11/06/2007, 2:45pm, EST

Tuesday, November 6th

New 'Santa Rosa' MacBooks surprisingly 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.

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njfuzzy

Bullet-itis

11/06, 2:55pm, EST

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.

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legacyb4

nice

11/06, 3:16pm, EST

I've had my Macbook for a year now; another two to go and I'll be upgrading again!

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zl9600

the pro is a tiny update

11/06, 3:22pm, EST

This is a great update for the Macbook, but not the Pro. I'd sure like to see the speed tests for this laptop since Santa Rosa has been in the MBPro now for a while. I don't think I'm alone in the opinion that without an LED screen or any other innovative advances found in many PC counterpart laptops, it's not enough to jump on. Sadly, I'll suffer another round with my PB17".

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njfuzzy

Another thought

11/06, 3:31pm, EST

I just realized why Apple is now comfortable making changes like this... They aren't purely depending on getting current Mac users excited enough to upgrade sooner than they planned. They are now trying mostly to lure new customers, which means a less dramatic (but still competetive) upgrade is much more economical than constant form-factor changes, bells and whistles, etc.

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BelugaShark

pffft

11/06, 3:33pm, EST

the performance bars do not look significantly longer. How can they assume that they are significantly faster with those significantly similar bars?

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njfuzzy

To belugashark

11/06, 4:04pm, EST

Those bards represent raw numbers, which have increased by the 10-25% outlined in the summary. The 10-25% increase is what is being referred to as significant, presumably because the processor speed increases were only about 2%.

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chucker

11/06, 5:07pm, EST

Some people just don't understand the significance of significant

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tindrum

Better Graphs

11/06, 5:48pm, EST

A better graph would have the bar segments broken and bridged with a jagged icon, to only show the 100 or more point difference, and not the 2000 point or so similarity. Unfortunately, these bozos used an accurate graph, it seems, rather than an advertising copy graph.

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McDave

Re: Bullet-itis

11/06, 6:47pm, EST

But even this serves to distract us with hardware even though software is the Apple point of difference and key advantage. They definitely play the hardware game these days

McD

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Javizun

lol

11/07, 11:09am, EST

hmmmmmm..DUH

Why woulndt it be better then the previous one? Amazing stupidity is nolt like intel will make something inferior then their previous attempt.

And people act surprise when benchmarks come out? Why is that?

I find it so idiotic to act surprised about new architecture being faster lol

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