View this article at: http://dev.macnn.com/articles/07/11/06/macbooks.faster
Tuesday, Nov 06, 2007 2:45pm
New 'Santa Rosa' MacBooks s...
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.