The 15-inch laptop finished the CineBench CPU test 41 percent faster than the ultimate 13-inch laptop, and displayed more than twice as many frames per second in our Portal 2 timedemo.If you don't look closely- very closely-you might not realize that the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Mid 2012) ($1,499 direct) is any different than the nearly identical models from spring and fall of 2011, like the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Thunderbolt) ($1,499 direct, 3.5 stars). The 15-inch model has a quad-core 2.3GHz Core i7 processor and discrete nVidia GeForce GT 650M graphics. The $2199 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro-priced the same as the high-end 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro with the $200 processor upgrade-was 25 percent faster overall than the BTO 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Graphics test results were very similar between the two.īut its not all lollipops and roses for the ultimate 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. Photoshop was 35 percent faster on the ultimate system, and MathematicaMark was 14 percent faster. The hard drive in the non-Retina MacBook Pro took more than 5 times as long to complete the file copy and unzip tests as the ultimate MacBook Pro’s zippy flash storage. The ultimate Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro was a whopping 69 percent faster overall over the standard 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro with a 2.9GHz dual-core Core i7 processor. File copy and file uncompression test results between the ultimate and standard model were close. Our iPhoto import test was 19 percent faster on the ultimate model. Our graphics tests also saw a boost, with 9 percent higher frames per second in Portal 2, and 13 percent higher frame rates in the Cinebench OpenGL test. In CPU-intensive test such as MathematicaMark and CineBench CPU, the ultimate Retina MacBook Pro was 13 and 14.5 percent faster, respectively, than the standard system. The BTO system was faster in every test, but to varying degrees. Overall, the ultimate 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro with a 2.9GHz dual-core i7 processor was 11 percent faster than the standard 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro with a 2.5GHz dual-core Core i5 processor. To see if these upgrades are worth the significant cost, we put the ultimate 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro through the paces of our new Speedmark 8 system performance benchmark suite. Our ultimate system has the same 8GB of RAM and integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 as the standard configuration. A 512GB flash storage drive ($500) replaces the stock 256GB flash storage. It starts with a fast 2.9GHz dual-core Core i7 processor (a $200 option), which replaces the 2.5GHz dual-core Core i5 processor in the $1999 standard configuration model. Our $2699 BTO 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro was loaded for bear. We’ve tested the ultimate configuration of the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and found that the performance-as well as the price tag-were both considerably higher than the standard high-end configuration. An “ultimate” configuration is a customized machine with the fastest options available.
In addition to the standard configurations of its Macs, Apple offers a number of build-to-order (BTO) upgrade options that include more RAM, more storage capacity, and faster processors.