The ruing of the MacNewlyOld

Something old (ish), something new and incredibly fast. Photo / Mark Webster

Apple pulled another one out of the hat when it unveiled new MacBook Pros a couple of weeks ago. Not in design, not even really in capabilities, although they have definitely been improved. No, the big deal was a new port.

Apple does this all the time. While the neophytes bray 'why bring out a new connector no one uses!?', industries kick off whole new product lines to take advantage. That's what happened when Apple deleted the serial port and introduced USB on all Macs, and that's what's going to happen with Thunderbolt - actually, it is already. But more on that, later.

I bought myself a new MacBook Pro last year, so I'm one of those many people newly disenfranchised by Apple's latest. I wasn't bitter - my machine still stacks up in the specs stakes (or so I thought), and it's just the lack of Thunderbolt I'm going to end up resenting. I figured.

I got a new 17-inch quad-core i7 MacBook Pro to play with for ten days or so, and while I don't, as yet, have a Thunderbolt device to try with it, I did get to assess its other capabilities.

They're impressive.

I used my September 2010 Dual Core i7 15-inch MacBook Pro as a comparo. This is clocked at 2.66GHz with 8GB RAM, 256KB L2 cache and a 4MB L3 cache. I put extra RAM in (8GB of 1067MHz DDR3) and it has the high-resolution 1680x1050 screen option, a 7200rpm hard drive and it's also running OS 10.6.6.

The 17-inch has a quad Core 17 clocking 2.2GHz with a 256KB L2 cache and a bigger (6MB) L3 cache. It's running the same OS version, but it came with the stock 4GB RAM, which is faster (at 13333MHz) DDR3.

In the graphics stakes there have also been changes. My 15-inch has integrated Intel HD Graphics with 288MB VRAM for low-power consumption (basically, for video tasks while running on battery), and the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics card is for more demanding tasks; it has 512MB dedicated VRAM.

(The graphics switches GPU depending on need and mode, but I have a cool little utility that lets me choose which one to run. It's free, Open Source and called gfxCardStatus.)

The 17 has Intel HD Graphics 3000 as its integrated option, with 384MB VRAM. The discrete graphics has changed vendor to AMD Radeon. This is the HD 6750M, with 1024MB VRAM (a gigabyte, in other words). The built-in 17-inch screen shows 1920x1200 pixels.

Booting

On a straight boot-up from off, the 15-inch 2010 MacBook Pro is ready for action in 48 seconds, with an additional screen plugged in, or without. The brand new Quad Core i7 takes 31 seconds.

Logic boots (with no project) in 16.4 seconds. On the 17-inch, it's 8 seconds.

The 17-inch booted Logic, including launching Lily Allen's 53-track The Fear with all its effects plus video, in 48.6 seconds.

On the new 17, Aperture opens in 2.4 seconds, including a library of high resolution images. On last year's 15-inch, Aperture launches in 11 seconds.

Final Cut launches in 7 seconds on the 17-inch, and 18.6 seconds on 2010's 15.

(I will run some render timings and include them in next week's story.)

Benchmarks

I used Geekbench to test the new 17-inch - the software can be used to measure Windows and Unix boxes too, so the benchmarks can be compared across platforms instead of just across Macs. My 'newly-old' MacBook Pro registers aggregate figures of 6135 running discrete graphics and 6232 with the integrated; higher is better.

The 17 simply blows this out of the water with a fairly astonishing 10,204. That's with the discrete graphics card. With the integrated Intel graphics, the figure is 10,175.

In fact, I got my daughter to bench her two-week-old 2.3GHz 13-inch MacBook Pro. At least my 15 would still beat that, I thought ... but no. The i5-engined nipper eased past my i7-engined 15, posting 6441 (vs 6135) with discrete graphics and 6431 (vs 6232) with the integrated. Ouch! It wasn't even the more expensive of the two 13-inch stock versions. Dang.

A stonking, generously-specced September 2010 2.93GHz quad Core i7 iMac (12GB RAM) geekbenched 10,850. The CPU in this six-month old iMac is considerably faster than the 17-inch MacBook Pro at nearly 3GHz.

That just goes to show what Apple's little system tweaks combined with Intel's newer Sandybridge architecture can do. Scoring over 10,000 is well into Mac Pro territory ... and it also points to some pretty exciting new iMacs when they get this new generation of chips, which can't be very far off.

And expect some pretty breathtaking new Mac Pro towers in June - WWDC in San Francisco is typically the event that launches pro Apple hardware and software. Apple has to do quite a lot to get out of this performance ballpark; expectations have been raised considerably when laptops can achieve this.

Graphics

CineBench is a 3D modelling benchmark by Maxxon, also cross-platform, and a better indicator of graphics' chops than Geekbench, which concentrates on CPU, bus and memory.

The overall CPU score for my 2010 15-inch was 2.06, and on the 17-inch, 5.29 (higher is better). The OpenGL measure was 16.49 frames/second for the 2010, and 33.19 frames/second for the 2011.

CineBench's measure of a single CPU core was 1.06 for the 15, and 1.24 for the 17. The multi-processor ratio (a measure of the speedup from multiple cores working together) was 10.12 on last year's 15's two cores/four threads, and 9.37 on the four cores/eight threads of the 17-inch.

Overall, the 17-inch's graphics were just over twice as fast.

Ports

All on the left side (the case is exactly the same one-piece aluminium of the last year or so), there's (back to front) the MagSafe power adapter (designed to pop off if you trip over the cable instead of dragging your laptop onto the floor), Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800, 2xUSB2 ports, the Thunderbolt port, audio line in and audio line out, an SDXC slot (this is new and handles multi-Gigabyte cards) and the Kensington lock slot.

I have a lot to say about Thunderbolt ... but I'll do that next week, along with some Final Cut render timings.

Battery life

Some may have noticed a reduction in the battery life figures. The batteries are the same, with the same life - but now the quoted figure of 'up to seven hours' is when the computer is operating under load, instead of just running and doing nothing. It's a fairer figure.

Prices

Strangely, the new MacBook Pros are either exactly the same prices as the commensurate models for last year, or even slightly, marginally less. The stock models range from $1999 (as per my daughter's standard, lowest-spec Dual Core i5 13-inch that beat my i7-CPU 15-inch!), $2499 for the Dual Core i5 2.7GHz 13-inch, $2999 for the 2GHz Quad Core i7 15-inch, $3799 for the 2.2GHz 15-inch, and $4199 for the 2.2GHz 17-inch i7 as tested.

Educators and the educated get a discount equal to about 3-4 per cent.

For the best deals on new Macs, look to ... nowhere. There aren't any. If someone bundles or discounts something with a new Mac, that's about as good as you can get.

The high-res and matte display options are still there, for an additional $200 and $200, there are several drive options including SSD, and 8GB RAM instead of the stck 4GB is $320 more, unless you do it yourself with approved third party RAM, which is cheaper.

Verdict, in a word: awesome.