First benchmarks: MacBook Air is the slowest Apple machine on the block
No one should be surprised, but if you were looking for a speed freak of a laptop, you're going to want to glaze those lustful eyes over the MacBook Air. While the new hotness has a speedy memory bus, overall its performance is dramatically smushed by its integrated graphics, anemic 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo processor, and 1.8-inch hard drive. Yes, you can officially call the MacBook Air the slowest machine Apple makes — but you already figured as much, right? No one buys an ultraportable for its real ultimate power.
- All machines tested with Xbench 1.3. Sorry, we didn't have a Mac Pro around.
- All machines tested were using Leopard (except the MBP in the center). Also, MacBook uses 1GB RAM.
- You can check the bold Xbench scores to compare the cumulative results for each test.
| Air (1.6GHz Core 2 Duo) | MBP (2.16GHz Core Duo) | MBP (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, Tiger) | MacBook (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) | iMac (2.4GHz Core 2 Duo) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 79.98 | 90.06 | 112.93 | 126.66 | 138.58 |
| GCD Loop | 9.67 Mops/s | 14.89 Mops/s | 13.17 Mops/s | 13.43 Mops/s | 14.91 Mops/s |
| Floating Point Basic | 2.03 Gflop/s | 2.34 Gflop/s | 2.96 Gflop/s | 2.95 Gflop/s | 3.23 Gflop/s |
| vecLib FFT | 1.71 Gflop/s | 1.68 Gflop/s | 2.98 Gflop/s | 3.36 Gflop/s | 3.66 Gflop/s |
| Floating Point Library | 12.82 Mops/s | 15.78 Mops/s | 14.15 Mops/s | 17.80 Mops/s | 19.43 Mops/s |
| Thread Test | 148.81 | 185.75 | 219.18 | 186.4 | 208.77 |
| Computation | 2.77 Mops/s | 3.36 Mops/s | 4.04 Mops/s | 3.58 Mops/s | 3.56 Mops/s |
| Lock Contention | 7.04 Mlocks/s | 9.07 Mlocks/s | 10.47 Mlocks/s | 8.48 Mlocks/s | 11.06 Mlocks/s |
| Air (1.6GHz Core 2 Duo) | MBP (2.16GHz Core Duo) | MBP (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, Tiger) | MacBook (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) | iMac (2.4GHz) | |
| Memory Test | 140.42 | 129.56 | 137.1 | 150.23 | 150.82 |
| System | 143.51 | 139.25 | 126.92 | 158.95 | 151.56 |
| Allocate | 718.86 Kalloc/s | 731.25 Kalloc/s | 401.22 Kalloc/s | 856.78 Kalloc/s | 657.80 Kalloc/s |
| Fill | 5770.30 MB/s | 5565.31 MB/s | 6490.47 MB/s | 6480.99 MB/s | 6606.88 MB/s |
| Copy | 2802.78 MB/s | 2652.96 MB/s | 2954.03 MB/s | 2914.92 MB/s | 3014.12 MB/s |
| Stream | 137.46 | 121.14 | 149.05 | 142.41 | 150.08 |
| Copy | 2621.64 MB/s | 2400.99 MB/s | 2923.94 MB/s | 2799.64 MB/s | 2926.68 MB/s |
| Scale | 2602.03 MB/s | 2412.90 MB/s | 2918.16 MB/s | 2797.66 MB/s | 3022.24 MB/s |
| Add | 3230.58 MB/s | 2703.93 MB/s | 3359.19 MB/s | 3196.17 MB/s | 3364.41 MB/s |
| Triad | 3199.37 MB/s | 2681.42 MB/s | 3368.41 MB/s | 3211.97 MB/s | 3328.48 MB/s |
| Air (1.6GHz Core 2 Duo) | MBP (2.16GHz Core Duo) | MBP (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, Tiger) | MacBook (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) | iMac (2.4GHz) | |
| Quartz Graphics Test | 96.89 | 144.23 | 141.5 | 154.32 | 193.4 |
| Line | 6.94 Klines/s | 8.84 Klines/s | 9.23 Klines/s | 9.69 Klines/s | 11.64 Klines/s |
| Rectangle | 32.23 Krects/s | 49.67 Krects/s | 51.59 Krects/s | 51.66 Krects/s | 70.02 Krects/s |
| Circle | 7.22 Kcircles/s | 11.31 Kcircles/s | 13.30 Kcircles/s | 11.54 Kcircles/s | 15.29 Kcircles/s |
| Bezier | 2.49 Kbeziers/s | 3.58 Kbeziers/s | 3.71 Kbeziers/s | 3.79 Kbeziers/s | 4.51 Kbeziers/s |
| Text | 5.53 Kchars/s | 9.12 Kchars/s | 6.65 Kchars/s | 10.39 Kchars/s | 12.66 Kchars/s |
| OpenGL Graphics Test | 17.26 | 175.06 | 129.88 | 23.36 | 152.66 |
| Spinning Squares | 21.89 frames/s | 222.08 frames/s | 164.76 frames/s | 29.64 frames/s | 193.65 frames/s |
| User Interface Test | 105.81 | 217.79 | 303.98 | 244.28 | 335.18 |
| Elements | 485.60 refresh/s | 999.54 refresh/s | 1.40 Krefresh/s | 1.12 Krefresh/s | 1.54 Krefresh/s |
| Air (1.6GHz Core 2 Duo) | MBP (2.16GHz Core Duo) | MBP (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, Tiger) | MacBook (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) | iMac (2.4GHz) | |
| Disk Test | 24.05 | 27.59 | 38.13 | 39.64 | 80.72 |
| Sequential | 42.21 | 49.22 | 59.81 | 66.07 | 115.15 |
| Uncached Write | 30.96 MB/s [4K blocks] | 31.32 MB/s [4K blocks] | 42.60 MB/s [4K blocks] | 53.34 MB/s [4K blocks] | 72.17 MB/s [4K blocks] |
| Uncached Write | 31.19 MB/s [256K blocks] | 28.37 MB/s [256K blocks] | 39.19 MB/s [256K blocks] | 47.63 MB/s [256K blocks] | 66.51 MB/s [256K blocks] |
| Uncached Read | 7.27 MB/s [4K blocks] | 12.11 MB/s [4K blocks] | 11.59 MB/s [4K blocks] | 10.83 MB/s [4K blocks] | 27.81 MB/s [4K blocks] |
| Uncached Read | 30.42 MB/s [256K blocks] | 28.65 MB/s [256K blocks] | 39.37 MB/s [256K blocks] | 49.62 MB/s [256K blocks] | 69.83 MB/s [256K blocks] |
| Random | 16.81 | 19.16 | 27.99 | 28.31 | 62.13 |
| Uncached Write | 0.57 MB/s [4K blocks] | 0.65 MB/s [4K blocks] | 1.08 MB/s [4K blocks] | 1.03 MB/s [4K blocks] | 2.67 MB/s [4K blocks] |
| Uncached Write | 18.35 MB/s [256K blocks] | 17.49 MB/s [256K blocks] | 19.24 MB/s [256K blocks] | 22.73 MB/s [256K blocks] | 48.45 MB/s [256K blocks] |
| Uncached Read | 0.35 MB/s [4K blocks] | 0.46 MB/s [4K blocks] | 0.41 MB/s [4K blocks] | 0.48 MB/s [4K blocks] | 0.63 MB/s [4K blocks] |
| Uncached Read | 13.28 MB/s [256K blocks] | 15.08 MB/s [256K blocks] | 16.33 MB/s [256K blocks] | 19.31 MB/s [256K blocks] | 27.08 MB/s [256K blocks] |