Macworld provides benchmarks for the new NVIDIA-based MacBook Air that was introduced in October.
Macworld found that benchmarks improved up to 39%, when comparing the new 1.86GHz MacBook Air (SSD) to the first generation 1.8GHz MacBook Air (HDD).
The new high-end Air posted a 39 percent higher Speedmark 5 score than that old CTO Air. It was also 28 percent faster in our Photoshop tests and 22 percent faster in our Cinema 4D testing. Compressor, iMovie and iTunes were faster on the new system, but not by as big of a margin. Again, the biggest gains for the new Air were in our game frame rate tests. The new Air was able to display 24.8 frames per second in our Quake 4 tests, as opposed to the older CTO Airs 3.9 fps - thats more than a 6x improvement.
Unfortunately, many of these test results are likely skewed by the use of the SSD hard drive in the new MacBook Air, so it's difficult to isolate what is contributing to the improvement in scores.
