Apple’s latest Retina MacBook Pros are only 3-5% faster than the previous generations
If you picked up a Retina MacBook Pro as soon as they went on sale, you may have been a little disappointed when Apple announced a few improvements to them last week. But don’t feel too downhearted; according to the latest benchmarks, the new models are only 3-5% faster than their predecessors.
The results from Primate Labs’ Geekbench tests aren’t really that surprising — after all, Apple did only make minor improvements. With the 15-inch model, all three of the available processors got an extra 100MHz, while only the high-end configurations of the 13-inch model — starting with the 256GB machine — received the same treatment.
In fact, the new mid-range Retina MacBook Pro is actually slower than the previous mid-range notebook, according to the results.
13-inch Retina MacBook Pro benchmarks
15-inch Retina MacBook Pro benchmarks
“One thing to note is that the new mid-range Retina MacBook Pro has the same speed processor as the old high-end Retina MacBook Pro. However, the new mid-range model is slightly slower than the old high-end model,” Primate Labs said.
“While this seems surprising at first, the difference is easily explained by comparing the two processors: the old high-end processor has more cache than the new mid-range processor.”
So, all of the machines Apple upgraded have only shown 3-5% performance increases, according to the Geekbench statistics. While this is nice if you were planning to pick up a Retina MacBook Pro in the near future, it’s hardly a reason to feel like your existing model is now outdated.
[Via: MacRumors]
