macnn
02/04/2008, 1:25am, EST
Monday, February 4th
MacBook Air benchmarks: not quite a MacBook
The MacBook Air has caused quite a stir with its slender packaging and minimalist features, but many have wondered what they are giving up in terms of performance by trading in their MacBooks and MacBook Pros for the ultraportable. Primate Labs recently benchmarked the miniature laptop, and found that performance was around 80- to 85-percent of that of a 2GHz MacBook. While the Air pulled ahead slightly in memory and stream performance, it was lacking in other areas.
The Air dragged behind the generation-old MacBook in integer and floating point performance, which the tester admits it is somewhat to be expected, since the Air has a slower clock speed.
Primate Labs found that while there is a bit of performance difference between the MacBook and MacBook Air, most users wouldn't notice the change. The tester also vindicates the ultraportable for PowerPC users, saying "the MacBook Air will feel a lot faster (and lighter, too)."
Filed under: Apple, industry
Other story tags: MacBook Air, laptop, performance, portable, benchmark, Primate Labs
, 
, 21
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
Ford Focuses not as fast as Ford Mustangs.
a more useful test would have been between the 1.8Ghz MacBook and the 1.8GHz MacBook Air (SSD & HD versions). as to see if when CPU is equal whether the architecture itself makes it any slower.
The default 2Gb RAM config, on the other hand, also offsets that, in terms of 'out of the box' performance.