:00 EST
Chris Barylick
The guys over at Macworld News have posted the benchmarks for Apple's newest generation of the MacBook Pro laptop.
The new units, which are based on Intel's Santa Rosa hardware architecture, fared well in tests and performed as expected for the most part, but lagged in graphics cards tests, despite the new Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics chip found on the new laptops sporting more VRAM and additional upgrades over the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 found on the previous generation of MacBook Pro laptops - specifically in tests involving frame rates on Unreal Tournament 2004.
Macworld has stated that the magazine, Apple and Unreal Tournament makers MacSoft, are looking into the situation and that the game's code itself may not be optimized for the new hardware.
Improvements offered by the much-lauded Santa Rosa architecture appear to be present, as tests revealed that the new chipset and backlit-LED displays helped improved battery conservation.
For the full report, click here.
If you've picked up a 17" MacBook Pro with the Santa Rosa architecture and can provide comments or feedback about it, let us know how it's worked for you.
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Category: Benchmark
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2.0 GHz MacBook Benchmarks Posted
21 May 2007 01:19 EST
Chris Barylick
The guys over at Mac|Life have recently posted a benchmark report on the new MacBook laptops released late last week.
The updated laptops went from 1.83 GHz to 2 Ghz and gained an additional two megabytes of L2 cache among other changes and the review pitted the older 2 GHz black MacBook against the newest revision.
While the speed boost from 1.83 GHz to 2.0 GHz may not be epic, the piece finds seconds shaved in programs like iMovie and Photoshop with a 22% speed boost in iPhoto.
Click over to see what you make of it and if you've gotten your hands on the newest MacBooks, tell us how they're working out for you, especially when compared to the previous version.
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Category: Benchmark
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How Well do MacBooks run Quake 4?
13 June 2006 10:25 EST
Jason D. O'Grady
BareFeats has posted a shootout between various Macs running Quake 4 Including three MacBooks:
PowerBook G4/1.5 15" (with Daystar 2.0GHz upgrade)
PowerBook G4/1.67 17"
MacBook 13" (2GHz)
MacBook Pro 15" (2GHz)
MacBook Pro 17" (2.16GHz)
We're still excited about seeing multi-processor support on a state-of-the-art game like Quake 4. It reminds us of "yesteryear" when Id Software was the only company to dedicate the time and effort to optimize Quake 3 for AltiVec and Dual G4 Processors. The frame rates we get for Quake 4 are much lower than Quake 3 due to the higher sophistication of Quake 4 and due to the fact that the Quake 4 test is a Network Timed Demo rather than Quake 3's Single User Timed Demo. In other words, the "id_demo0001" demo file simulates real game play against opponents over a network.I'm not sure at what resolution and quality level you prefer to use with Quake 4 but we chose various settings with the hope of clarifying how the various Macs perform in a "real world" Quake 4 gaming situation. We also wanted to compare Intel Macs to PPC Macs. Needless to say, the ultimate Quake 4 "engine" in the Mac realm is the Quad-Core G5/2.5GHz Power Mac with the mutant GeForce 7800 GTX. I'm sure the "ultimate" title will be passed on when the Quad Intel "MacTower Pro" shows up with SLI support.
Click through for all the numbers.
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Category: Benchmark
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