How does MBA performance compare to 1.83 Core Duo?

[ascender]

Sorry for the specific nature of the question! I'm looking to replace my Macbook which is a 1.83 GHz Core Duo with 2Gb RAM. I have an Alu iMac in the house, so my Macbook is mainly used for word processing, surfing the web and the occasional bit of Dreamweaver and Photoshop (not intensive).

So I'm thinking that the Air is ideal for this use and that a MBP or even a new Macbook would really be overkill for me.

But I was wondering how the MBA will compare to what I'm currently running as there seems to be quite a few threads on the web about performance being poor on the MBA. However, I understand that performance is obviously relative to what you're comparing it to and what tasks you're doing.

Any opinions would be much appreciated.

 

[MrT8064]

my local reseller says that the air is slower than the 1.83ghz... but you can have a look at geekbench results and see for your self...

i will post back in a minute

 

[ascender]

I suppose ultimately its not until I bought one that I'd discover just how it would fare on a day to day basis. So maybe that would be an expensive mistake to make.

I'll check out Geekbench just now, thanks for the advice.

 

[MrT8064]

Geekbench results:

Your macbook scores around 2300
the air scores around 1950

pretty close, get it, if you've got an alu iMac then you can leave the power stuff for that.

the weight/size/battery life is worth it

 

[MrT8064]

I suppose ultimately its not until I bought one that I'd discover just how it would fare on a day to day basis. So maybe that would be an expensive mistake to make.

I'll check out Geekbench just now, thanks for the advice.

My friend is going down the route of "buy it, see what its like, and take it back if he doesnt like it" which i suppose is a fairly good idea...

...One mac shop i went too were raving about it, saying how he had it as his only machine etc etc...

and the other mac shop were saying "don't get it 'its an expensive paper weight"

so it must be a very personal thing!

 

[ascender]

I'd never heard of Geekbench, so thanks for that. You beat me to it, my Macbook scores 2312 at Normal performance settings.

 

[twynne]

Many of the 1.8's are getting in excess of 2200, so the performance isn't that far off. Also can't tell if they're SSD models or not but that must also help somewhat.

 

[NC MacGuy]

I think my 1.6 Air is as fast as my 2GHz core duo MBP in real world tests.



So does Anandtech:
"Quite possibly the most surprising results we saw in our tests were those that compared the MacBook Air to the original Core Duo based MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is two years old now and in that time, Apple has managed to offer the same if not better performance as the first MBP in the MacBook Air. Battery life of the first MacBook Pro is also equalled by the Air."

Geekbench Score 2046
Version Geekbench 2.0.3
Platform Mac OS X x86 (32-bit)
Operating System Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C31)
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P7500 @ 1.60GHz
Model MacBookAir1,1
Memory 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

 

[raremage]

I think my 1.6 Air is as fast as my 2GHz core duo MBP in real world tests.

I agree - other than graphically intensive tasks my 1.6 is comparable to my rev A MBP - 2.0 with 2 GB RAM.

 

[NC MacGuy]

I do think the reseller is mistaken. The Air w. a C2D and faster bus should be faster than a 1.83 CD in near all tasks except heavy disk access.

 

[Phil A.]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 16GB: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

I find my 1.8 ssd faster in nearly all real world tests than my old 2.16 1st gen mbp. The only thing that's slower is graphically intensive stuff

 

[NC MacGuy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 16GB: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

I find my 1.8 ssd faster in nearly all real world tests than my old 2.16 1st gen mbp. The only thing that's slower is graphically intensive stuff

As it should be.. The OP was given inaccurate info by reseller. The 1.6 C2D should be faster than a 1.83 CD MB in everything but disk access.

 

[queshy]

The bottleneck for the air is not the processor, it's the slow hard drive.

 

[ascender]

I took the plunge and bought one today. Having played with one in the store, the performance seemed to be much better than I'd expected.

Thanks for all the advice and info.

 

[mcvaughan]

The bottleneck for the air is not the processor, it's the slow hard drive.

Unless you get the SSD model.

 

[bcaslis]

I ran Geekbench and got a score of 2201 on an MBA 1.8GHz SSD.

Geekbench also got a score of 3369 on a MBP 2.6GHz Penryn (200GB 7200rpm HD).

 

[fredrickyoon]

I find mine slower than my iMac 24" Aluminum 2.8 GHz Extreme desktop, and my 17" MacBook Pro Santa Rosa 2.6 GHz, but for a portable computer, it suffices for my everyday needs.

 

[NC MacGuy]

I find mine slower than my iMac 24" Aluminum 2.8 GHz Extreme desktop, and my 17" MacBook Pro Santa Rosa 2.6 GHz, but for a portable computer, it suffices for my everyday needs.

I would hope so for your iMac & MBP's sake.

 

[fredrickyoon]

 

[Sesshi]

I agree - other than graphically intensive tasks my 1.6 is comparable to my rev A MBP - 2.0 with 2 GB RAM.

Woo wee. It's as good as a (almost literally) flaming piece of crap. Not very complimentary.

In isolation I'd say the MBA has decent performance, certainly as far as the sort of use it will experience in general. It's (or at least my 1.8/SSD is) actually slower than a 1.33Ghz ULV SSD machine running Vista for some real-world, everyday office-y stuff, but nevertheless decent. For your usual stuff I don't see anything to worry about, unless of course it overheats.

The most accurate assessment in terms of equivalents is perhaps last year's Macbook or Mini.

 

[AreanFSL]

I went from MBP 2.0 Ghz CoreDuo 2 GB RAM to a MBA 1.6/80 and this 'feels' much snappier..
This is all relative, I'm talking in terms of opening up multiple applications and doing simple tasks. No photoshop, aperture, final cut, etc.
Trust me you will be very satisfied from going from a 1.83 Core Duo to an MBP, SSD even better.

 

[raremage]

Woo wee. It's as good as a (almost literally) flaming piece of crap. Not very complimentary.

Could not agree less. The MBP has served me very well for the past two years, and now is serving one of my employees very well. It runs native OS X apps very well, and an XP Pro image in VMWare Fusion at the same time without any slowdowns. As does the MBA.

In isolation I'd say the MBA has decent performance, certainly as far as the sort of use it will experience in general. It's (or at least my 1.8/SSD is) actually slower than a 1.33Ghz ULV SSD machine running Vista for some real-world, everyday office-y stuff, but nevertheless decent. For your usual stuff I don't see anything to worry about, unless of course it overheats.

I find that exceptionally difficult to believe - in fact, I call BS on this. As a network engineer I have not seen Vista perform even 'adequately' on any ULV systems. Running Vista on anything less than top of the line hardware with at least 128 Megs of dedicated video memory is (in general) a painful experience.

 

[Nichod]

I don't think the MBA was ever meant to be a powerhouse. In many ways to me its more of a novelty item. Super slim for the wow factor. Interesting to see how well it does perform though.

 

[ntrigue]

My 1.8GHz MBA 80GB HDD is falling between 2420-2485! To those that doubt undervolting (Coolbook) this is at 0.9250V where factory uses 1.250V

 

[ayeying]

I find that exceptionally difficult to believe - in fact, I call BS on this. As a network engineer I have not seen Vista perform even 'adequately' on any ULV systems. Running Vista on anything less than top of the line hardware with at least 128 Megs of dedicated video memory is (in general) a painful experience.

Not really. If you want vista to run "well" in a ULV system, turn down ALL the graphic eye candy and you'll get pretty good performance. It won't be the best looking, but it wouldn't be horrible or slow at this point.