Submitted by Geek Patrol has benchmarked the new (Core 2 Duo) MacBook Pro against the old (Core Duo) model. “Moving from the Core Duo to the Core 2 Duo means 32-bit MacBook Pro performance is up 10% without an increase in processor clock speed. That’s impressive! Even more impressive is the Core 2 Duo is 20% faster (when executing 64-bit code) than the Core Duo (when executing 32-bit code).”
I think this looks great. The MacBook Pro finally got the two things I sorely missed in the previous version: FireWire 800 and 64-bit CPU. The disappointing thing, however, is that it only supports 3GB of memory. I guess I’d manage with 2GB for now until the prices on the 2GB sticks drop, but the option of 4GB would really be sweet. I have 1.25GB on my current PowerBook, which is rather on the painful side. (I constantly have 2-3GB in swap.)
And, from what I’ve heard, Mathworks have a beta version of Matlab for Intel Macs out now, so that’s no longer a huge obstacle for me either. Now, all I need is money. 😛
2-3GB in swap and you have 1.25GB of ram? Not to be an arse but people complain about Windows being bloated and using a lot of ram but…that’s insane. What do you do on your computer?
Windows was worse 😉 I do think that Linux is nicer on the memory consupmtion than either, though. Don’t know if this is a fact, but that’s my impression.
In a typical session I have:
* Opera with roughly 100 pages open.
* Colloquy IRC program with 4-5 channels open.
* TextMate editor (brilliant!) with 10-15 files open.
* Emacs.
* Adium messenger, connected with 5-8 different accounts/protocols.
* Mail.
* Safari, for testing purposes.
* Terminal, 5-10 open sessions.
* QuickSilver.
* iTunes.
* VLC.
* Dictionary.
* Preview.app with about 5-10 PDFs.
* Azureus.
* VirtueDesktops.
* Various Menu applets like Menumeters, etc.
* Various other apps from time to time, such as Matlab, Vim, etc.
It all adds up to quite a lot, especially a hundred web pages. I mostly do surfing, programming, research, and LaTeX.
Linux tends to use less memory because Linux installs share as much code as possible. However, Linux handles high memory loads better than OS X as well. OS X’s VM is ancient technology and its showing. It’s still not as bad as XP under load, but it’s not like Linux where I could often fail to notice swapping unless I was listening to the hard drive.
How do you ever got work done?
Wow, thats a lot of stuff. I typically have open:
* firefox + about 15 extensions + ~30-50 websites
* 2 or 3 instances of PuTTY connected to various remote servers via ssh or telnet
* WinSCP connected to my shell
* notepad++ with 3 or 4 files open
* mediaplayer10 with about 5k MP3s in the playlist
* POSE (palm os emulator)
* several palm os programming tools (prcedit among others)
* South palm os debugger (its a java app)
* palm hotsink manager…
few other things… and I’m typically only using about 500mb of RAM… (this is with windows XP)
Guess most of my apps are smaller in size
How did you measure your 500MB? by counting in Process list?
> * Emacs.
Well there’s your problem
EMACS: Eight-hundred Megs And Swapping.
;-D
Seriously though, do you really need to keep everything running all the time? The Dock is there so you don;t have to keep stuff running 24/7.
I have Safari, iChat, and WoW (a ram and CPU hog) running on my 17″ PowerBook 1.66 (The last-gen PB) with 1GB ram.
(I’m getting a new MBP 17″ soon, but I’m in the Silicon Valley, so naturally the Apple Stores are sold out 🙂 )
Edited 2006-10-28 05:02
100 pages? I heard of this thing the other day, I think they called it a bookmark. You might be interested :-P.
I can see how you’re using so much ram then and I don’t think you can blame the OS, no matter which one your using.
Clock speed is’nt all!
Right now, I’m much more interested in the changes in noise, heat and battery life. My ibook g4 did pretty well in those categories. The idea of going to a macbook almost seemed like a downgrade.