Conversations: Performance of the New MacBooks

I mostly kept quiet last night while I chatted with Marco, the site guy, about just how much more powerful the new MacBooks are compared to their predecessors.

Marco: http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2008/10/macbook-and-macbook-pro-performance-october-2008/
Marco: not too much performance boost
Marco: even with ddr3
Rico: Lol, only the basic model has an appreciable boost
Marco: yeah
Marco: i told you
Marco: macbooks benefited more
Marco: benefited
Rico: especially with the discrete (but not dedicated) graphics
Marco: yeah
Marco: but it is cheaper
Marco: my probable advice would be
Marco: if you’re upgrading from a 3 year old laptop
Marco: its worth it
Marco: but if like me
Rico: hahaha, agreed
Marco: someone who just has bought an mbp
Marco: not really worth it
Marco: unless you have cash to burn
Marco: the lack of performance gains could also be in the drivers
Marco: remember apple writes their own chipset drivers
Marco: and this is the first time they’re writing for nvidia based chipsets
Marco: but regardless the gains are still negligible
Rico: So this could probably improve over time?
Rico: With updates and the like?
Marco: it is possible
Marco: but how much gain
Marco: is still probably minute
Marco: but the platform opens up very exciting possibilities when intel releases their nehalem family chips
Marco: which offer mobile quadcore
Marco: that with nvidia’s 9400m chipset could really usher in some amazingly fast notebooks by the start of next year
Marco: probably in june at macworld
Marco: future proofing has always been the forte of apple anyway
Rico: nehalem?
Marco: the next family of multicore processors
Marco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Nehalem_(microarchitecture)
Marco: right now it’s penryn
Marco:
Marco: its also cool to note that apple thinks (well implied) that bluray will die soon.
Marco: i think bluray hasnt enjoyed the ubiquitous popularity of dvd
Marco: when dvd became standard
Marco: infact bluray sales are down this year
Rico: Ah, you mean all that talk about licensing complications keeping Apple from integrating Blu-Ray in the MacBook?
Marco: because people prefer to get their hd content online
Marco: lol
Marco: yeah its not licensing complications really
Marco: well that’s probably part of it
Marco: but i think its more of not adapting something that is close to extinction anyway
Marco: its cheaper to get your hd content via itunes
Marco: or hulu
Marco: than it is to buy a bluray disc
Marco: let alone a bluray capable burner
Marco: er
Marco: player
Marco: so i think apple believes that hd content’s future is through online distribution
Marco: rather than through physical media
Marco: like bluray
Marco: but of course they cant really say that
Marco: and that’s beside their official issues with licensing
Rico: I know I know, it’s Apple’s marketing magic at work again
Marco: hahah true