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Retina Display MacBook Pro Q&A
Published November 14, 2012
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How fast are the 13-Inch Retina Display "Late 2012" MacBook Pro models compared to one another? How fast are they compared to the 15-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro, 13-Inch non-Retina Display MacBook Pro, and 13-Inch MacBook Air "Mid-2012" models?
Please note that all notebooks mentioned in this Q&A have been discontinued. However, this Q&A is up-to-date and remains quite useful for anyone buying or selling one of these models on the used market.
In the company press release for the 13-Inch "Late 2012" Retina Display MacBook Pro -- the MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.5 13" (Retina) and "Core i7" 2.9 13" (Retina) -- Apple mentions on the "fast" flash architecture, but otherwise places much more emphasis on the display than performance.
In other promo materials, Apple focused on the performance of the 15-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro models, which have much faster quad core processors and dedicated graphics. The 13-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro models, by contrast, only have dual core processors and slower integrated graphics that share memory with the system.
Consequently, it would be reasonable to expect the 13-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro models to be considerably slower than their 15-Inch counterparts, but just how much slower requires benchmarks and real-world testing. Comparing the performance of this line to the "regular" MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models can be worthwhile, too.
Photo Credit: Apple, Inc. (13-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro)
General Performance Overview
For a solid overview of the performance difference between the 13-Inch "Late 2012" Retina Display MacBook Pro models, EveryMac.com's own Ultimate Mac Comparison makes it quick to compare side-by-side 32-bit-and 64-bit Geekbench benchmark averages with all other G3 and later Macs for thousands of possible performance comparisons.
The Geekbench benchmark shows that the build-to-order MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.9 13" (Retina) is roughly 16% faster than the standard model -- the MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.5 13" (Retina).
Likewise, the standard MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.5 13" (Retina) is a whopping 39% slower than the entry-level 15-Inch Retina model -- the MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.3 15" (Retina).
Even the custom build-to-order MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.9 13" (Retina) is a substantial 29% slower than the entry-level MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.3 15" (Retina). It also is worth noting that when configured with this upgraded processor and the same 256 GB of flash storage as the entry-level 15-Inch model, the 13-Inch and 15-Inch Retina Display models are the same price.
Compared to the non-Retina Display 13-Inch MacBook Pro models -- the MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.5 13" (Mid-2012) and "Core i7" 2.9 13" (Mid-2012) -- overall performance is effectively identical to the 13-Inch Retina models, as one would expect as these systems have identical processors and architectures, with the exception of drive related tasks which are held back in the non-Retina models by slower, but much larger traditional hard drives. Geekbench does not fully exhibit the storage performance difference regarding drive-related tasks, however.
Naturally, if the non-Retina 13-Inch MacBook Pro models also are equipped with SSDs, performance is similar to the 13-Inch Retina models.
Finally, Geekbench demonstrates that the standard MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.5 13" (Retina) is roughly 9.5% faster than the standard MacBook Air "Core i5" 1.8 13" (Mid-2012) and the custom MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.9 13" (Retina) is roughly 14.5% faster than the custom MacBook Air "Core i7" 2.0 13" (Mid-2012).
Other Benchmarks & Real-World Test Results
Geekbench provides a convenient overview of overall performance, but other benchmarks and real-world tests can be worthwhile, particularly for disk-related tasks.
Macworld performed their own Speedmark 8 tests -- which place more emphasis on drive performance -- and found:
Overall, the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro posted a Speedmark 8 score of 184, which is 52 percent faster than the [US]$1199 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro, which has the same processor as the Retina laptop. In disk-intensive tests, the Retina MacBook Pro's flash storage gave it a huge advantage over the non-Retina model's 5400-rpm hard drive. In CPU-intensive tests, the non-Retina MacBook Pro was able to close the performance gap.
While the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro won, overall, over the [US]$1499 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro with a 2.9 GHz dual-core Core i7 processor, the latter model did beat the Retina laptop in CineBench's CPU and GPU tests, the file-compression test, Portal 2, and MathematicaMark.
The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro was only 11 percent faster than the current 13-inch MacBook Air with a 1.8 GHz dual-core Core i5 processor. . . [and] as expected, the quad-core Core i7 processors and the discrete graphics chips in the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pros helps those machines blow past the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.
BareFeats compared the 13-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro to the 15-Inch model as well as the 13-Inch "Mid-2012" MacBook Air in an onslaught of benchmark and application and wisely concluded:
The 13" Retina MacBook Pro is for consumers who want an "insanely great" small screen but don't have heavy computing requirements. The 15" Retina MacBook Pro is for professionals who run demanding pro apps.
The always detailed AnandTech performs extensive tests that definitely should be reviewed in their entirety, but the author comes to much the same conclusion as BareFeats:
The 13-inch rMBP is clearly a fast machine thanks to its integrated SSD, but the 15-inch model is just significantly faster. The MacBook Air comparison is very close across the board. Although there's more thermal headroom offered by the 13-inch rMBP chassis, max turbo frequencies are very similar between the MBA and 13-inch rMBP models which results in peak performance looking very similar. What makes the 13-inch rMBP a "Pro" machine is really about the display first, not performance.
Performance Summary
Ultimately, the 13-Inch "Late 2012" Retina Display MacBook Pro models are fast, but largely due to the SSD storage more than processor or graphics capability. These models also are not hugely faster than the "Mid-2012" regular MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models overall and they are vastly slower than the "Mid-2012" 15-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro line.
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