03-29-2008, 06:54 AM

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has seen battery drain tests pitting the new 15" MBPs against each other. On the apple site, they claim the two models should be equal here, 5 hours (which obviously has to be taken with a grain of salt). But CNETs tests appear to have the 2.5 model getting 4:23 while the 2.4 model only gets 3:35. Has anyone seen any other tests?

The CNET test also have pretty wide margins in performance between these two models. I had pretty much been happily convinced by the review that the 2.4 was definitely a better value, and not much of a compromise in terms of performance. Now I'm not sure...

I typically deal with large image files and catalogs (Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom), not much video, and no gaming. Thanks!

03-31-2008, 06:35 AM

The more I think about this, the more I think it should depend more on the speed of the hard drive, the 5400 rpm vs. the 7200 rpm drive, the faster drive eating more of the battery life. A faster processor with more L2 cache and a slightly better graphics card with more video memory should in theory be slightly less efficient. Am I right?

03-31-2008, 09:01 AM

the hard drive really only affects battery life by about 5% if that.

Ive been there, and done that. Its all dependent on the two drives also. my 7k200 actually used LESS power than the 120 that came with my second mac. Go figure....

it all depends.

04-03-2008, 02:04 AM

riverteeth,

Those Cnet benchmarks are complete nonsense and NOT consistent with other benchmarks on these machines.

By the way, the new 2.5 ghz (penryn) MacBook Pro is NOT being compared to the NEW 2.4 ghz penryn version in those CNET charts. It is being compared to previous benchmark results from the last generation 2.4 ghz merom chip macbook pros. (Look at the system specs listed below the chart.) Clearly, battery life would NOT be better for the 2.5 over the 2.4, it would be slightly worse.

Either way, those benchmark results are way off, and the CNET folks are simply too stupid to recognize what should be obvious. This should NOT surprise anyone who follows their frequent mistakes.

Check out the Macworld benchmarks for a far more accurate picture. Both the 2.5 and 2.4 perform quite well and offer a nice (but not spectacular) bump in speed over the previous generation.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1323...pro_bench.html

04-03-2008, 11:45 AM

rather impressed with my first drain on my 2.4 penny.

5hrs @ 30% brightness, and nothing but surfing/rebooting.

most enjoyable was the lack of "lap-heat" it was still very nice on the bottom during this first run, idled at about 45c the entire time.

04-03-2008, 12:09 PM

Nice kgeier82! 5 hrs would be great... So, 30% brightness is all you need for normal indoor use?