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White Unibody MacBook Q&A - Published November 9, 2009
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How much faster is the White "Polycarbonate Unibody/Late 2009" MacBook Core 2 Duo than the MacBook it replaced? How fast is it compared to the 13-Inch MacBook Pro?
Please note that all models mentioned in this Q&A have been discontinued. The "Late 2009" MacBook was replaced by the "Mid-2010" MacBook.
Quickly review a comparison of the White "Unibody" MacBook -- the MacBook "Core 2 Duo" 2.26 13" (White Polycarbonate Unibody/Late 2009) -- and the "Mid-2009" MacBook -- the MacBook "Core 2 Duo" 2.13 13-Inch (White - Mid-2009) -- that it replaced and it is evident that the new system has a modestly faster processor as well as faster RAM. Consequently, one would expect the "Late 2009" model to be modestly faster overall.
Compared to the 13-Inch MacBook Pro models -- the MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.26 13" (SD/FW) and "Core 2 Duo" 2.53 13" (SD/FW) -- the White "Unibody" model has the same frontside bus, support for the same type of memory, and the same graphics processor. As such, one would expect the White "Unibody" and "low-end" 13-Inch MacBook Pro -- with identical processors as well -- to provide essentially identical performance.
For the precise performance difference or similarity, however, real-world testing is required.
The industry-standard MacWorld ran Speedmark 6 tests -- the publication's standard test suite -- and determined:
Improvements ranged from 5.5 percent faster for an iTunes MP3 encoding test to 17 percent faster for an Aperture import test. The new MacBook shaved seven seconds off the Photoshop CS4 test suite (12.5 percent), 13 seconds off our iMovie archive import test (10.4 percent), and nine seconds off our unzip archive Finder test (11 percent).
The new MacBook also matched or bested the 2.26 GHz 13-inch MacBook Pro in almost all of our tests -- somewhat surprising considering the two systems have almost identical components (although it's possible that the MacBook Pro’s smaller hard drive was a factor, or that we have a test system with a somewhat wonky hard drive).
As part of a longer review, Register Hardware conducted both MacOS X and Windows tests:
We benchmarked the MacBook using both the Mac-native Xbench and the Windows-based PCMark 05 and 3DMark running on a Windows partition created with Apple's Boot Camp software. The new MacBook consistently came in around 10-15 percent faster than its predecessor. The 5400rpm hard disk is a bit sluggish, but graphics performance is more respectable and the MacBook even managed to run the PC version of Far Cry 2 at a playable 27f/s.
In likely the most extensive set of benchmarks on the new system, LaptopMag compared the White "Unibody" model to the 13-Inch MacBook Pro and reported odd results in line with those from MacWorld:
Interestingly, [running PCMark Vantage in Windows] the MacBook's score was about 500 points higher than the 13-inch MacBook Pro, which has the same processor and RAM. . .
When transcoding a 114 MB MPEG4 to AVI using HandBrake in Snow Leopard, the MacBook took 2 minutes and 12 seconds; that's over 5 minutes faster than the category average, and just 9 seconds slower than the 2009 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Ultimately, the White "Unibody" MacBook is modestly faster than its predecessors -- as one would expect from evaluating their respective specifications -- but oddly, perhaps modestly faster than the low-end 13-Inch MacBook Pro.
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