MacBook review @ Ars Technica

Linc

Ars reviews the MacBook to see how it stacks up against its PowerPC predecessor and Apple's other Intel machines.

On May 16, the MacBook replaced the nearly seven-year-old iBook and brought with it a new era of consumer-grade portables from Apple. For the first time since the clam-shell style iBooks were discontinued at the beginning of 2001 is an Apple portable available in more than one color. Apple has been toying with the idea of offering both black and white devices since the iPod nano and subsequently the video-capable iPod, and now they've begun offering their consumer-grade portable laptop, the predictably named MacBook, in similar glossy black and white models.

With the new MacBook, Apple has completed the transition of its portables to the Intel architecture.

Source: Ars Technica

drasnor

These guys need to hang out at more Linux hardware sites.

What surprised me greatly, however, is that the MacBook with its integrated GMA950 video chip set, beat the MacBook Pro and its ATI Mobility Radeon X1600. Looking specifically at the OpenGL graphics test, you'll see that the GMA950's score on the MacBook was significantly better than the X1600 on the MacBook Pro. On the Quartz Graphics Test, however, the scores were much more similar, 51.21 and 57.20 for the MBP and MB respectively. It's my suspicion that the OpenGL graphics test in Xbench is not a very good indicator of the full capabilities of a machine's graphics system.

I suspect that ATI provides the same kernel drivers for OS X as it does for Linux. These drivers are absolutely terrible in terms of performance and are often one to two generations of cards slower than their Windows counterparts.

-drasnor