It's all about the gearing... in a manual you can force the highest gear in at will.... in a CVT you cannot. The CVT will hunt for the "right" gear for the job at hand... but not neccessarily the best FE gear ratio. If you could lock the CVT into it's highest gear ratio, you would probably be able to achieve closer results to the manual. Even so, I think the manual high gear ratio is larger than the highest ratio of the CVT. Advantage, manual.