Review: MacBook Core 2 Duo (C2D) - Part 2 - Performance Benchmarks
My hardware being tested is a 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 1GB RAM, 120GB Hard drive. All tests were run with the computer plugged in (not on battery or power saving mode).
super_pi
The first benchmark I ran was super_pi, which calculates digits of pi. It's not a great benchmark in that first of all, the version I ran was a PowerPC binary, not an intel binary, so, the MacBook uses the Rosetta translator to run it. Second, super_pi seems to only utilize one CPU core, so it's not using the Core 2 Duo to its best advantage. Nevertheless, because it's so prevalent, here are the results (best of 3 runs is shown below):
./super_pi 21
Version 2.0 of the super_pi for Mac OS/X
Fortran source program was translated into C program with version 19981204 of
f2c, then generated C source program was optimized manually.
gcc-3.2.2 with compile option of "-O3 -ffast-math -finline-limit=1000" was used
for the compilation.
------ Started super_pi run : Sun Nov 12 21:20:32 PST 2006
Start of PI calculation up to 2097152 decimal digits
End of initialization. Time= 1.239 Sec.
I= 1 L= 0 Time= 3.409 Sec.
I= 2 L= 0 Time= 3.823 Sec.
I= 3 L= 1 Time= 3.832 Sec.
I= 4 L= 2 Time= 3.814 Sec.
I= 5 L= 5 Time= 3.837 Sec.
I= 6 L= 10 Time= 3.825 Sec.
I= 7 L= 21 Time= 3.817 Sec.
I= 8 L= 43 Time= 3.821 Sec.
I= 9 L= 87 Time= 3.811 Sec.
I=10 L= 174 Time= 3.802 Sec.
I=11 L= 349 Time= 3.810 Sec.
I=12 L= 698 Time= 3.815 Sec.
I=13 L= 1396 Time= 3.813 Sec.
I=14 L= 2794 Time= 3.821 Sec.
I=15 L= 5588 Time= 3.798 Sec.
I=16 L= 11176 Time= 3.787 Sec.
I=17 L= 22353 Time= 3.771 Sec.
I=18 L= 44707 Time= 3.711 Sec.
I=19 L= 89415 Time= 3.610 Sec.
I=20 L= 178831 Time= 3.389 Sec.
End of main loop
End of calculation. Time= 79.218 Sec.
End of data output. Time= 0.550 Sec.
Total calculation(I/O) time= 79.768( 15.581) Sec.
------ Ended super_pi run : Sun Nov 12 21:21:57 PST 2006
Comparison:
MacBook Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz: 79.768s
MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz: 68.727s
CineBench Results (Universal Binary)
Rendering (1 CPU): 331 CB-CPU
Rendering (x CPU): 592 CB-CPU
Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.79
C4D Shading: 403 CB-GFX
OpenGL SW-L: 1418 CB-GFX
OpenGL HW-L: 1493 CB-GFX
OpenGL Speedup: 3.70
My resuls were about 10% faster than ArsTechnica's results for the MacBook with 2.0Ghz Core Duo. So, even given an equivalent speed CPU, the Core 2 Duo showed some advantages over the previous version.
Click here for full comparisons from ArsTechnica
I'm happy with the performance of the 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo. I think it's a real ground-breaking processor, with its 64-bit instruction set, its support for virtualization, and its great performance. It is now possible to actually run two operating systems, such as OS X and Windows XP simultaneously on a portable notebook computer and have good performance in both OSes.
See Also:
MacBook Core 2 Duo (C2D) Review Part 3, 2nd week update (TopicPoint.com)
MacBooks see a modest Core 2 Duo Boost (MacWorld)