In the first-generation Air, playing back videos via YouTube or iTunes would inevitably push the processor to its limit and beyond, leading to stuttering playback and severe usability problems as the Air struggled to keep its temperature down by reducing the speed of its processor. What’s more, the 9400M’s integrated graphics processing unit (GPU) lends a hand to the CPU when it comes to decoding and playing back video material. In our tests, the Air managed a Quake 4 frame rate of nearly 25 frames per second, more than six times the rate of the previous Air. The Air’s Nvidia GeForce 9400M is much faster, which makes the Air a competent, if not fantastic, gaming machine. The previous generation of Airs was saddled with Intel’s GMA X3100 graphics circuitry, which was slow.
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The front-side bus and memory architecture has been ramped up, and the Air now uses faster DDR3 memory modules.īut perhaps the most major upgrade to be found across all the new MacBook Airs is to the video subsystem. But the small low-power processor custom-built by Intel for the original MacBook Air has been replaced by a smaller, stock Intel Core 2 Duo processor that offers more L2 cache (6MB instead of 4MB-L2 cache is speedy on-processor memory that improves efficiency) and uses less power. The weight and size remain identical, as does the bright 13-inch display and single USB port. This new MacBook Air gives wary consumers a bit more ammunition for the golden rule of technology buying: “Never buy version 1.0.” Apple appears to have improved almost every aspect of the internals of the Air, despite the remarkably small space available for the laptop’s components.
However, the substantial upgrades Apple has made to the rest of the MacBook line threaten to narrow the MacBook Air’s already limited appeal even further. As a result, the new generation of MacBook Air is superior to the original. But inside it’s quite different, offering a new and faster processor, upgraded video circuitry, a faster front-side bus, faster RAM, and a new display connector.
On the outside, the new MacBook Air 1.86GHz is identical to the first generation of Apple’s lightweight laptops.
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