[Hornet]

http://www.barefeats.com/al15.html

Comparing the 15 Alu vs the 15 Ti:

18.3% faster in photoshop
32.2% faster in Cinebench CPU render
30.2% faster in Bryce (had to compare against 17" Alu, as no 15" Ti results were listed for this)
12% faster in Q3 (err...)
59.6% faster in UT2K3 (vs 17" Alu, no 15" Ti results)
495.2% faster in hardware OpenGL

All in all, the 1.25 15 Alu seems to do quite well! The 1.33 17 Alu is just a bit ahead in all tests. The lack of L3 seems to be offset entirely by the doubling in size and speed of the L2 (as it should)


Request to 15" 1.25 owners: can you please run the UT2K3 botmatch test, as this tests the CPU primarily, rather than the graphics card. Macs are currently extremely lacking in this botmatch test, thus it would be great to see the difference from a 1.0 Ti

[11011001]

Does this mean that Warcraft III might actually run decently on these things??!!

Woot!

(sure, it runs fine for the most part, but once a big battle starts, it becomes unplayable on my QS 867)

[Scooterboy]

I'd expect the ATi Radeon 9600 to run just about any game smoothly. I was hoping the new PowerBooks would feature the 9600, and it makes it a tempting buy, especially for gaming. In the tests, it looks as if the most dramatic speed improvements are due to the state-of-the-art 9600.
I only wish the system bus (167 MHz) could be faster as I feel this cripples the G4 (G5 front side bus is .5 of processor speed). Would the slow bus speed of the G4 Al Books be partly to explain why the Centrino laptop blasted the new AlBooks in some of the non GPU intensive tasks? I was surprised to see the Wintel laptop besting the PowerBook. What is the front side bus speed of the Centrino laptops?
I winced a bit when the barefeats analysis rated the new PowerBooks as iMac replacements, or Power Mac (G5) replacements for web browsing or email only. Ouch!
Still, the new 15.2 inch PowerBook will be a very nice upgrade from my iBook (which I bought as an iMac replacement). On the other hand, if I already owned a PowerBook G4, I'd probably wait for the G5.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Hornet:
http://www.barefeats.com/al15.html

These are great numbers!

They show that
a) Apple has not tried to pull our leg: The current line-up is a good replacement.
and
b) These PowerBooks have a future: Either Moto can pump the 7457 to >1.33GHz, or the 7457-RM replaces the 7457 or, at least Apple can include L3 to get even more out of these current 7457s.

This is very good for us PowerBook users/owners/buyers, but also for the professional Mac world as a whole. Let's check the recent changes:

- PowerMacs? Check.
- iMacs? Check.
- PowerBooks? Check.
- Xserves? uhm...

Uhm, Steve?