The MacBook Pro finally came. I knew it would be much faster than the 1.67Ghz G4 it is replacing. Well, I thought I knew.
Far be it from me to actually try benchmarking that anyone else could use. It's all relative anyway, so let's look at the relatives:
I timed an update of a 3D perspective view placed in a layout. (Who knew views would be so helpful for benchmarking? None of this setting and fiddling business, because all the settings are in the view. Very convenient.) The model is pretty hairy and the fills are on.
First, I would normally only update this drawing on the PowerMac G5. That's a quad 2.5Ghz, 3GB RAM. The update takes a way tolerable 2:28.
The old PowerBook. (Not that old. 16 months. The last, best PB.) 1.5GB RAM. I know full well that a G4 is not up to the task, especially in 10. Not that you can't work; you just need to be tactical. Always marquee the 3D window. Turn all the fills off. Refrain from generating full building sections. Things like that. It takes a different mindset, but you can still be productive.
I would never generate such a view on the PB unless absolutely necessary. I'm fairly sure I never updated this particular drawing on that machine. Still, I was quite surprised at the result, a truly pitiful 6:26. (Moment of silence.)
Yeah, I need a new computer. That's why I bought one. This is the 2.33Ghz Core2 Duo, 2GB RAM.
First I tried the PPC Archicad 10, which runs under the Rosetta emulation layer. As with any emulation, expect a performance cost. (In real life, I'll need to run 10 in this way for a while, because the Universal Wibu driver breaks AC9. I don't use 9, but I need to maintain libraries in it.) The 'wrong' AC10 updates the drawing in 2:08.
So this here portable is more than 10% faster than my 1-year-old G5. In emulation.
Swap out the Wibu driver and really go for it. In the properly-compiled AC10, 1:06. Twice as fast as the G5, almost six times as fast as the G4 PowerBook. Holy @#$%.