That ancient model is using an Ivy Bridge processor. That's two generations older than the current Broadwell processors.

You can't just compare clock rates when going between processor families. There are significant leaps forward in processing speeds and performance at the exact same clock speed with each new processor family revision (about every 1.5-2 years). Especially when it comes to pipelining, pre-fetch and a lot of other processor functions that speed up interactive performance when under multithreaded workloads--the Mac I'm typing on is running a couple hundred threads simultaneously right now.

Also, those clock rates are minimums. Modern Intel processors can shut down cores and crank up the clock rate on the remaining cores depending on the current processor load. Which is why even serious benchmarks don't tell you as much as they used to when it comes to actual real-world performance.

Finally, a Mac Air is optimized for size and weight, not performance. The direct comparison with the 13-inch MacBook Pro are the modern 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina models. And there've been lots of upgrades along the way. For example, the old model has a screen resolution of 1280x800 or 1,024,000 pixels. The current Retina model is 2880x1800 or 5,184,000 pixels in the same sized (though much more color accurate) screen. That's quite a difference--as is the much faster graphics processor used to manipulate all those pixels.

Arthur Gaer
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Senior Systems Manager
Harvard University
Department of Mathematics
Science Center
1 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-495-1610




On Jan 13, 2016, at 3:28 PM, Stewart Gooderman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The model you are talking about actually has a faster processor than the MacBook Air computers. I just looked at Apple’s web site to confirm.
>
> DrG
>
>> On Jan 13, 2016, at 11:26 AM, Arthur Gaer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The one exception you shouldn't waste money on: it's a single low end model that hasn't changed since 2012, heavy, with a slow processor and slow memory, low res screen, etc. It's not a modern computer. Even Apple's cheaper laptops take SSD's.