When Apple updated the white, plastic MacBook a couple weeks back, we noticed that it was now more powerful than its unibody, and more expensive, counterpart. The benchmarks are now in, and it seems that it is indeed a better deal as it outperforms the $299 more expensive model almost across the board.

The better performance comes from the updated Core 2 Duo CPU that now runs at 2.13GHz paired with 800MHz DDR2 memory. The only place that the unibody MacBook soundly beat the white model was in Quake 4 frame rates. So if you’re willing to forgo the multi-touch trackpad, slightly thinner aluminum casing and don’t plan on gaming, you can save $300 and get a faster machine with the white MacBook. Sounds like a no-brainer to us.

FYI, Apple will probably update the unibody MacBooks next week at WWDC or shortly there afterwards.