2GHz Santa Rosa or 2.16GHz Merom?

Which one is faster for a MacBook, A 2GHz Core 2 Duo 800MHz bus or a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo 667MHz bus? The other specs of both MacBooks are nearly identical.

 

The 2GHZ Santa Rosa...doesn't matter too much anyway... both very fast Well the SR MBP does have the 8600GT.

 

Actually, the one I am considering only has Intel GMA X3100. Is it good enough for web, office, standard DVD playback, photo and video editing?

 

Merom 2.16 gig is actually faster you know in terms of processing power... but you'll have to suck it up with Intel GMA 950 which is an ass...

And btw, GMA X3100 should be fine for DVD, photo and video editing (unless you professionally edit it) However, don't expect gaming performance out of it =D

 

Yeah it should be fine...

 

Definitely go with the Santa Rosa 2.0Ghz/X3100 GMA. It'll at least support 4GB of RAM. I believe the previous generation, Napa 2.16GHz/GMA 950 only supports 3GB. Which will not give you optimal performance since the RAM sizes will not be identical (1GB+2GB).

 

But does the OS that comes with it 32 bit or 64 bit? If I have 4GB RAM installed, will all 4GB be available to the OS?

 

OS X Tiger (10.4) is 32bit
OS X Leopard (10.5) is 64bit

Leopard will recognize 4GB, whereas Tiger will recognize only 3GB.

So as long as your Santa Rosa comes with Leopard, you'll get to enjoy 4GB.

 

Doesn't the 2GHz Santa Rosa MacBook only come with a Combo Drive while the 2.16GHz MacBooks always shipped with SuperDrives?

The SuperDrive, and presumably cheaper price tag, is reason enough to go with the 2.16GHz MacBook. Processing speed will be about the same. The Santa Rosa based system does have the faster FSB, but thats offset by the overall faster processor in the 2.16GHz system. I have 2 C2D systems, an HP with a 2GHz SR chipset and the MacBook with the 2.16GHz C2D. In Windows, they're roughly the same when it comes to raw processing speed.

Don't worry about the "limit" of 3GB of RAM either. By the time 4GB its actually useful, or required, it will have long since been time to upgrade the entire system. You can, however, install 4GB in the system. It will only recognize 3GB, but you will get the "dual channel performance" you would otherwise lose by using 2GB+1GB. That real world performance loss, or gain depending on how you look at it, is basically unnoticeable and doesn't really justify the extra cost for buying an extra GB of memory you won't be able to use.

As of right now, the 2.16GHz MacBook will run just as good with 3GB of RAM as the 2GHz SR based MB will run with 4GB of RAM. By the time that changes you will be well passed the point of needing to upgrade the entire system

Don't worry about the X3100 or GMA 950 either. Both are fine for DVD playback because Apple doesn't even take advantage of hardware features for DVD playback. The X3100 looks better on paper than the GMA 950, but the real world performance tells a completely different story. Both will be fine for every day tasks and general video editing.

 

I on the other hand disagree. The lack of the superdrive is the only reason I would consider the OLDER macbook. The Santa Rosa is faster all around. Faster CPU, faster front side bus, more cache, and better graphics. Here is a linke to the graphics speed. http://www.barefeats.com/mbook2.html. You might not notice the speed when reading email, or surfing the web, but burning a DVD or other intensive stuff will show the difference.

Not much but remember the x3100 are only optimized right now for Windows XP, and Vista and OS X only get the benefit of having twice the pixel pipe, which you can see helps. The driver updates will further give performance gains.

Also I believe that the Sant Rosa Notebooks have better cooling, my fan almost never comes on.

Lastly never say never. Ram is stupid cheap right now. A buddy just bought 4gig at NewEgg, $54 per stick for some corsair ram, and each stick came with a $15mail in rebate. If you run ever run Fusion to VM a Windows box, being 64bit with leopard with as much ram as can stuff in it.

 

^agreed.

4gb is neccessary for VMs IMO. I have 4gb, which i paid 100$ for, and would never go back to 2gb + VM

 

Honestly, for the OP's needs, it really comes down to cost and budget. Since you are not playing games or running a VM, you will not see a noticeable performance jump with the SR notebook. In fact, the 2.16 Merom will easily be as fast as the 2.0 Merom. The FSB is not faster enough to negate the more powerful processor. Plus the SuperDrive is nice.

If the price difference is not significant, I would go for the Santa Rosa and the new tech. If the price difference is pretty large, go with the older Napa.

 

^agreed.

I couldn't contemplate going back to 2GB now that I have 4.

 

I would go for the newer technology, as that also comes with X3100 graphics, but if you can't go 2.2 GHz and you want a SuperDrive, get the 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook.

 

That is not true. Every Mac OS starting from Panther 10.3 has been 64-bit. The 3GB limitation for the previous 667MHz FSB Merom Core 2 Duos is not because of the OS, but because of the Napa chipset. The chipset mapped device addresses in the upper 32-bit memory region between 3.3GB-4GB which meant that area couldn't be used for memory. The Santa Rosa chipset has fixed that by supporting 36-bit addressing and moving device addresses away from the lower 32-bits.

In any case, it seems that the specific 3GB limitation that Apple puts on the 667MHz FSB Meroms is partially artificial too, in that the chipset should be able to support nearly 3.3GB of RAM and if Apple took the time to jiggle the device address, they might even be able to squeeze 3.5GB out of it. But, they decided that there would be too much confusion if people added 4GB and only got 3.3GB or even 3.5GB, so they set a nice round 3GB limit in the EFI.

In terms of the specific question of which processor is faster, the 2.16GHz Merom Core 2 Duo will be faster in most cases. The Merom architecture seems pretty resilient to FSB bandwidth changes, otherwise you wouldn't see much scaling at all between desktop dual core Conroes that use a 1067Hz FSB and Kentsfield quad cores which still use a 1067MHz FSB. The 2.16GHz Merom Core 2 Duo has a 4MB L2 cache which is sufficiently large to buffer the difference between a 667MHz FSB and a 800MHz FSB.

If you intend to do light gaming, then the new 2GHz Santa Rosa model will be faster due to the GMA X3100, but otherwise the 2.16GHz model will be the better choice since a SuperDrive is quiet important nowadays. You never know when you might need to backup some data the the size of a CD is pretty limiting.

 

Ahh, you're right, my apologies. I thought I read an article awhile back stating how Leopard was the first true 64 bit O/S while the previous generations merely offered support for 64 bit.

 

Well, I guess it depends on what true 64-bit means. Panther included 64-bit support, but only in the kernel so the core OS could access all the benefits of 64-bit. Applications were still 32-bit, but the benefit is that each application could have a full 4GB of RAM, and the kernel being 64-bit can handle multiple 4GB applications assuming you have that much RAM of course.

Tiger introduced 64-bit support at the application level, but the only programming library that was 64-bit was libSystem which was for math and I/O. This was useful for data crunching, in that you could have worker threads that are 64-bit which pass there results to a GUI, which remained 32-bit since things like OpenGL and Cocoa were still 32-bit.

With Leopard almost everything is available in 64-bit now like Java, Quicktime, OpenGL, and Cocoa, with the exception being Carbon (finally signaling the end of the Mac OS era) so now the benefits of 64-bit are more readable to the end-user.