Is my new laptop better?

[mrmonkey]

I have a gaming computer I built a few years ago. Specs:

NVidia 8800 GTS 512MB
4GB RAM
Core 2 Quad OC'ed to 3.0GHz
Monitor: Samsung (1680x1050)

I guess that would be all that's important... I've got a nice sound card in it and stuff, don't remember the name of it though. This system runs all the games I want it to and usually at the highest settings, so even though it's not state of the art anymore I find it more than sufficient.

Anyways, I'm going off to college in a month and I'm upgrading my outdated Macbook Pro to the newest Macbook Pro. It actually just shipped from Apple. Specs:

2.66GHz Intel Core i7
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRM - 2x2GB
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200
SuperDrive 8X DL
MBP 15"HR Antiglare WS Display (1680x1050)

I'm very out of the loop on what is good in computer hardware these days, so my question is will this new Macbook Pro be at least as good or better as my gaming PC? Because if it won't be I'm bringing my PC to college to set up in the dorm, but if my MBP is better then I will just install Boot Camp with a Windows partition and play games off of that.

Thanks!

 

[WR2]

Hello mrmonkey;

I don't think the new laptop is going to quite measure up to your desktop PC
It's not easy comparing desktop to laptop parts but I'll take a stab at it using scores from the Passmark CPU/GPU benchmarks.

Passmark CPU scores:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
Core2 Quad Q9650 @ 3.00GHz = 4583 (used the Q9650 for it's 3.0Ghz)
Core i7 720QM @ 1.60GHz = 3235

Passmark GPU scores:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php
GeForce GT 330M = 476
GeForce 8800 GTS 512 = 1008

 

[mrmonkey]

Interesting numbers. So it won't even be close? Should I be able to run Starcraft II at full settings when it comes out? (I've been playing the beta constantly ).

 

[WR2]

And it's probably even a little bit worse after I fix an error in my earlier post:

I posted the wrong data for the Macbook Pro CPU by using the i7 720M quad data.
I should have used I7-620M dual core data: Core i7 M 620 @ 2.66GHz = 2746 Passmark CPU score

Running Starcraft 2 on full: It looks like the jury is still out. I found some posts on the MacRumors forums that said yes (see post #7 and 8
Other forum posts there weren't as positive about that.

Here are some specific data on Core i7 620M @ 2.66Ghz and NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics

Apple MacBook Pro 15 i7 2010-04 review

 

[Ubrales]

If you factor in the convenience of a laptop, the Mac may have an edge!