Review and Benchmarks: Apple 13-Inch MacBook

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Hardware Review

Review and Benchmarks: Apple 13-Inch MacBook

7/9/2007

By David Nagel

For these tests, Cinebench runs a battery of hardware and software operations, including OpenGL hardware, OpenGL software, CPU performance, and Cinema 4D software-based shading.

With Autodesk Maya, we rendered (or attempted to render) several 3D scenes. However, for the third-generation MacBook rendering Mac OS X, we had to use the latest version of Maya (8.5), and some of the scenes simply would not load. These are noted with an NA. Of the two we were able to load successfully, the third-generation MacBook performed admirably. The MacBook isn't even close to being on Autodesk's list of certified systems for Maya; but you never know when you'll need a system like the MacBook to kick in a little extra rendering power.

Test 1 rendered a smoke scene using highest-quality anti-aliasing.
Test 2 rendered a fog scene with anti-aliasing set to high quality.
Test 3 rendered a scene with a soft-body object and particles with anti-aliasing set to high quality.
Test 4 rendered several objects, including a cutaway of a building, with anti-aliasing set to "highest quality."
Test 5 rendered a complex object with anti-aliasing set to "highest quality."

NewTek LightWave is the latest to make its way into a native Intel Mac format. On the first test, the third-generation MacBook outperformed all other systems at rendering the scene, while in the others it turned in respectable, but not overwhelming, results.

These tests used the following scenes, which were included with LightWave:

Test 1: Radiosity_BOX.lws (/Content/Scenes/Benchmark/);
Test 2: SunsetSample.lws (/Content/Scenes/);
Test 3: Teapot.lws (/Content/Scenes/Benchmark/);
Test 4: The_Matrix5.lws (/Content/Scenes/Abstract/);
Test 5: Virus_DOF.lws (/content/Scenes/Surface/).

These tests, of course, tell only a part of the story. These are, essentially, pure tests of CPU performance and do not include graphics performance. Like the two generations of 13-inch MacBooks before it, the latest MacBook uses the Intel 950 graphics processor with 64 MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory. It simply does not compare with workstation-class graphics processing units or higher-end GPUs designed for notebooks.

So, in other words, you would want to bump up from a MacBook if you were working on any seriously OpenGL-intenstive projects in 3D applications, video editing, motion graphics, and the like. However, as the tests we'll publish later this week will show, this doesn't rule out the possibility of using a MacBook in something like a render farm, where CPU performance would be all you'd care about.