Quick access
Round five: performance
Who will win the multimedia drag race?
Any late-model laptop will do for basic tasks such as checking email and browsing the web, just like most any car will get you from point A to point B. But with dual-core processors, discrete graphics and plenty of RAM, these souped-up hot rods are made for more than checking out LOLcats. We tested their speed on a variety of multimedia tasks to determine just how fine-tuned they are in OS X 10.6 64-bit kernel mode, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit under Boot Camp on the Mac.
Image editing
We timed how long it took for Adobe Photoshop CS3 to execute our custom Action file on a collection of seven raw images, around 12MB in size. The Action file applies a number of Photoshop's built-in filters, converts to greyscale and exports the resulting images as moderately compressed JPEG files.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
While the Mac takes the lead, it's only very slight. Last time we ran Vista on Leopard's Boot Camp its Photoshop score was almost double that of OS X. Windows 7 and Snow Leopard's Boot Camp obviously work better together, but it's still the native OS X that takes the crown here.
3D rendering
The Cinebench benchmark measures processor and graphics performance for rendering shaded images, taking advantage of a multithreaded, multi-core processor, such as Intel's Core 2 Duo. It should be noted that for Windows the 64-bit binary was used, whereas OS X only has a 32-bit binary provided.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Quite the mixed result. It looks like Windows has the CPU advantage (particularly the multi-core under Boot Camp), although the OpenGL implementation in OS X is markedly speedier.
iTunes encoding
Using iTunes, we timed how long it took to convert 19 MP3 files to iTunes Plus quality AAC files. The 64-bit binary was used on Windows, while OS X's iTunes is still 32-bit only.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
The MacBook streaks ahead with iTunes encoding.
Video encoding
Using our own custom 1GB raw .avi file, we timed how long it took the VLC player to convert it to a 3072Kbps H.264 file without sound.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
OS X takes the performance crown, leaving Windows to choke in its dust.
Gaming graphics performance
Sadly due to the small amount of titles on the Mac, comparative gaming tests are quite difficult. The newest OpenGL title on both platforms with a built-in benchmarking tool is the ageing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars; it's not the most taxing of titles. Indeed, we might be waiting until iD's Rage comes out in order to get some comparable modern gaming tests.
In the mean time, we've settled on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4), thankfully available for OS X and Windows. A few things colour this test: CoD4 runs in OpenGL on Mac and Direct3D on Windows — while we noticed no obvious visual degradation during testing between the two, the OS X scores here should be considered as data for interest only, whereas the Windows 7 scores both through Boot Camp and on the PC should be the ones compared.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Settings: 1024x768, 2x AA; Sync every frame: no; Shadows: no; Specular map: yes; Depth of field: yes; Glow: yes; Number of dynamic lights: normal; Soften smoke edges: no; Ragdoll: yes; Bullet impacts: yes; Model detail: normal; Water detail: normal; Texture filtering: trilinear; Anisotropic filtering: minimum; Texture, normal map and specular map resolution: normal.
Just like in Cinebench the Mac shows its strong OpenGL colours; but whether under Boot Camp or on the Dell, Windows 7 is pretty much identical as far as CoD4 is concerned.
Winner: Apple romps it in over Dell on the majority of our performance tests.
| Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 | Round 4 | Round 5 | Round 6 | Round 7 | Round 8 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | ||||||||
| Dell |
Add Your Comment 183