What changes would Penryn bring to the Mac?

How is Penryn different from the current C2D's? I'm a n00b at this and would like an opinion on whether this is something I should wait for when buying a macbook in the near future. I know you guys would say that the best time to buy is when you need it, but I wanted to know if this is worth the wait until possibly May when the MB would get Penryn?

I would like not too techyy terms as I will probably not understand it. But please don't be too general like "it will be faster".

 

See if this explains it better: http://laptoping.com/intel-penryn-in-laptops-notebooks.html

But really, these updates are good, but not really worth dying for, if you ask me. Waiting until May is quite a long time...I would personally not wait for it that long to come to the MacBook. Penryn is an improvement, but it doesn't make the current Core 2 Duos obsolete in any way. Even the old Core Duos are still very powerful considering applications have not caught up yet.

 

From that site it said that Penryn would extend battery life, but by how much? I wouldn't care if it's going to be a difference of 2 or 3 minutes.

Also, I can only get a MB at the end of January. At that time would it still be a good idea to buy then or at the end of January should I wait?

 

I'm not much of a processor freak myself, so I don't really know. I assume its more than just 2-3 minutes though . Maybe half an hour?

And as for whether you should wait at the end of January...naw, that's still five months to May, nearly half a year. I'd say just get yourself a MacBook now. It was just updated, so there most likely won't be any further changes for at least a few months.

Worth noting that there's rumours of an ultraportable MacBook Pro arriving at Macworld 2008, so if that fits you, you might want to take a look.

 

The current MacBooks have a battery life of up to 6 hours, and have been known to run a good 5 hours with light browsing and basic use. It's possible that better power management in Penryn will yield another hour, but still, 5 hours is still really good.

 

wow 5 hours, is that with the 15" model or 17"? I'm sure the LED display in the 15" will yield some better battery life..

 

I was talking about the MacBook, not the Pro. The Pro, while rated at 6 hours too I think, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't hold up quite as well as the MacBook, but it should be close.

 

Ahh I see, yeh the macbook pro's have dedicated graphics which will bring the battery life down considerably

 

pretty sure the macbook doesn't last 5 hours considering I have one...I would say like 4-4:30 assuming that you're doing essentially nothing on your computer

 

But it also has an LED-backlit screen, which helps save battery life . I think the MBP still has better battery life though.

 

better than a MB? no way. Ive had both. if thats what you meant

 

I'm pretty sure I've heard of people getting 5 hours (mind you, that's tops) out of a MB, of course, settings are everything. What you get, especially if you have brightness turned up a bit and use the HDD regularly, sounds about right.

It's all in the settings. My iBook, if I put it into rigorous battery saving mode, could get 5 hours easily.

 

Two more questions I've thought of.

1) What about heat output? I've heard about something like the 45nm thing that is supposed to control heat better. Can you explain it better?

2) How much of a difference is speed compared to the current one?

 

The 45nm manufacturing process of the Penryn processors (Core Duo and Core 2 Duo, up till now, have all been on a 65nm process) put out less heat and use less power. Along with it will be an improvement in speed, since the clock speeds can be upped.

 

Man my vostro 1500 only gets 2:30 tops on power saver.. Cheap ass dell!

 

Wow. I used to be able to top 5 hours on my Vostro 1500, though that was with the 9 cell battery (but it had the 8600GT).

 

In addition to all-around performance improvements from the die-shrink, with Penryn Intel is adding a new instruction set extension, SSE4. It contains 47 new instructions which should give additional performance improvement for image and video processing and video encoding.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070417-intel-details-penryn-performance-sse4.html

However, I imagine it'll probably be a while before there's much software around optimized to use the new instruction set extension.

 

Yeh I only have the 6cell, but with wifi off and brightness to the lowest it struggles to get 3hours... Something wrong with the battery maybe? (I also have the 8600gt)

 

The Macbook will probably get 5 hours of battery life only when typing up notes and having the display severely dimmed.

 

Don't expect much real world performance increase from Penryn. It will still use the Santa Rosa platform (for now) and have the same bottlenecks, none of which are the processor. Since it is likely they will show in the MBP in the next month and a half or so, I might consider waiting if that it what you are looking at. The MB likely won't get it for some time, and I would not wait if you wanted a MB. There is not enough performance increase to warrant a long wait.