Dan's Demented Ramblings » Macbook http://blog.drysdale.org The geek shall inherit the earth Wed, 18 May 2011 06:28:32 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 Core Blimey http://blog.drysdale.org/2010/04/24/core-blimey/ http://blog.drysdale.org/2010/04/24/core-blimey/#comments Sat, 24 Apr 2010 02:15:55 +0000 Dan http://blog.drysdale.org/?p=196

Thanks to the magic of salary sacrifice I’ve updated my late 2006 MacBook Pro to a shiny new 17″ Core i7 MacBook Pro.

The old machine has served me well these last three years but it has really started to show it’s age. Lately for work I have needed to spend more time working in a virtual machine, the 2GB of RAM and 140GB hard drive on the old machine were just not cutting it.

Specs for the new machine

  • 2.66GHz Core i7
  • 8GB RAM 1066MHz DDR3
  • 17″ Anti-glare display (1920×1200)
  • Intel HD Graphics 256MB DDR3 + GeForce GT330M 512MB DDR3
  • 500GB 7200 RPM HDD

I haven’t had much time to play with it yet but it is certainly much snappier than the old one.

I ran GeekBench 32-bit on the new and old machines (the 64-bit version of GeekBench is paid only)

Late 2006 MacBook Pro
Summary
GeekBench Score 3131
Integer 2547
Floating Point 4749
Memory 2077
Stream 1627
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Build 10C540)
Model MacBook Pro (17-inch Core 2 Duo) Motherboard Apple Computer, Inc. Mac-F42189C8 PVT
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7600 @ 2.33GHz
Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 6
Processors 1 Threads 2
Cores 2 Memory 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Processor Frequency 2.33 GHz Bus Frequency 664 MHz
L1 Instruction Cache 32.0 KB L1 Data Cache 32.0 KB
L2 Cache 4.00 MB L3 Cache 0.00 B
BIOS Apple Inc. MBP21.88Z.00A5.B08.0802291403

2010 MacBook Pro
Summary
GeekBench Score 5363
Integer 4124
Floating Point 8487
Memory 3268
Stream 2962
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.6.3 (Build 10D2094)
Model MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2010) Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-F22589C8
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU M 620 @ 2.67GHz
Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 37 Stepping 2
Processors 1 Threads 4
Cores 2 Memory 8.00 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Processor Frequency 2.66 GHz Bus Frequency 4.80 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache 32.0 KB L1 Data Cache 32.0 KB
L2 Cache 256 KB L3 Cache 4.00 MB
BIOS Apple Inc. MBP61.88Z.0057.B05.1003191134

The GeekBench score shows a 58% increase in performance which will definitely make life easier for me.

On top of the obvious advantage of having a shiny new machine I will be passing the old MBP on to Viv so now I will actually be able to use my laptop at night when the kids are in bed ;)

See below for the obligatory un-boxing photos, I apologise for the poor quality, my camera was out of juice so I took these with my iPhone 3G.

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Thanks to the magic of salary sacrifice I’ve updated my late 2006 MacBook Pro to a shiny new 17″ Core i7 MacBook Pro.

The old machine has served me well these last three years but it has really started to show it’s age. Lately for work I have needed to spend more time working in a virtual machine, the 2GB of RAM and 140GB hard drive on the old machine were just not cutting it.

Specs for the new machine

  • 2.66GHz Core i7
  • 8GB RAM 1066MHz DDR3
  • 17″ Anti-glare display (1920×1200)
  • Intel HD Graphics 256MB DDR3 + GeForce GT330M 512MB DDR3
  • 500GB 7200 RPM HDD

I haven’t had much time to play with it yet but it is certainly much snappier than the old one.

I ran GeekBench 32-bit on the new and old machines (the 64-bit version of GeekBench is paid only)

Late 2006 MacBook Pro
Summary
GeekBench Score 3131
Integer 2547
Floating Point 4749
Memory 2077
Stream 1627
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Build 10C540)
Model MacBook Pro (17-inch Core 2 Duo) Motherboard Apple Computer, Inc. Mac-F42189C8 PVT
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7600 @ 2.33GHz
Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 6
Processors 1 Threads 2
Cores 2 Memory 2.00 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Processor Frequency 2.33 GHz Bus Frequency 664 MHz
L1 Instruction Cache 32.0 KB L1 Data Cache 32.0 KB
L2 Cache 4.00 MB L3 Cache 0.00 B
BIOS Apple Inc. MBP21.88Z.00A5.B08.0802291403

2010 MacBook Pro
Summary
GeekBench Score 5363
Integer 4124
Floating Point 8487
Memory 3268
Stream 2962
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.6.3 (Build 10D2094)
Model MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2010) Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-F22589C8
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU M 620 @ 2.67GHz
Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 37 Stepping 2
Processors 1 Threads 4
Cores 2 Memory 8.00 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Processor Frequency 2.66 GHz Bus Frequency 4.80 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache 32.0 KB L1 Data Cache 32.0 KB
L2 Cache 256 KB L3 Cache 4.00 MB
BIOS Apple Inc. MBP61.88Z.0057.B05.1003191134

The GeekBench score shows a 58% increase in performance which will definitely make life easier for me.

On top of the obvious advantage of having a shiny new machine I will be passing the old MBP on to Viv so now I will actually be able to use my laptop at night when the kids are in bed ;)

See below for the obligatory un-boxing photos, I apologise for the poor quality, my camera was out of juice so I took these with my iPhone 3G.

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