The graphic just to have an overview on 32bits (blue) and 64bits (green) :

Core i3 Mobile

The Core i3 mobile cpu is available in 2×2.13Ghz and 2×2.26Ghz, with 2 physical cores and 4 threads (hyper-threading) but only 3MB cache. They offers approximately the performance of Core2 Duo 2×2.53Ghz and 2×2.66 Ghz respectively, that is speed of mainstream actual MacBook Pro in 13″ and 15″, at the entry-level of the new Mobile lineup!

Core i5 Mobile

The Core i5 mobile cpu is available in 2×2.26, 2×2.4Ghz and 2×2.53Ghz, with 2 physical cores and 4 threads (hyper-threading) with 3MB cache as Core i3, but they add Intel Turbo-Boost technology, with respectively 2×2.53, 2×2.93 and 2×3.06Ghz. Latest model (Core i5 540M 2×2.53 to 2×3.06Ghz) have not been tested on Geekbench, so there’s no result at this time.

Turbo-boost enable the entry-level Core i5 Mobile processor to largely outperform the Core i3 Mobile of same frequency, offering performance between actual Core2 Duo 2×2.8Ghz and 2×3.06Ghz! First Core i5 Mobile equal the best Core2 Duo Mobile CPU, at only 2×2.26Ghz so needless to say, Core i5 is the way to go, if possible to upgrade your laptop.

2×2.4Ghz with Turbo-boost up to 2×2.93Ghz just outperforms any existing Mobile Mac CPU…

Core i7 Mobile

The Core i7 Mobile CPU will be available on 2×2.66Ghz on Mac laptops with 2×3.33Ghz Turbo-boost, as other Core i mobile cpu, it integrates 2 physical cores and 4 threads with hyper-threading, it have the more impressive Turbo-boost, and sports 4MB cache instead 3MB.

This is a real fast processor with 4900 GeekBench score on 32bits and 5500 on 64bits, offering a 12% boost on 64bits due to it’s larger cache, and 20% faster than 2×3.06Ghz Core2 Duo Mobile.

Which one of these you will find on February 16th, 2010 MacBook Pro?

The early-2010 MacBook Pro lineup is expected this next tuesday, and we won’t be sure of which one will sport which processor, but some choices are obvious:

MacBook Pro 13″ will be offered with Core i3 Mobile processor in 2×1.13 and 2×2.26Ghz, offering same cpu performance-level of actual MacBook Pro 15″ 2.53Ghz and 2.66Ghz. For thermal reason we might not see the Core i5 on 13″ MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro 15″ will sport the Core i5 processor at 2.26Ghz, 2.4Ghz and 2.53Ghz, offering performance level on a par with 2×3.06Ghz actual customized MacBook Pro, and over! Core i7 maybe offered as a custom option.

MacBook Pro 17″ will probably sports Core i5 2.53Ghz and Core i7 2.66Ghz as custom option, maybe 2.8Ghz if Apple overclock the Core i7 as it did for some previous generations. The 17″ will probably offers 4 DDR3 DIMM support to be upgradeable up to 16GB DDR3 RAM!

Depending on the configuration the CPU performance-level will increase from 10% to 25%, for same price-level… Considering Apple pricing, it’s a gift of $200 to $300! So wait until tuesday to discover the new Mac lineup, and probably new ATI Radeon Mobile GPU too

A last word: with these dual-core 4-threads cpu, the MacBook Pro will reach the performance-level of original Mac Pro, sporting 2 dual-core server-grade CPU! And I find it exciting!

The Geekbench 32bits score associated with this hypothetical MacBook Pro 6,1, equipped woth Core i7-620M Mobile processor is strangely high: it’s 10% over other Geekbench 32bits scores of the same processor under Windows. On other CPU, scores tends to be similar between Mac OS X and Windows, and somewhat even better on Windows computers!

So this might be a prototype of Apple, but it’s more likely an overclocked laptop PC with Mac OS X installed (a hackintosh), as the Mac OS X distro is a current one, and not an internal Mac OS X version, as it is usually the case with new Apple products.

Also notice that the 10.6.2 doesn’t support the GMA HD integrated with new Core ix Mobile CPU, so it’s unlikely that this “MacBook Pro 6,1″ is an Apple product. But Apple will probably unveil new MacBook Pro unibody lineup within Q1′2010 anyway with Core ix CPU.

Fair benchmarks?

They are Fair, but they didn’t test the same thing. GeekBench measure multi-threaded CPU cores in Integer and Floating-Point, and RAM bandwidth, ignoring CPU-cache size and speed in any way. XBench try to give a view of balanced speed of Mac subparts, balanced as a PowerMac G4 where CPU was the limiting factor and hard-drive relatively fast compard to PowerPC G4. MacWorld SpeedMark 6 gives an overview of application-level performance (real-world speed for these applications).

So they doesn’t measure the same thing, GeekBench is sensible to number of core, cpu frequency and DDR3 instead DDR2. XBench is sensible to balanced configuration, where CPU, Memory, OpenGL videocard, and moreover hard-drive subsystem is scaled up from PowerMac G4 balance (a good one from my point-of-view). MacWorld SpeedMark 6 will tell you which level of performance to expect on some applications and some selected tasks.

So they are fair, but you have to digg to understand what their Results means…

Benchmarks Results in real world?

Geek Bench overall score correspond to heavily multi-threaded optimized applications (kinda Pro applications) such as CineBench or H.264 encoding with x264 (FFMPEG, handbrake and many other applications). It’s memory subpart doesn’t really correspond to any application as influence is really below the cache size and performance that is not tested. Integer and Floating point performance will give you an insight for these kind of applications, for me the Integer test is the most revealing of raw cpu performance-level in many case.

XBench will reveal a balanced configuration, for example putting 2×1TB 7200 rpm in RAID-0 in a first-generation Mac Pro instead of the crappy 320GB hard-drive will enable it to go from 115 to 170+, Cinebench won’t be faster or game, but in day-to-day use you will find your Mac much more responsive, application launching faster. It doesn’t reveal a faster CPU on new iMac because with Core i7 iMac you still have a single 1TB 7200 rpm hard-drive, marginally faster in real-world performance to what you had on iMac G5 for example, while CPU is 8X faster! Launch an heavy application on both and you will discover that hard-drive is a limitation for today’s Mac, except upgraded Mac Pro

MacWorld SpeedMark 6 will give you a good view on the performance-level for specific tasks on some applications. But if you use another application or another task in the tested applications, it will be of no help to know if your Mac will be faster or slower than another. Radeon 4670 shine one Call of Duty, but it’s a dog when using OpenCL applications and you might prefer a GT120 for that matter. You may use mono-threaded “compressor” for HD Video, but if you use heavily multi-threaded x264 based application, results will vary! Aperture is used for photography but the big majority of photographer use Adobe LightRoom 2 that is really different in it’s internal conception and multi-tasking use or GPU use!

All-in-one, none of these benchmarks will give you a complete point-of-view about your Mac with your Application, except SpeedMark 6 if you use same Applications and tasks.

How to use these benchmarks?

You will end-up looking at benchmark global score, where you have to take a look at sub-scores: these are much more revealing. You must compare sub-score between Mac to see how they will fit for your use, for example…

Gamer: OpenGL results of XBench are totally out (old 3D), you must focus on SpeedMark 6 Call Of Duty performance-level that is most revealing. Forget GeekBench!

User of heavily multi-threaded application, with few disk IO (ie. x264 video encoding): Focus yourself on the GeekBench Floating Point score, SpeedMark 6 CineBench, Handbrake and MathematicaMark scores. Forget XBench!

Apache/Mysql/PHP-Ruby developper: You must focus on GeekBench Integer Score there’s no floating point involved, XBench is of no-use (until you need heavy disk IO!), SpeedMark 6 too.

Launching many applications at-once (after boot) and waiting: look at your XBench disk score, and try with faster hard-drive, or with Mac Pro install 2 or 3 new hard-drive in RAID-0!

Having a mix of applications, of different kind, try to find the kinda application you use in MacWorld SpeedMark 6 and do your own metric

To resume…

GeekBench, XBench and MacWorld SpeedMark 6 are fair tests, but they doesn’t test the same thing (subparts versus Application-level performance) and subpart test are oriented among CPU+RAM or whole computer subparts, with maximum performance or balanced performance as primary target.

None of them could be a true measure of a Mac performance, because the performance of YOUR MAC depends on the Application you use and the tasks you perform. It’s something personal and none of them could be a true metrics that you may definitely apply to a Mac.

But you could do you own Mix to see wether a Mac will be faster or not for your own use, remembering that 20% faster is hardly noticeable, and 40% faster on task execution may justify a move on long tasks (but not short ones), and you need 70% faster to see differences on fast actions!

So upgrading from 2.8Ghz to 3.06Ghz iMac won’t give you any real juice, albeit upgrading from Core2 Duo 3.06Ghz to Core i5 2.66Ghz will be impressive

It’s over a Core i7 2.8Ghz iMac geekbench 32bits Integer score (under 7000), so it’s a perfect fit for a computer that will run up to 3 Virtual Machines for development and Linux/Apache/PHP/MySQL (LAMP) software simulation and test. All these software do mainly if not uniquely Integer computation.

In this case, floating point computation is of no importance whatsoever, and memory speed not so important with 8MB cache on-chip

PS: I will go back to 3.2Ghz and test reliability of the Quad-core Mhackintosh under heavy load, at 3.0Ghz it’s perfect, I just re-encoded 3 Full HD movies in 4.3GB H.264 today!