MacBook Pro Early 2011 Benchmarks Confirm Huge Performance Leap

We've already been impressed by the quad-core speed boost shown by our early 2011 MacBook Pro review unit, but it seems the performance jolt is across the board with Apple's refreshed machines. Primate Labs – responsible for the Geekbench tool SlashGear uses to profile notebooks – has pulled together benchmarking results for the new range, and the improvement is dramatic.

The entry-level 13-inch with the 2.3GHz Core i5 CPU scores 5900; the entry-level version from early 2010 managed 3351. The improvement for the 15-inch and 17-inch versions is even more impressive, with the entry-level 15-inch jumping from 4866 last year to 8804 on this year's quadcore 2.0GHz Core i7. The 17-inch goes from 5837 to 10026 with its new quadcore 2.2GHz Core i7.

As you'd expect, the faster versions of each MacBook Pro do even better; the full graphi is below. It's worth remembering that Geekbench only tests CPU and memory performance, not graphics card and HDD, so a speedy SSD and potent GPU will make a difference in real-world usage, but from the outset it's clear the new MacBook Pro line means business.