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Penryn MacBook Pros: Performance Comparable, Battery Life Greater

Anandtech posts a lengthy review of the new Penryn-based MacBook Pros. Their review provides some objective data on the new laptops, as compared to the previous generation.

As described before, the biggest change in the new MacBook Pros is the use of a 45-nm Penryn CPU as opposed to the older 65-nm Merom CPU. Despite some differences in L2 cache, Anandtech found benchmark performance to be neck and neck:

Overall, the performance differential ends up being a wash - there are some cases where Penryn is faster at lower clock speeds, while others where Merom manages a win - much as we expected.


One measurable advantage of the new processors, however, is an extension of battery life, with improvements ranging from 7-15% longer than its predecessor, with an absolute increase in battery life of 37-67 minutes in their web browsing test.

It looks like Penryn is good for a 7 - 15% increase in battery life over similarly configured Merom systems. The improvement alone isn't enough to warrant an upgrade but it's a nice improvement over the previous systems given that you get it at no additional cost. Ah, the beauty of innovation.

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52 months ago
was it really worth the wait?
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
52 months ago

was it really worth the wait?


for a decently longer battery, I think so!:cool:
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
52 months ago
More and more this feels like an update to smooth over Intel's Merom phaseout (it's not massively difficult to spin a modified motherboard and the old and new ones are fairly similar), and an all new design in the not-too-distant future (which does take longer). It really feels like the last-generation Powerbook G4 update.
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52 months ago

for a decently longer battery, I think so!:cool:


Ah, yes. 7-15% percent is 17-36 minutes – assuming a batteri life of four hours. And who can honestly say they're getting 4 hours on a MBP pro? More realistically, you get 2-2,50 and with the latter, it's a mere 10-22 minutes.

Now, don't get me wrong, _any_ enhancement is great. But worth the wait?

Nah …
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52 months ago
YAY, This makes me less sad that i had to buy mine a month before this upgrade..
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
52 months ago

Ah, yes. 7-15% percent is 17-36 minutes – assuming a batteri life of four hours. And who can honestly say they're getting 4 hours on a MBP pro? More realistically, you get 2-2,50 and with the latter, it's a mere 10-22 minutes.

Now, don't get me wrong, _any_ enhancement is great. But worth the wait?

Nah …


It shuts up the moaners for a month or so... :rolleyes:
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
52 months ago
I'm still happy with my 2.16 MBP ;)

I have a xbench score of 136.15 hehe
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52 months ago
so the 'real' point of the upgrade is multitouch

and they didnt even think to make the trackpad bigger!
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52 months ago
This was an interim step for the MB/Ps.

Come June/July when we get the next Intel chips with possibly wimax, I think we will see a revolutionary jump not an evolutionary bump.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
52 months ago

This was an interim step for the MB/Ps.

Come June/July when we get the next Intel chips with possibly wimax, I think we will see a revolutionary jump not an evolutionary bump.


Bingo! In fact I find it quite likely that Apple had no intention of pushing this update out but was forced to by Intel wishing to cut down production of Merom.
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