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White & Black MacBook Q&A - Published February 15, 2009
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How fast is the "Early 2009 NVIDIA" MacBook Core 2 Duo compared to the "Early 2008 Penryn" MacBook Core 2 Duo models? How fast is it compared to the "Late 2008 Unibody" MacBook Core 2 Duo models?
Please note that all models mentioned in this Q&A have been discontinued. The "Early 2009 NVIDIA" MacBook Core 2 Duo was replaced on May 27, 2009 by the "Mid-2009" MacBook.
For both the "Early 2008 Penryn" and the "Late 2008 Unibody" MacBook models Apple released performance benchmarks. For the white "Early 2009 NVIDIA" model -- the MacBook "Core 2 Duo" 2.0 13-Inch (White - Early 2009/NVIDIA) -- which was quietly pushed out the door without even a press release, the company did not do so.
Nevertheless, if you review a comparison of the "Early 2009 NVIDIA" to the previous white and black "Early 2008 Penryn" model that it replaced, you will notice that the "Early 2009" model has a slower processor -- 2.0 GHz compared to 2.1 GHz -- but has a faster system bus -- 1066 MHz compared to 800 MHz -- and a superior graphics processor -- a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M compared to an Intel GMA X3100.
Likewise, review a comparison of the "Early 2009 NVIDIA" model to the "Late 2008 Unibody" models and you will notice that the "Early 2009" model has a very similar architecture with the same system bus and graphics system as well as a processor of identical speed to the lower end "Unibody" model (2.0 GHz) but has slower memory.
Taking these specification differences into account, one would expect the "Early 2009 NVIDIA" model to be a tiny bit slower than the lower end "Early 2008 Penryn" in processor intensive tasks and significantly faster in graphics intensive tasks with a modest overall performance boost. In turn, one would expect the "Early 2009 NVIDIA" model to be rather comparable in performance to the lower end "Unibody" system.
For the precise differences in performance, however, real-world testing is required.
In a review that should be read in its entirety for complete details, the always reliable MacWorld reported:
In overall performance, the differences were as subtle as you'd expect, with the new white MacBook getting a nearly four percent higher score than the previous white MacBook in our system performance benchmark Speedmark 5. In most processor-intensive tests, the new white MacBook is slightly slower than its predecessor. . . But the new white MacBook showed improvement in our 3-D game benchmarks; in fact, the new Nvidia-powered MacBook can display nearly four times as many frames per seconds in our Quake tests as the last generation with its Intel graphics. . .
The new white MacBook was about five percent slower in our Speedmark 5 tests than the 2 GHz aluminum MacBook, but in many tests the results were very close, with the white MacBook even turning in a slightly faster time than its aluminum sibling in a few tests.
In another evaluation, a writer for NotebookReview tested the performance of the "Early 2009 NVIDIA" MacBook in MacOS X and found that:
The XBench score is 119.01 which is 20-25% faster than the first generation MacBook Pro. This score is very close to that of my Aluminum Body MacBook which gets 123.49 with all the latest patches and updates from Apple.
Register Hardware also ran XBench tests comparing the "Early 2009 NVIDIA" model to a smattering of other MacBook and MacBook Pro models that you may wish to review.
Ultimately, the "Early 2009 NVIDA" MacBook model is slightly faster than its predecessor and comparable in performance to the more expensive "Unibody" models. The "Early 2009 NVIDIA" model might not be as "sexy" as the "Unibody" models, but its performance definitely represents a good value for the money.
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