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MacBook Pro

MacBook Pro Benchmarks (Update2)

ALERT: According to Ladd at Xbench: 10.4 attempts to limit screen updating to 60 frames per second, and will throttle applications that exceed this limit. Normally, this is the correct thing to do, but for a benchmarking application it doesn’t work out so well. In the meanwhile, you can turn off beam sync in Quartz Debug.
They’re working on an update to resolve the issue. I’ll be posting updated benchmarks soon…


ALERT: According to Ladd at Xbench: 10.4 attempts to limit screen updating to 60 frames per second, and will throttle applications that exceed this limit. Normally, this is the correct thing to do, but for a benchmarking application it doesn’t work out so well. In the meanwhile, you can turn off beam sync in Quartz Debug.
They’re working on an update to resolve the issue. I’ll be posting updated benchmarks soon.
Following are some initial benchmarks comparing the PowerBook G4 1.5GHz (2GB RAM, 120GB HDD) and the MacBook Pro 2.0GHz (1GB RAM, 100GB HDD) from MacBench 1.2.

PBG4 1.5GHz MBP 2.0GHz % of
Results 29.98 53.03 177
System Version 10.4.5 (8H14) 10.4.5 (8G1453)
Physical RAM 2048 MB 1024 MB
Model PowerBook5,4 MacBookPro1,1
Drive Type ST9120821A ST9100824AS
CPU Test 34.54 67.28 195
GCD Loop 87.7 240.31 274
Floating Point Basic 19.15 71.12 371
vecLib FFT 85.16 38.17 45
Floating Point Library 24.71 66.55 269
Memory Test 19.4 104.12 537
System 16.44 113.57 691
Allocate 69.33 128 185
Fill 15.14 109.51 723
Copy 9.81 105.57 1076
Stream 23.65 96.12 406
Copy 21.15 81.4 385
Scale 24.66 80.12 325
Add 24.85 119.82 482
Triad 24.36 117.64 483
Quartz Graphics Test 45.77 45.19 99
Line 38.73 46.65 120
Rectangle 44.22 40.44 91
Circle 47.31 41.4 88
Bezier 55.78 74.07 133
Text 45.99 37.27 81
OpenGL Graphics Test 65.71 129.91 198
Spinning Squares 65.71 129.91 198
User Interface Test 19.6 23.97 122
Elements 19.6 23.97 122
Disk Test 21.08 32.45 154
Sequential 38.04 58.02 153
Uncached Write 33.79 71.99 213
Uncached Write 33.82 51.13 151
Uncached Read 49.35 47.79 97
Uncached Read 38.9 68.65 176
Random 14.58 22.52 154
Uncached Write 4.71 7.29 155
Uncached Write 39.89 66.61 167
Uncached Read 49.45 69.24 140
Uncached Read 59.63 90.79 152

Note:
PowerPage reader dombi notes that there’s a bug in Xbench when running on Intel. You need to Turn off the Beam sync option within the Quart Debug application found on the developer tools). Better MacBook Pro benchmarks can be found here.

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.

4 replies on “MacBook Pro Benchmarks (Update2)”

To the photoshop guy – O’grady has a basic benchmark of Photoshop at https://www.powerpage.org/archives/2006/02/the_apple_core_macbook_pro_photoshop_benchmarks.html
Basically the performance of Photoshop on his 2 tests falls roughly half way between a TiBook 1Ghz and a PowerBook 1.5Ghz… closer to the PB than TiB.
He links to the ZDNet article he published – I’d give you that but this whole “no free link advertising” got me worried (and the “Terms” don’t come up when I click ‘terms’!)
Hope that helps!

My CPU Test yielded 69.15 overall (139.69 GCD, 46.48 FP Basic, 98.27 FFT and 52.65 FP Lib) – 1.67Ghz Powerbook.
Compared to above as 100%, the MBP has the following:
Overall: 97%
GCD: 172%
FP Basic: 153%
FFT: 39%
FPLib: 126%

I’m confused Erik, how come your PB G4 1.25 significantly outperforms a PB G4 1.5? Is it the same test?
Looks like Quartz is NOT optimized for Intel yet. From what I’ve read other places, I guess I should be surprised it even runs. The lines that surprise me most are “Copy 9.81 105.57” and “vecLib FFT 85.16 38.17”. Both of them seem very weirdly skewed…in opposite directions. But I don’t even know what they mean.
Other than that, it looks safe to say that the machine is generally about twice as fast, which should result in a noticeable improvement in speed during use. Is this the case?

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