Okay, I admit, that’s a little harsh…but some initial benchmark numbers are in and with a few exceptions, the MacBook Air is getting dirt kicked into its [pretty] face by the other computers in Apple’s lineup.
How badly is it getting beaten? Depends on what you’re evaluating.
The numbers are pretty much what you could expect if you were to just peek at the specs. Its not a bad machine–anything with a Core 2 Duo will move–but its a lot of money for the performance you get.
The folks at Engadget were able to put five Mac’s through their paces with Xbench 1.3 and here are the results they ended up with:
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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] |
[Via Engadget]
Filed under: tech | Tagged: apple, benchmarks, mac, tech
