Apple's most popular Mac, the White, 13-inch polycarbonate MacBook, has been benchmarked by the fine folks at Macworld, who revealed that the laptop is more than a good choice for power computing. Not only is it up to the task of handling Photoshop's graphically intensive processes, but it did so even better than the 13-inch, unibody MacBook.

Earlier this year, Apple quietly enhanced the capabilities of its consumer notebook, including NVIDIA's new 9400M, in an attempt to unify its entire notebook line from the graphics point of view. Besides the inclusion of Bluetooth 2.1, the processor was updated from 800MHz frontside bus to the 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo model with a 1066MHz frontside bus, and 2 gigs of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory. On top of these enhancements, Apple has recently added faster RAM – 2GB DDR2 at 800MHz, increased storage capacity to 160GB HDD, and upgraded the processor to a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo.

The testers used Speedmark 5, Macworld’s overall system performance benchmark, to measure the performance difference between the new White MacBook and its predecessor. The tests found that the new 2.13GHz white MacBook was approximately 6.5 percent faster than the 2GHz white MacBook, updated earlier this year. Macworld concluded that the new model had faster test times across the board, including around an 8 percent boost in Photoshop times and iTunes MP3 encoding scores. Based on the same tests, Cinema 4D was also some 5 percent faster.

“For comparison’s sake,” the MacBook Air was included in the benchmark to show an embarrassing 12 percent slower performance than the white MacBook. The same Speedmark 5 tests were used on Apple's ultra-thin notebook.

Softpedia has reported that, unlike the last time Apple updated its White MacBook, the Mac maker now encourages visitors of its online store to check out the new configuration for the same $999 price tag.