Round 4: Performance

Just about any late-model laptop will do for basic tasks such as checking e-mail and surfing the Web, just like most any car will get you from point A to point B. But with dual-core processors, discrete graphics, and plenty of RAM, these souped-up hot rods are made for more than cruising blogs. We tested their speed on a variety of multimedia tasks to determine just how fine-tuned they are.

Image editing
We timed how long it took for Adobe Photoshop CS to execute our custom Action file on a collection of 15 JPEG and TIFF files, ranging in size from 1.83MB to 49.2MB. The Action file simulates a Web-image production work flow, converting color bit depths, resizing images, applying a number of Photoshop's built-in filters, and exporting the resulting images as moderately compressed JPEG files.

Clearly, the MacBook Pro running OS X suffers from the fact that Photoshop currently relies on the Rosetta translation program, resulting in performance that's more than three times slower than the TravelMate 8200's. After Apple released Boot Camp, we loaded Windows XP onto the MacBook Pro, ran the tests again, and got results that were just slightly faster than the Acer's. Still, achieving that performance requires you to shell out extra dough for a Windows XP license and the Windows version of Photoshop--not an ideal scenario. (We expect this performance discrepancy to shrink or disappear altogether once more universal binary apps--that is, Mac software built for the Intel platform--are released. Still, though Apple can boast of the hundreds of apps that do run natively on Intel-based Macs, Adobe's universal binary version of its next Creative Suite, which includes Photoshop, is likely more than a year away.)

3D rendering
The Cinebench benchmark measures processor and graphics performance for rendering shaded images, taking advantage of a multithreaded, multicore processor, such as Intel's Core Duo.

The MacBook Pro running OS X crossed the finish line more than 11 seconds ahead of the TravelMate 8200.

MP3 encoding
Using iTunes, we timed how long it took to rip 19 audio tracks to 192Kbps MP3 files. To eliminate the optical drive as a potential bottleneck, we ripped WAV files already stored on the laptop's hard drive.

The TravelMate 8200 squeaked ahead of the MacBook Pro, but only by a few seconds.

Video encoding
Using our own custom project file, we timed how long it took Sorenson Squeeze to convert a 30-second DV AVI file (captured from a DV camera) to MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 files.

As with Photoshop CS, the MacBook Pro has to translate Sorenson through Rosetta, significantly slowing the pace of encoding. The MacBook Pro running Windows XP performed more admirably, but still trailed behind the TravelMate 8200.

Gaming graphics performance:
Doom 3's lighting effects and shadows are generated in real time, so when the quality settings are cranked high, the game can be very demanding on the graphics subsystem. We ran our own custom demo of actual gameplay to generate an average frame rate score; a higher frame rate is better.

The TravelMate 8200 smoked the MacBook Pro, pushing nearly twice as many frames per second as its competitor. We were able to salvage some of the MacBook Pro's dignity, though, by using Boot Camp to run the benchmark on Windows XP. Though it was still no match for the Acer, the MacBook Pro running Windows turned in a more respectable 21.6 frames per second. The bottom line: Though PCs remain best for gaming, Boot Camp bridges the gap considerably.

Find out more about how we test notebooks.

Winner: For outrunning the MacBook Pro on every performance test but one, the Acer TravelMate 8200 takes the round.

Editor's note: This story originally misstated the version of Mac OS used to test the MacBook Pro. The correct version is OS 10.4.6. We regret the error. (5/4/06)