Macword has tested the latest Haswell-based MacBook Pros., and their results show that the newly updated hardware gives a boost in performance in nearly every application.
The new line of MacBook Pros consists of five standard configurations, three with 13-inch displays and two 15-inch models. All use Intel’s fourth generation Core processors, dual-core Haswells in the smaller models and quad-core Crystalwell processors in the larger laptops. All five of the portables take advantage of Intel’s new Iris integrated graphics. Only the $2599 high-end 15-inch MacBook Pro adds discrete graphics, in the form of Nvidia’s GeForce GT 750m with 2GB of dedicated video memory.
Macworld tested two 13-inch Retina models, the entry-level $1299 system with a 2.4GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of flash memory, and the high-end $1799 13-inch model with a 2.6GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of flash storage.
They also used an early 2013 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro for comparison purposes, and ran the same tests on it. The early 2013 model had a 2.6GHz dual-core Ivy Bridge processor, 8GB of RAM, Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, and a 256GB of SATA-attached flash storage.
The most impressive improvements in the new laptops came courtesy of the new Iris graphics. Compared to the HD 4000 graphics in the early 2013 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, the Iris graphics posted between 45 and 50 percent higher frame rates in Cinebench r15’s OpenGL tests and the Unigine Valley Benchmark. Unigen’s Heaven benchmark showed the new systems with about 65 percent improvement in frame rates over the earlier model.
While the newer machines scored better on almost all the tests, the early 2013 model scored better on compressing and uncompressing a 6GB set of files and folders.
Results of the tests can be seen in the tables below.
