MacBook Pro 17", review

Yesterday i received the new MacBook Pro 17 inches HiRes 1920 x 1200 so i decided to do some tests and write a review because nobody already did it.

Specs:
CPU: Intel® Core 2 Duo T7700 2.4GHz
Ram: 2 GB 667 MHz
GPU: nVidia GeForce 8600M GT 256 GB ram
Hard Disk: 160 GB @ 7200 rpm
Display: 17" LCD WUXGA (1920 x 1200) glossy


The content of the package is the classic one for Apple mobile computers: laptop, MagSafe power chord, Apple Remote, 2 DVD of installationof MacOS X version 10.4.9, one little paper manual, dvi-vga adapter.
The first thig i've done has been reinstalling the operating system without all the garbage that by default Apple puts in her computer. I obtained an hard disk with occupied 7GB on 148,7GB


After that i did some benchmarks with XBench 1.3 changing the hard drive for the speed test.


I've obtained 118.23 points using the 160Gb at 7200 rpm internal hard drive, 136.07 points using a Western Digital MyBook wiht 500Gb at 7200 rpm connected by the FireWire 800, finally 172.18 points without doing the hard drive speed test.


If you touch the computer it results warm, but much cooler than my previous MacBook Pro with the lower limit of the cooling fan setted to 2000 rpm. Moreover the brightness of the screen is clearly great then the other model.


The screen resolution is phenomenal. You can easily put side by side two text documents and read them easily.


I've done some benchmarks with GeekBench 2. Initially the score was 1115 points (too few), so i've updated Mac OS X with Software Update and the score growed up to 3140 points.


After these test under Mac OS X i used BootCamp Assistant to create the partition for Microsoft Windows XP sp2 to do other tests.


The installation proceded without errors, so i installed the drivers burned with BootCamp 1.3. The operation taked few minutes without any action required from the user.

I immidiately installed the software nTune 5.05.38 to check the temperature of the GPU and to control the clock of memory and GPU.

nTune reported that clock of GPU and memory were respectively 470 and 650 MHz so Apple continues to set values for the video cards lower than the factory ones, because the defaults ones for the nVidia 8600M GT are 475 and 700 MHz respectively.

I've installed 3DMark 2005 (version 1.2.0 13065) the maximum score obtained was 7469 points. During this step the temperature was stable at 79°C.

I've done a little overclock of GPU and memory setting them at 475 and 700 MHz. I've done a stability test (10 minutes) with the nVidia control panel nVidia, with the temperature oscillating from 75°C to 80°C.
The score obtained with 3DMark 2005 was 7705 points.

Setting the clock of the GPU at 500 MHz and mantaining the memory at 700 MHz i've obtained 7732 points.


Finally i'm pleased with this new computer, a good step ahead respect the previous models.

Update: i've inserted a screenshot of Windows XP, you can appreciate the dimension of the font in a text file.



Update2: i've done some benchmarks with Cinebench 9.6...

CINEBENCH 9.6
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Tester : Fire-Fly

Processor : MacBook Pro 17" 3.1
MHz : 2400
Number of CPUs : 2
Operating System : Mac OS X 10.4.9

Graphics Card : nVidia 8600M GT
Resolution : 1920x1200
Color Depth : 32 bit

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Rendering (Single CPU): 398 CB-CPU 56s
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 739 CB-CPU 30s

Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.86

Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 477 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1826 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 3896 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 8.17

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This is the place where i did all the tests, bautiful don't you think so? Rifugio Città di Fiume



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