Apple drops white Macbook processor speed Apple has quietly revamped its low-end, plastic-cased MacBook - in the process reducing the machine's processor speed. OK, we admit it, the reduction's a small one: 2.1GHz down to 2.0GHz. And in compensation, buyers get rather better graphics. Apple's white Macbook Apple's white Macbook: slower CPU, way faster graphics than …
Yes, Apple have reduced the processor speed on the white MacBook, however they have changed the platform its running on, so that reduced processor speed is balanced by an increase in FSB from 800MHz to 1066MHz.
A properly researched list of changes can be found here :
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/01/21/apple-quietly-updates-entry-level-white-macbook/
... being backed by a 1066Mhz bus rather than an 866Mhz one. In addition, it seems that the default amount of RAM is now 2gb, not 1.
Anyway, a cheer for the cheapest Mac I would be interested in now being cheaper (albeit not cheap), fifteen cheers for Apple managing a substantial product update without some ridiculous hyped-up launch.
All eyes on the Mac Mini for the next silent upgrade?
In difference to the rumoured Mac Mini atom downgrade/video upgrade which is lunacy, most people won't miss 100MHz of speed. The X3100 is a horrid chipset with subpar drivers (under Windows; I don't believe the Mac is much better). It's fine for applications but not for anything graphical or games.
The only question is whether the change of chipset impacts on battery life; an area where the Intel IGP tends to shine.
Despite no change to US price, it's hard to imagine there won't be a price rise when it does come to the UK store - a straight pound conversion at $1.37, plus 15% Vat, comes to £835 - current model is £130 less than that, and Apple usually likes to charge us more than their domestic customers.
Snow Leopard is on the way..
I believe they'll make sure all their gear is on Nvidia graphics first before launching the OpenCL-compatible Snow Leopard..
Thus begins the evolution of computing yet again - WinDoze owners left in the dust, cough cough...
Paris, because she knows it's not about the size but what you can do with it :)
Further investigation reveals that this shift is from the Core 2 Duo T8100 (2.1GHz, 800MHz FSB) to the Core 2 Duo P7350 (2.0GHZ, 1066MHz FSB). The key point is probably that the P7350 is a medium voltage chip that uses 25W of power rather than a full voltage chip that uses 35W like the T8100.
My guess is that Apple has changed the CPU to one with similar performance but lower power consumption to make up for higher power consumption of the nVidia chipset. It will be interesting to see what sort of net impact on battery life this has.
Do bear in mind that although throwing in 2GB rather than 1GB memory is very welcome and usable for most purposes (unless you're running a fully loaded Vista x64 laptop), it's only about 30 quid for 4GB (2x2GB) and on practically every laptop this can be upgraded without voiding the warranty.
4GB SODIMMs are still extremely reassuringly (5x) priced though, and it doesn't help that most manufacturers lie and tell you their Santa Rosa based laptops are limited to 4GB when that's not the case..
I looked at the tests, reviewers seem to think battery life has stayed about the same, despite GPU. They refer to macs having a set of power-saving techniques.
One such which has been discussed for a while, not just for macs, is to switch between a GPU and a smaller on-board chip - has that idea been dropped?
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