Posted by The mid-2010 revision has a lot in common with the previous MacBook generation.
It has the same white polycarbonate enclosure, the same 13.3-inch widescreen display and the same 250GB 5400RPM Serial ATA hard drive. You still get 2GB of onboard memory (expandable to 4GB), the 8x slot-loading optical drive is unchanged and connectivity is still through Ethernet and two USB 2.0 ports.
And at £849, up from £816, the MacBook’s price hasn’t changed too much either. Yet there’s been significant changes under the hood.
As you would expect, the processor’s had an upgrade, though it’s still an Intel Core 2 Duo, which is inevitable considering the legal barriers preventing Intel integrating an Nvidia graphics chipset into its Core-i series CPUs.
We’d have loved to see a Core i3 in there, but with no integrated Nvidia graphics and no room on the logic board for a discrete GPU, Apple would have had to use the Core-i series’ built-in Intel HD Graphics, a significant step down from the integrated GeForce 9400M chipset used in the previous release. That’s the reason we didn’t get a Core-i processor in the 13-inch MacBook Pro reviewed last issue, and that’s why we aren’t getting one here either.
Even so, the new MacBook’s Core 2 Duo CPU runs at 2.4GHz, which is up from 2.26GHz in the previous release and a match for the cheapest configuration of 13-inch MacBook Pro.
The new integrated graphics chipset is the new MacBook’s most significant upgrade, stepping up from the aforementioned Nvidia GeForce 9400M to the new 320M. And what a step up it is. The Nvidia GeForce 320M is significantly more energy efficient than its predecessor, giving the new MacBook a battery life of up to 10 hours on a single charge, which is enough for an entire day’s computing on the go.
In our benchmark tests, the MacBook showed steady progress over its comparable predecessors. Its Cinebench rendering, movie encoding and Xbench results were all incrementally higher than last year’s MacBook, though it suffered a hiccup when it came to the Doom 3 framerate test, managing just two frames a second using the Ultra Quality graphics setting.
However, using the still-impressive High Quality setting, it ran at 68.3 frames per second. We’re betting the slow speed is down to the new 320M graphics chip not liking the shaders used in Ultra Quality – a performance issue potential hardcore gamers would do well to be aware of.
Overall, the mid-2010 refresh is a useful update for the MacBook. An incremental processor boost and a significantly better graphics chipset makes it good value for money, despite the small price increase.
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