MacBook Performance (March 2008)

When I wrote about the performance of Apple's recently-released MacBook Pros last week, I wanted to write about the MacBooks, too but didn't have results for the differnet MacBook models. Well, now I do, so here's a Geekbench performance comparison of the latest MacBooks against the previous generation of MacBooks.

Setup

Here is the configuration of the four test machines:

• MacBook (Early 2008)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.40GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C2015)

• MacBook (Early 2008)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.10GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C2015)

• MacBook (Late 2007)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.20GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C31)

• MacBook (Late 2007)

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.00GHz
  • 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C31)

If you're not familiar with Geekbench, Geekbench scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 1000 (which is the score a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6GHz would receive). Higher scores are better.

Overall Performance

Integer Performance

Floating Point Performance

Memory Performance

Stream Performance

Conclusions

Despite having a slightly faster processor, the smaller L2 cache of the Penryn processors means the base MacBook (Early 2008) is slower than the base MacBook (Late 2007). If you're considering buying a base MacBook, you might want to shop around and see if you can snag an old one rather than a new one.

Of course, the high-end MacBook (Early 2008) is faster than the high-end MacBook (Late 2007); it seems the increase in processor frequency is enough to overcome the smaller L2 cache in this case.

Overall the new MacBooks, like the new MacBook Pros, don't feel like an incredibly compelling upgrade. Sure, the MacBook Pro has a multi-touch trackpad, but the MacBooks don't and sure, the new Penryn processors are cooler and use less power, but at an apparent hit in performance.

This update reminds me of the PowerBook/iBook updates right before the switch to Intel; slightly faster (but not that much faster) processors coupled with more memory and/or more hard drive space. Back then I got the feeling Apple released updates not because they wanted to, but because they didn't want the product line to look stagnant.

The switch to Intel was supposed to stop this trend and provide fresh updates on a regular basis. I hope this latest update is just a hiccup and not a new start to an old trend.

Update Turns out I was wrong. Looking at the results from April's Mac Performance chart it turns out the latest base-model MacBook is, in fact, faster than the previous base-model MacBook. After digging into the results from the Geekbench Browser I found that MacBook performance is poor with Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C2015) (the version I used) but improves with later builds.