Benchmark Requests for the NEW MBP 2.4ghz 256meg vram

Last night I bought a new 2.4ghz, 256 meg vram macbook pro. It has an 8600m gt graphics processor.

After setting up osx, I installed bootcamp 1.3 and loaded up windows xp sp2 in ntfs on a 32 gig partition (its faster, i dont care if osx and windows cant comminucate)

everything installed smoothly, but it took quite a while to do. now i can dual boot windows xp and osx!

i took out the battery because this system is going to be dumping some heat when i do benchmarking. i will benchmark games, 3dmarks, etc on request.

so far, i have benchmarked CS:S-

anything else you guys want? super pi? etc?

if you have any questions about the system, i can answer those as well! i hope to have a successful install of the nvidia tuner so i can give some thermal specs and clock settings.

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CS:S
video stress test
1440x900, 2x aa, 4x aniso, all settings maximum
112 fps
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3dmark06
1280x1024 (im 99% sure this is the res despite my monitor not being able to show it. if you know for a fact that 3dmark06 reverts to some other res on 15" mbp, please inform me)
3406 points
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I'd love to hear your experiences with Oblivion (I guess maybe FPS results with FRAPS in different environments, etc. at different quality settings).

 

I'm not sure about the current model, but on previous MBs/MBPs the CPU would not run at full speed with the battery removed.

 

you mean without being plugged into the wall?

 

light leakage!!!! do you have any light leakage on your screen from the backlighting? if possible, can you please take pics of the display in a dark room with the apple solid (light) grey color background (dock hidden nothing on desktop)?

I am really curious about this (and im sure many others are). The previous gens (including mine) are notorious for uneven backlighting.

 

ok first off, i have the glossy screen.

to test color accuracy and light leakage, is there a more quantitative program you can refer me to? i can do my own analysis for now though.

im in xp, and i open up microsoft paint, maximize the window and extend the drawing window all the way across the screen. i dont really know what i am doing but lets see what happens.

paint can produce accurate colors. so i flush the screen with a perfect white.
looking for intensity and brightness, i would say first off the the screen is VERY evenly lit. its possible that it is insignificantly brighter in the upper left than the lower right. this could just be ambient lighting distorting things... its really hard to tell, and its really close either way.

so now i flush the screen with gray- as you recommended. after staring at the screen, i still cant see much if any light gradient here. maybe i just dont know what to look for, but my answer is that it is evenly lit.

when i flush the screen with black, i can suddenly see myself. it is REALLY weird. its just like a mirror basically, but the black really pops out. its great and i love it.

that is the end of my analysis. i wont have my camera until monday. if you want me to run a program to help me determine lighting i can do that.

 

From the ones I saw at the Apple Store, the backlighting on the new models is much more even now.

This makes me happy because I absolutely loved the MBP I bought, but returned it only because of the uneven lighting. So it corrects the one big complaint I had.

 

I want to know if it looks anything like this with the grey background (from system preferences -> desktop and screensaver -> desktop -> solid colors):
http://www.urbanloon.com/laptop_pics/

A pic in a similar setting as that would be greatly appreciated, and i'm willing to wait

 

Trust me, not nearly as bad. If you can get a chance to see one in person you'll see........ much more even across the board.

-Zadillo

 

I was playing with one at the store yesterday. The screen produces very "clean" colors and it was noticeably brighter than the last gen macbook/mbp (at max brightness). However when you dim the lights down to about halfway, the led screen seemed dimmer. Overall, the LED screen produced better colors and was more evenly lit.

 

Yeah, at lower brightness levels it does seem relatively dimmer, but I'll accept the tradeoff I think.

Frankly my SZ460 with an LED-backlit screen was like that too; I think part of it though was that the half brightness was more noticeably dimmer just because the max brightness was so bright. I generally noticed in using my SZ460 that it would be a startling change at first, but as I adjusted the lower brightness levels were still fine.

 

Interesting comparo between 2.4 Ghz and 2.33 Ghz at Barefeats here
http://www.barefeats.com/santarosa.html

 

Just because it might not be clear, those are gaming results with the Mac versions of the respective games. Really only useful I think for telling the difference in performance within OS X; games generally don't perform as well in OS X as they do in Windows.

 

No, it was either a bug or a feature (your guess is as good as mine). The CPU would clock down to idle speed when the battery is removed and the unit is plugged in.

 

thats really annoying because i dont want to fry the battery if i want to play games in windows. so i plan to take it out first.

still- i did one CSS video stress test with battery and plugged into the outlet- just for fun - i got 109 fps. the 3 frame/s average difference is just by chance im sure, but it does show that you wont be getting better performance with the battery in vs. out- and so taking the battery out for gaming is ok with CSS at least. unfortunately, that doesnt prove anything. maybe the battery removed does lower the clock, and CSS is limited by the GPU?

ill try more tests in coming days.

 

I would be so paranoid using my machine without the battery. The magsafe connector pops off way too easy.

 

umm well im not really moving around like a madman if im going to be gaming.

plus, if you lose power in windows- usually nothing happens and it is ok.

worst comes to worst- i can reformat the xp partition.

i dont know about sudden power outages in osx - but i dont think it should be an issue there either. the biggest thing is that while gaming, the hard drive is almost never writing anything. so temp data isnt an issue.

 

some pics would be nice