New 'Santa Rosa' MacBooks surprisingly faster
updated 02:45 pm EST, Tue November 6, 2007
MacBooks faster
Despite their modest numerical gains in clock speed, new MacBooks based on the Santa Rosa chipset are significantly faster than their predecessors according to tests conducted by Primate Labs. Memory performance is up almost 15 percent and stream performance -- heavily memory reliant -- is up nearly 25 percent. Overall performance is up about 10 percent. The 13-inch systems are now based on the Intel Santa Rosa platform used by the recent MacBook Pro and run on a faster 800MHz system bus in addition to using faster GMA X3100 integrated graphics, which add improved hardware 3D acceleration compared to the GMA 950 used in previous models. The improved bus speed has led to a slight increase in processor speed from 2.16GHz to 2.2GHz for the mid-range $1,299 and high-end $1,499 models.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Apr 2001
Bullet-itis
I think this is an example of peoples' expectations being based on the bullet points... They see that the processor speed barely changed, and the other "major stats" aren't affected, and think this is a tiny update. Really, though, it's a whole new chipset, which in the days before Intel would have been a major revision for Apple.