MacBook 2.0GHz Intel Duo 2 Core Performance

upgrading from what?

in any case, expect performance along the lines of a dual G5, like prob in the range of a dual core G5 2.3 ghz. of course am pulling this figure completely out of my a**... but given the C2D macbook is a little slower in clockspeed than the C2D MBP i just started using, I would assume it's going to be in that range.

anyway, the performance pershmormance.. the important thing is that these laptops are really totally usable for logic, even for people that use a lot of audio instruments and plug ins, the are plenty capable. last night I did a mix on my machine (MBP C2D 2.33) using about 10 audio instruments (including 1 sculpture, and one NI massive) plus effects directly on inserts. and then also about 20 audio tracks including a lot of vocals all with sonalksis compression and eq, pitch correction, some distortion, some ohmforce fx, and the usual delay, reverb, chorusey things on buses. all up prob 40-50 plug ins, and it ran fine, the CPU bars didn't go over half way with no freezing. to me it feels quite a bit more responsive than my dual 2gig G5, and I certainly get more plug ins running on it for less CPU use. there is not a hope in **** that my PB could have even run just the one track of a pad sound on sculpture, let alone the rest of the song, so I'm obvious happy with that. 🙂

...just make sure that you have plenty of RAM.

I find it hard to believe that even the top of the line MBP's performance is on par with any dual G5 PowerMac. Okay, maybe the top of the line MBP is equivalent to a lesser clock speed G5, but beyond that? First, the frontside bus for RAM on a G5 is considerably faster than the memory bus on all Macintel laptops, anywhere between 50% and 100% faster, and its bandwidth, from what I understand, is twice that of a MBP (dedicated pairs of memory modules, each with their own bus on the G5). Theoretically, this means the G5's memory bandwidth is 2 to 4 times faster than the fastest MBP. Also, unless you have a fast external drive connected via the FireWire 800 port, the internal HD in a MBP will never be close to as fast as what you can get with a SATA Raptor drive or a SCSI drive connected internally or through a dedicated PCI-X card added to a G5.

None of this implies that a MacBook Pro, or for that matter a MacBook, is not plenty to run Logic, especially if it is not intended to run a large studio setup. I just am not ready to believe, until I see specific benchmarks, that any laptop in the MacWorld bests a G5, not yet.

I keep waiting to see if Apple can come out with a MacBook that will actually be an improvement over my now more than 3 year old PowerMac. I haven't seen it yet, but its surely coming next year. I read somewhere a couple of days ago that Intel does indeed have a four-core laptop setup in the works, but its not expected to ship until Summer 2007, and early predictions are that Apple won't be able to implement it in a MBP until at least fall. If true, that means I will be waiting until Spring 2008 to buy my next laptop, when Apple hopefully expands the 4-core option to more than its top of the line, $3000-range MBP. When I can get a 4-core laptop for something closer to $2,000, that's when I'll finally take the plunge, lose this iBook, and replace it and my G5 with a single Mac, a laptop with what is currently workstation performance.

well you should probably take a look at the specs in a different way. I have both a dual G5 2ghz and an MBP C2D 2.33, the MBP is definitely faster to run logic than my desktop machine is, period. I open a logic song (on an external FW800 drive) on the G5, then I open the same song on the MBP, and the CPU usage bars (both the logic ones and the activity monitor ones) don't go nearly as high on the MBP as on the G5. sure this isn't scientific testing, I'm sure there are little discrepanies here and there, but as far as it all averages out in actual real world performance, I'm afraid I just had to let go of my prejudice that a tower just had to be faster than a notebook. the mac pro is a different story, but I'm afraid the MBPs smoke dual G5s..

btw, i've mentioned this before on this forum, but I was at an apple briefing earlier this year in paris put on by apple for audio industry pros. it was run by a great german guy from the original emagic who still works in the logic team, and he had parallel setups of a G5 quad and a macbook pro (1st gen). the mac pro desktop was not out yet. basically, the laptop was not far behind quad's performance, running a big logic song with many audio tracks, lots of instruments and EXS vienna orchestra instances, all with a good quality H264 video file playing in logic. the MBPs disk performance was working a lot harder... but, it was all running on the internal drive, including sample streaming, so that should not come as a surprise. of course it's not ideal to work that way, but to see it could be done was impressive to say the least. so, it follows that these machines especially the new ones really do outperform dual processor and dual core G5s in real world running of logic situations.

if you're interested, there's a thread here somewhere of people playing a logic song with instances of sculpture playing 16 note polyphony constantly. this is of course a much less balanced test than what I saw at the briefing, but in terms of seeing processing grunt for CPU-intensive audio instruments, it's enlightening. the MBPs are getting higher plug in and polyphony counts than the dual G5s, and also the quad, unless people use the node trick to make the quad use its extra cores more effectively.

I find it hard to believe that even the top of the
line MBP's performance is on par with any dual G5
PowerMac.

Umm, perhaps you should read the benchmark threads on this very forum.

Even Yonah-based MBPs and iMacs (like mine) are as fast as Dual 2.0-2.3 G5s.

That's not to say the G5s aren't better in many ways; they're more expandable, for one thing, which may or may not be important to you.

You may find it hard to believe, but the benchmarks are very clear.

I know! it was a surprise to me too at first but there you go..

Okay, maybe the top of the line MBP is equivalent to a lesser clock speed G5, but beyond that?

LOL.. I forgot to mention that I connected my external FW800 drive to a friend's dual 1.8 G5 the other day and tried to play a song I had been working on on my MBP 2.33 C2D.. had to freeze a lot of tracks to get it to play at all... 🙂

FYI here's a link to one of those benchmark threads that have been going on here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=375180&start=50&tstart=0

note that the core 2 duo MBPs are getting up to 30 instances of sculpture in this test, a dual G5 2.0 gets around 17 and there is one guy with a dual G5 2.7 that got 26 tracks. also, the core duo mac mini was up there more or less equal to a dual G5 1.8.

anyway as I said earlier this is far from a scientific test. it's just going to show a brute indication of CPU grunt skewed for one particular audio instrument (which happens to be a CPU intensive one). it should also give an indication of bus and RAM throughput because audio intruments being 'playable' are more susceptible to choking logic if buffer settings aren't quite right etc etc. however, the numbers really speak for themselves. and to be honest, in actual real world use of logic, I've found the difference to be even more pronounced, as in, my MBP is even more obviously capable of running more 'stuff' in logic than in a simple test like in the above thread.

as I said earlier, i/o options, better disk speed and expandability, ie, the usual pluses you get with towers, are pretty much the only advantage the G5s have over MBPs now. if you have a need for the top of the range grunt available today, then forget the G5s, it's time for a mac pro, or if you can go portable, a MBP. it's starting to be a good time to buy now that large numbers of universal binary plug ins have begun to come online. none of my regular ones are missing in action for intel anymore, so I'm sorted. 🙂

Hi,

As used in the above phase:

"Even Yonah-based MBPs and iMacs (like mine) are as fast as Dual 2.0-2.3 G5s."

What does "Yonah" mean?

Thanks,
Sys6

Hi,

Here's an interesting thought, though these figures are very, very crude.
For instance, I'm not sure that Apple's SPECint rate base 2000 ratings are
based on running exactly the same tests, but we can probably use these
ratings for crude measurements. I'm also not sure to what extent
Logic Pro uses integer-based calculations verse floating-point
calculations.

The current, top of the line iMac and MacBook Pro have the same processor,
Core 2 Duo at 2.33 GHz, and get a SPECint rate base 2000 rating of
approximately 48.5.

The top of the line Mac computer, the Mac Pro, two dual-core Xeon
"Woodcrest" at 3 GHz, has a SPECint rate base 2000 rating of 115.3.

Half of 115.3 is about 57.

If there is no "self-noding" going on, and if it is true that that the Mac Pro
does not (at this time) use its second dual-core processor when
Logic Pro is running, and if the SPEC int rating for the Mac Pro utilized
both dual processors,
then the comparative ratings of the iMac verse the Mac Pro is
48.5 verse 57. The Mac Pro being very roughly 1.18 times faster.

Thanks,
Sys6

interesting.. I think we can safely say however that even if the mac pro doesn't properly get used in terms of all of its cores when running logic, they must certainly be aiming to have it do so pretty quickly as its in everyone's best interest to have those machines perform at their best for people that need it for logic.

just curious, do you happen to know what the SPECint ratings for the dual G5s are? I am a little ashamed of myself delving this far into performance nerd behaviour, but I'd be interested to see if it confirms the increased performance I'm getting out of my MBP C2D over my dual G5. then, I'm done... back to music.. 🙂

Hi,

As used in the above phase:

"Even Yonah-based MBPs and iMacs (like mine) are as
fast as Dual 2.0-2.3 G5s."

What does "Yonah" mean?

Thanks,
Sys6

Sorry, "Yonah" was Intel's code name for the Core Duo used in the iMacs, MB, MBPs, and Mini. "Merom" was the code name for the Core 2 Duo used in the current lineup (except the Mac Pro, which is a different chip altogether).

Thanks for the link. I read it. Although I still don't get how an Intel Cure 2 Duo laptop could be so much faster than a G5 system, It looks like I am wrong. I am glad to be wrong because I so want to replace my current setup (Dual 1.8 G5 + iBook G4) with a single MBP.

I wonder if these results are specific to something about Logic, or if the Intel chips are just that much better than the G5's overall. I am going to take a peek around and see if I can find actual apples to apples comparisons on overall performance. If performance of the MBP is just that much better than a G5 overall, it may be time to upgrade sooner than expected.

PowerMac G5, Dual 1.8, Raptor, Delta 44 Audio; iBook G4 1.33 Mac OS X (10.4.8) Mac owner since 1989

I have both a Powermac G5 dual 2.3 (2.5GB RAM), and a MacBook Pro Core Duo 2 2.33 (3GB RAM), and I have compared the two systems extensively over the past three weeks.

There is very little difference in performance between the two systems. It may be that the laptop is a little faster for certain tasks, and can run more of certain plugins. But QuickTime performance in Logic seems to be better tasked by the G5. Overall, I would say that the MBP has a slight edge in performance, but there are also some disadvantages, compatibility and expandibility being the two most obvious.

For example, I can'r run my Powercore on the mbp yet, and despite claims by Apple, there are NO Firewire/USB expansion cards available for the mbp, and it may be some time before there are.

Cheers...

no firewire/usb expansion cards for the MBP? with all due respect, what have you been smoking? every single firewire or USB audio interface that works on a desktop machine also works on the MBP, provided that there is a universal binary driver, and I doubt there are many missing any more. also, if you mean expansion as in a device to give you more plug ins that run on an external unit, then what about the focusrite liquid mix? I've not heard any reports of it not working with MBPs in fact I think there are people on this forum that are using them. what's the deal with the powercore FW model which I assume you have? does it have no intel drivers yet or is it a serious hardware problem between the two?

yes, you are right that there are limitations of course like expandability. but this is just laptop vs desktop common sense. if you need a desktop because of PCI card needs and so on for a hardcore studio machine, well you already know you need a desktop machine and you wouldn't be looking at a laptop regardless of performance.

I don't agree about being limited in terms of compatability because with an MBP you're in the same boat as a mac pro or intel imac, it's nothing specific to the MBP, it's a mac intel thing that is quickly changing anyway as the flood of UB plug ins seems to have started.

that's interesting about the performance comparison you made between your G5 and your MBP. sounds spot on, seeing as my G5 is only a dual 2.0, it confirms that in my case it's correct that I'm seeing my MBP C2D 2.33 get quite a few more plug ins and generally better performance across the board than my particular G5.

no firewire/usb expansion cards for the MBP? with
all due respect, what have you been smoking?

Perhaps the OP meant that there were not FW/USB ExpressCard expansion cards that work with the MBP??? That's the only explanation I can see, because there clearly are FW/USB audio interfaces that work very nicely with the MBP.