2012 MBP 15-inch — Photoshop CS6 Performance

The newer CPU and chipset are apparently faster at the same clock speed then the 2011 MacBook Pro chipset, since the clock speed differences alone are not enough to explain its superior performance over the 2011 17" quad-core i7 model.

As can be seen, the predicted performance of the 2.3 GHz model should be on par with the prior MBP 17" 2.5 GHz, suggesting that the new CPU and design are on the order of 7-8% faster at the same clock speed (for Photoshop). That’s just enough to notice, certainly not by itself a justification to upgrade if you already have a 2011 model.

diglloydSpeed1

This is an in-memory test that easily fits in 8GB, so it’s a pure CPU speed test.

The MacBook Pro (Retina and non-Retina) beat the Mac Pro and fastest iMac! But not by much, and see the diglloydMedium below, where the MBP Retina lags badly due to its 16GB memory limit.

The MacBook Pro 15" (non Retina) consistently beat the Retina model, but only by a 0.1 to 0.3 seconds. Perhaps this is due to the Retina display “pixel doubling” overhead.

Photoshop CS6 performance on diglloydSpeed1 benchmark

diglloydMedium

See the Photoshop CS6 Speed with Various SSDs page.