Macbook Benchmarks

[angrynerdrock07]

For those of you interested, some benchmarks were done on the new 2.0ghz Macbook Pro running Photoshop CS2. It looks to me like it would run at the equivalent speed of a 1.33 ghz Powermac g4. Not as bad as I thought, but still not great. Anyways, here is the link:

LINK (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=104)

[kai]

That benchmark can't be accurate, as Adobe hasn't released their Universal Binary update yet... so it's crippled until then.

[angrynerdrock07]

I'd say a dual core processor running at 2.0ghz being outperformed by a 1.5ghz g4 processor is definitely crippling results. I would think that these benchmarks are pretty accurate.

[kai]

No, you're not getting the point... Adobe software that's running in that benchmark, is running under Rosetta emulation. Its not running in its native intel-ready state (universal binary). Therefore, the core duo isn't ready for that benchmark until its running to its full potential. Applications running under Rosetta are up to half as slow as their native counterparts.

Adobe is working on the universal release now.

[Policar]

True, but it won't be out for at least I year so if you want to use Photoshop now, that's the performance you'll get...for at least a year.

I tried these things out at MacWorld and even the slower models they had there were wonderful and really fast. I bet Final Cut Pro will run great on them, and only improve over time as code is further optimized. (Though rumors of SSE4 may mean future macintel releases are even better for video editing.)

[angrynerdrock07]

Kai, I know it's running on Rosetta. I guess my point of showing the benchmarks was to say that the performance cut with Rosetta isn't as bad as I thought. I was expecting it to have performance more comparable to the 867 mhz-1ghz range.

I have to get a laptop for school and was afraid that Photoshop would be pretty much inoperable. Although it's going to be sluggish, these benchmarks give me a little bit of hope that I'll be able to use it until Universal Binaries come out.

[Barry_Green]

Yeah, that's actually pretty surprising. I've done a few processor-translation programs in my time, and if we could the emulator to deliver 20% to 33% of native processor speed we thought we were doing fantastic. So for Rosetta to do as well as it is... that's just downright impressive.

[JarredLand]

33% emulator performance.. thats one hell of an emulator.

[angrynerdrock07]

I don't think it's going to be as bad as everyone made it out to be. Unless you are a power user (which I'm not), you shouldn't have any problems with running Photoshop. You may see a few more spinning beach balls than usual, but it will be tide you over until the universal binaries are released. However I have come to terms with the fact that I will be without After Effects for a while. Render times will be horrendous on the Macbook Pro. Definately going to miss my G5 until that Universal comes out.

[Cees Mutsaers]

What can we expect from the Macbook pro duo core, 2 GHz) running with the updated FCP? How many time lines at the same time are workable? What about rendering speed? In other words will this macbook be comparable with a G5 power pc?? or just a bit slower or no competition?

[angrynerdrock07]

It's hard to say until benchmarks come out. A Macbook Pro has a slower hard drive (5400 RPM) and even if you upgrade to the 7200 RPM, it's still a laptop hard drive which is a little slower than a full 3.5 inch hard drive. Another consideration is that Intel clocks their processor speeds differently than IBM, or at least they used to (I'm not sure if they still do). If that's the case then a 2.0 ghz Intel processor would be slower than an PPC 2.0 ghz processor.

[Rick Meyer]

geeks.

[angrynerdrock07]

You know it.

[Demistate]

Save yourself the hassle and buy the Dell Core Duo laptop, and run photoshop in windows (save enough money to actually buy a license for photoshop!)

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/entnb_e1705?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

And you get another mouse button too!

An e1705 with a 2.16 core duo only costs $1,649 from dell.

The 2.16 MBP with 15 inch screen costs $2,700 !!!

[Cheesesailor77]

Save yourself the hassle and buy the Dell Core Duo laptop, and run photoshop in windows

or just download boot camp and run windows photoshop at full speed :) anyone tried this?

[Policar]

I've tried it. Photoshop runs great.

One issue: when you use headphones in XP, sound still comes out of the speakers. Pretty unacceptable. Otherwise, the MacBook rocks but it also gets pretty insanely hot. Besides price, but I need OSX and XP and a fast laptop so what else is there out there?