Why is the Macbook much slower than the Pro?

[aakerman]

OK I tried out a new macbook and a new macbook pro in the store yesterday.

When browsing the objectdock at the bottom of the screen, the macbook was very visiby lagging/choppy. The pro was much quicker, and the animations were 100% smooth.

When launching mac:word, it took like 10 seconds on the macbook before the splash screen came up, and 1-2 secs on the pro.

Why is there this huge difference? Is it the norm? I initially thought it was the hard drive, but found out they were similarly specced, 4200 rpm. The small difference in cpu speed does not account for the immense difference.

Thanks =)

 

[AmigaMan]

Originally posted by: aakerman
OK I tried out a new macbook and a new macbook pro in the store yesterday.

When browsing the objectdock at the bottom of the screen, the macbook was very visiby lagging/choppy. The pro was much quicker, and the animations were 100% smooth.

When launching mac:word, it took like 10 seconds on the macbook before the splash screen came up, and 1-2 secs on the pro.

Why is there this huge difference? Is it the norm? I initially thought it was the hard drive, but found out they were similarly specced, 4200 rpm. The small difference in cpu speed does not account for the immense difference.

Thanks =)

First, the MacBookPro has a dedicated video card, the ATI x1600 while the MacBook just has Intel Integrated graphics. Plus the MacBook comes standard with only 512MB while the MBP comes with either 1GB or 512MB depending on the model. So if the MB had lots of stuff already open, it could have easily exhausted the available memory and begun paging to disk. And if the MBP you were using had 1GB, it would definitely appear faster. 512MB on a Mac is not enough sadly.
And the HD's are either 5400 or 7200 RPM, there is no Intel-based MacBook/Pro model with a 4200.

 

[aakerman]

Yeah typo, meant 5400 rpm.

Well I guess it could be the ram, I didn't check if they were similarly specced there. Also I can't believe the video card would make such a profound difference scrolling the object dock? if this is the case I can't see how people can be happy with their 512mb macbooks, it was terribly sluggish in the store..

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: aakerman
Yeah typo, meant 5400 rpm.

Well I guess it could be the ram, I didn't check if they were similarly specced there. Also I can't believe the video card would make such a profound difference scrolling the object dock? if this is the case I can't see how people can be happy with their 512mb macbooks, it was terribly sluggish in the store..

The video card can indeed make such a difference; as I understand it (and feel free to correct me), the Mac OS X GUI is 3D accelerated so integrated graphics generally suck for performance.