Macworld Tests New MacBook Airs – Standard Models

Macworld has been very busy since Apple’s new Intel Core i5 MacBook Airs launched. They’ve been testing and benchmarking all of the standard Intel Core i5 MacBook Airs. An Intel Core i7 is available as a Build-to-Order (BTO) option, for $150 USD more on the 11-inch model, and $100 USD more on the 13-inch model. They’ve found the Core i5 upgrade from last year’s Core 2 Duo is a major boost.

The marketing for the MacBook Airs is pretty accurate – Macworld found performance increases of up to twice as fast on quite a few tasks. Granted, the 2010 MacBook Airs were running on Core 2 Duos that were slower speedwise than the newer Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 processors.

With the multimedia test Cinebench CPU, the i5 pushed the MBAs up to 2.4 times faster, and HandBrake was 2.3 times faster.

Some graphics-intensive tasks such as games or OpenGL benchmarks were actuall faster on the older 2010 MacBook Airs, due to the NVIDIA GeForce 320M dedicated graphics chipsets instead of Intel’s HD Graphics 3000 integrated chipset.

Full article: Macworld