By far, the biggest gain was in our 3D game tests, in which the new MacBook, with its Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics, was able to display 66 percent more frames per second than the older model with its Nvidia GeForce 4200M graphics. The new MacBook's faster processor also helped it post a 10 percent faster Cinebench CPU score.

The new system was also faster in our Photoshop and iTunes tests, but only by a few seconds. Interestingly, some of the hard drive tests (file duplication and unzipping a 2GB file) were a couple of seconds faster on the older model.

Comparing the new $999 MacBook to the entry-level $1199 ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), we see identical Speedmark scores. With the same hard drives, processors, and integrated graphics, this should come as little surprise. And though the $1199 MacBook Pro, with 4GB of RAM, includes twice the memory of the MacBook, our Speedmark tests (run one at a time) show very little benefit from the additional RAM. I ran Speedmark on the 2.26GHz MacBook with 4GB of RAM for our and found only a 2-point increase in Speedmark scores with the additional memory. So why go Pro? There are a couple of advantages to the MacBook Pro, namely FireWire 800 and an SD card slot.

Looking at the performance differences between the MacBook and the ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ), a $1799 model with 4GB of RAM, both integrated and discreet graphics, and a 2.4GHz Intel Core i5 processor, we see a much bigger gap--24 percent overall, according to Speedmark 6 results. The Core i5 MacBook Pro, with its Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost technologies, was 32 percent faster than the MacBook in the Cinebench CPU test, 45 percent faster in MathematicaMark and 34 percent faster in our Aperture test. The 15-inch MacBook Pro's discreet graphics was able to display nearly twice the number of frames per second as the new MacBook with only integrated graphics.