Help understanding processors!

[Kev7n84]

Hi

Sorry this is probably really basic to some, but I’m struggling here! I currently have a 2018 iPad Pro and a 2012 iMac.

I’m looking at replacing the iPad Pro with a MacBook, my needs are quite limited so dont need huge performance, but just want the flexibility of using some particular programs and not just the iOS store. I’m looking at the MacBook Air but comparing the processor to my 7 year old iMac, makes it look like it’ll run poorly? I’ll put the comparision below, and maybe someone can reassure me, it’ll run faster than my iMac, I understand the difference in hardrives will have an effect - but presuming that whilst the processors are similarly named, theres actually a difference because the technology or something has improved over the years! My worry is my iMac doesn‘t perform some tasks very easily, ie safari & music is slow to open and run... I’m currently as i type this reinstalling the imac to scratch, which will hopefully improve performance, but am stil hoping a base model 2020 MacBook will be faster than my 7 year old imac, which part form the screen size was also base model!

2012 iMac 27”
2.9GHz Quad Core intel core i5 (6MB L3 cache) (Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz)
8GB of DDR SDRam
1Tb 7200 rpm harddrive

v

2020 MacBook Air
1.1GHz Dual - Core core i3 Processor (with Turbo boost up to 3.2GHz)
8GB Memory
256Gb SSD Storage

Possibly look at the quad core i5 processor and larger storage for the extra £300, but for a simple guy like myself, it looks like even that being 1.1 quad core i5 v the imacs 2.9 quad core i5, it would still be significantly worse? unless just baciuse of newer generations of processors, theres a different I wouldn’t see in written text!

Hopefully this makes sense? Just trying to get an idea of how well the MacBook will run compared to my old iMac and if its worth getting or if i need to look at a different set up!

Any advice would be appreciated,

Thanks

 

[KALLT]

In general, a higher clock speed does not necessarily indicate a higher performance, especially not if you are comparing CPUs a few generations apart. You can compare CPU benchmarks on websites like Geekbench (Core i5-3470S v Core i3-1000NG4), if you are interested in a more objective comparison. Keep in mind though that the scores may not reflect the performance you are getting, in particular not under a heavy workload or if the CPU becomes hot (a problem the newer MacBook Air models have).

A few things that are in favour of the MacBook Air:

• The Core i3 (Ice Lake) has Hyper-threading, which means that even though the MacBook Air has a dual core CPU, it can support four threads. The older Core i5 of the iMac does not have this (though it has four CPU cores of course).
• The newer GPU (Intel Iris Plus) works better with modern graphics libraries, notably Metal (which is the default graphics stack of modern macOS) and modern media codecs (hardware-based encoding and decoding). Although the iMac has a dedicated GPU, it is ancient by this point (Geekbench assigns a much lower benchmark score for Metal performance, e.g.).
• It has newer, and faster, RAM technology while it has the same amount as the iMac.
• SSDs have significant performance benefits over HDDs, the latter which can be a bottleneck to boot times and load times of applications.

It wholly depends on what you want to use the MacBook Air for. For web browsing and “light” programs at least it should be more than capable and ought to be equal to the iMac. What it probably cannot be used for is graphics-intensive programs (games and media editing) and higher workloads for prolonged times (due to heating and throttling issues).

 

[Kev7n84]

In general, a higher clock speed does not necessarily indicate a higher performance, especially not if you are comparing CPUs a few generations apart. You can compare CPU benchmarks on websites like Geekbench (Core i5-3470S v Core i3-1000NG4), if you are interested in a more objective comparison. Keep in mind though that the scores may not reflect the performance you are getting, in particular not under a heavy workload or if the CPU becomes hot (a problem the newer MacBook Air models have).

A few things that are in favour of the MacBook Air:

• The Core i3 (Ice Lake) has Hyper-threading, which means that even though the MacBook Air has a dual core CPU, it can support four threads. The older Core i5 of the iMac does not have this (though it has four CPU cores of course).
• The newer GPU (Intel Iris Plus) works better with modern graphics libraries, notably Metal (which is the default graphics stack of modern macOS) and modern media codecs (hardware-based encoding and decoding). Although the iMac has a dedicated GPU, it is ancient by this point (Geekbench assigns a much lower benchmark score for Metal performance, e.g.).
• It has newer, and faster, RAM technology while it has the same amount as the iMac.
• SSDs have significant performance benefits over HDDs, the latter which can be a bottleneck to boot times and load times of applications.

It wholly depends on what you want to use the MacBook Air for. For web browsing and “light” programs at least it should be more than capable and ought to be equal to the iMac. What it probably cannot be used for is graphics-intensive programs (games and media editing) and higher workloads for prolonged times (due to heating and throttling issues).

Thank you, your reply is informative and helpful. Will go ahead with the MacBook and not worry it’ll be significantly slower than the old mac i have! To be honest most of what it’ll be used for is ‘light work’, and graphics wise I’ve no issues, dont plan on video editing and gaming wise, i may buy football manager bunt that is more of an excel document than it is a game! Thanks again.