Macbook slower than Mini?

Any ideas why my brand new Macbook, 2.0 Ghz, 1Gig RAM, plays Rise of
Nations slower than my mother-in-law's 1.66 Ghz Mac Mini? Her
computer has 1 Gig RAM too, but in all other respects should be
slower, or certainly no faster, right? Yet RON freezes during big
battles on the Macbook, while playing flawlessly on the Mini. What's
the deal?
--Duffy Tweedy

duffytweedy RemoveThis @gmail.com writes:

> Any ideas why my brand new Macbook, 2.0 Ghz, 1Gig RAM, plays Rise of
> Nations slower than my mother-in-law's 1.66 Ghz Mac Mini? Her
> computer has 1 Gig RAM too, but in all other respects should be
> slower, or certainly no faster, right? Yet RON freezes during big
> battles on the Macbook, while playing flawlessly on the Mini. What's
> the deal?
> --Duffy Tweedy

Well, I can immediately think of a couple one possibility:

How are your energy saver settings on the laptop? This can cause
slowdowns, particularly if you favor battery life over performance.
The good news is that you can set this differently for AC power and
for battery.

Graphics hardware and disk drive options appear to be the same (unless
you went for the big, 4200rpm disk on the Macbook), as do the memory
specs. There are, however, usually a few minor performance differences
as laptops tend to be optimized for energy savings a bit more than for
raw performance.

--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute