Search Speed (grep)

2015 Apple MacBook Pro Retina

Authorized Apple dealer B&H Photo loaned MPG the Apple 15.4" MacBook Pro Retina (Mid 2015), 2.8GHz / Radeon R9 M370X / 16GB / 1TB, the configuration MPG recommends for power users, photographers, videographers, etc. Save money on AppleCare too.

The command line tool 'grep' is a proxy for any kind of search facility (e.g., Spotlight).

OS X aggressively caches files when they are read, so results here are shown uncached (grepping right after a reboot) and the common case (grepping a 2nd or subsequent time).

The 2015 MacBook Pro shows a 2X faster performance when files have to be read, reflecting its far speedier SSD. Once cached, the faster CPU in the 2015 MBPR shows ~17% faster speed in excess of its ~7% clock speed advantage—interesting since monitoring shows that no I/O operations are occurring. Hence the CPU may be a little more efficient (in addition to being 2.8 GHz vs 2.6 GHz for the 2013 MBPR).

2015 MacBook Pro vs late 2013 MacBook Pro: grep search