Benchmarks show modest performance gains with Apple's new Retina MacBook Pros

Apple's new Haswell-powered Retina MacBook Pros have started finding their way into the online score aggregator for popular benchmark suite Geekbench, less than 24 hours after their unveiling.

Backed by Intel's latest silicon, the new MacBook Pros —  which first began showing up in late June —  achieve similar gains to those notched by the MacBook Air after its Haswell refresh. The laptops' appearance on the site was first noticed by MacRumors.

Single-core scores, which measure performance using only a single CPU core, average 3108 for the 15-inch model and 2823 for the 13-inch variant. Those scores represent modest increases of four and two percent, respectively, over the previous generation.

Despite the moderate upgrade in performance, Tuesday's hardware refresh was still rather significant. Moving to the new Haswell architecture, alongside efficiency improvements courtesy of OS X Mavericks's new power management features, allowed both the 13- and 15-inch models to make battery life gains, increasing to nine and eight hours, respectively, on a single charge.

The 13-inch model also slimmed down to the same 0.71-inch thickness as its larger-screened sibling, while both variants dropped $200 off of their base configuration price tag (Mac Price Guide).

Additionally, Apple introduced faster 802.11ac wireless networking and PCIe-based storage, and provided for expansion by equipping the laptops with twin Thunderbolt 2 ports.