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MacBook performance boost
At first glance, last week's MacBook update did not appear to be anything to write home about. However, some benchmarks are starting to come out that show a non-negligible performance boost on the new 'Books. Macworld has found that the new top end 2.16GHz black MacBook bests previous top end white 2.0GHz white MacBook by an overall 12% (strangely, the different colors somehow tested differently). In fact, the new MacBooks are even giving the top end 2.33GHz MacBook Pro a run for its money in non-graphics intensive applications. MacLife also found an appreciable performance gain. So while it's not Santa Rosa, it is a nice little performance gain.Update: It's only the low end MacBooks that saw an increase in L2 cache.
New Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros only see 10 percent speed bump
We're not really sure how exactly Apple measured the new Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros in order to get a purported 39 percent speed increase from the previous models, but then again, that's what we depend upon the free and independent press for. Macworld has taken the new MBPs for a test flight and, guess what, Apple's been pulling our legs. Yep, Macworld could only get a 10 percent bump on the new 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MBP (just like those Core 2 Duo iMacs) when compared to the original 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo MBP running the Speedmark benchmark. The top of the line 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MBP with 2GB of RAM, as expected, was the leader of the pack, coming in with a Speedmark score of 226 ("19 percent faster than the older model"), and bested its companions in every category ranging from running Unreal Tournament 2004 to video Cinema 4D rendering. Now all we need are some Core 2 Duo MacBooks and we'll have the family fully upgraded -- that is, until they get those quad-core chips going.
