The latest PowerBooks feature mellow - resolve displays , longer battery lifetime , and threefold - layer SuperDrives — but not much in the path of substantial jumps in performance over their predecessor in Macworld Lab testing .
The subtle effects on performance were n’t surprising , given the nature of the changes introduce by Apple sooner this month . After all , the update to the 15 - column inch and 17 - column inch laptops did n’t include any increase in velocity from the 1.67GHz PowerPC G4 chipping featured in previous models . Meanwhile , two of the most prominent additions — increase battery life history and the ability to burn off dual - layer ( DL+R ) DVDs — are not measured byMacworld ’s Speedmark performance testing dick . Other improvements , like increased driving capacity , mellow cover resolution , and quicker DDR2 store contribute to only minor differences from the result posted by the previous propagation of 1.67GHz G4 PowerBooks .
Nevertheless , there were some performance difference between the new coevals of PowerBooks and their predecessors release earlier this yr . ( To differentiate between the like configurations , we ’ve designated the just - released PowerBooks as “ late 2005 ” models and their harbinger as “ other 2005 ” rendering . ) The highlight let in the new system of rules ’ small amplification in iTunes MP3 encryption and our 3 - viosterol rendering trial . The honest-to-god 15 - in PowerBook did pull off to creak past the new PowerBooks in our MPEG-2 encryption test and our Photoshop CS2 suite .
1.67GHz PowerBooks Tested
Best result inbold . Reference organization initalics .
Speedmark 4 scores are comparative to those of a 1.25GHz Mac mini , which is assigned a score of 100 . Adobe Photoshop , Cinema 4D XL , iMovie , and iTunes scores are in second : seconds . All systems were running Mac OS X 10.4.2 with 512 MB of RAM , with C.P.U. performance set to Highest in the Energy Saver preference pane . We exchange 45 moment of AAC audio files to MP3 using iTunes ’ High Quality setting . We used Unreal Tournament 2004 ’s Antalus Botmatch average - frames - per - sec grievance ; we tested at a resolve of 1,024 by 768 pixel at the Maximum background . The Photoshop Suite test is a set of 14 scripted tasks using a 50 MB single file . Photoshop ’s memory was set to 70 percent and History was set to Minimum . To liken Speedmark 4 dozens for various Mac systems , visit our Apple Hardware Guide .—Macworld Lab examination by James Galbraith and Jerry Jung
The late 2005 15 - inch model also get a square upgrade to its video memory , jump to 128 megabit from 64 MB . And though this rising slope was primarily target at enabling the power to drive Apple ’s Brobdingnagian 30 - inch Cinema HD presentation , the novel 15 - inch PowerBook did manage to score a twosome of more frames per second in our Unreal Tournament 2004 benchmark than the previous 15 - inch model , which has only 64 MB of television memory .
Click here for a full review of the vamp PowerBooks .
