New MacBook Air Is Faster Than 2010's MacBook Pro

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If you’ve read our blog for a while, or if you follow the computer hardware side of the technology industry at all, then you know all about Intel’s Sandy Bridge. It’s the latest generation of their processor family, and it’s had all the PC enthusiasts grinning from ear to ear for months. Apple has slowly been rolling out Sandy Bridge processors into their computers as they refresh their product lines for 2011. How big of an impact is Sandy Bridge? The just released MacBook Airs are more powerful in benchmarks than last year’s (non-Sandy Bridge) MacBook Pro.

According to some charts that are from Laptopmag.com, on the Geekbench benchmarking program, the new MacBook Air from 2011 with the Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor has outperformed last year’s top-end 17-inch Core i7 MacBook Pro. Yep, pretty incredible. According to their numbers, the new MacBook Air scored a 5,860 while the MacBook Pro scored a 5,423.

PC hardware enthusiast guys like myself weren’t too keen on the MacBook Air originally. It was way too overpriced for what it was (ironic that the Mac crowd who criticized the netbook craze of 2008 and 2009 would fall in love with the ultra-thin MacBook Airs). But, these new Sandy Bridge powered MacBook Airs are pretty fast and probably comparable to the desktop for most folks.

It’s interesting to note here that Apple has finally ditched NVIDIA graphics for the MacBook Air. NVIDIA and Apple are reported to have had a falling out over some delays in Fermi graphics processors or something, and we saw Apple remove NVIDIA graphics in favor of AMD ones in almost all their new computers – save for the MacBook Air. In the MBA, NVIDIA’s GeForce 320M chip was probably the only one which could meet Apple’s requirements for heat and power consumption in the ultra-thin laptops. Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors have much better integrated graphics (actually a lot better), and as was expected by the enthusiast pundits, Apple has removed the final NVIDIA product from their lineup. A bit of a blow for the green giant graphics company.