Apple MacBook Pro 15in

Sandy Bridge stunner

Push past PCs

PCMark Vantage's scores again show the performance of the new Core i family. The 3DMark 06 figures show the AMD GPU at work - and how it delivers a much better score than Intel's integrated GPU.

PCMark Vantage results

Longer bars are better

PCMark Vantage also forms the basis for Reg Hardware's battery test: loop the CPU-eating benchmark until the battery gives out. The 15in MBP ran for a decent 108 minutes. OK, that's not quite the seven hours Apple claims, but the PCMark Vantage loop test puts way more stress on the system than regular usage does and provides a good worse case scenario reading that can be directly compared to other laptops' results - unlike the figures handed out by vendors.

I can well see that, in the real world, the 15in MBP will give you six hours plus runtime - more if you drop the screen brightness - set to max for the test - and turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

3DMark06 results

Longer bars are better

The 3DMark 06 figures show the MBP's Radeon HD graphics clearly surpass the latest Intel integrated GPU at the same resolution. The Radeon figure is good for a mobile graphics chip, and the PCMark Vantage numbers show the machine is no sub-PC slouch.