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Changing from 24" iMac to Unibody 15.4" MBP

cy88

cy88

macrumors member
Original poster
Hi all,

I currently have a 24" iMac and Fujitsu UMPC (Specs in signature). I am planning to combine them into just a MBP and then getting a cheap windows system for development.

With this change, am I looking at any performance gain/loss?

Thanks,
Chris
 
I would definitely count on a performance increase, the CPU in the MBP is faster and the GPU is much faster than your iMac's 2600.

I'm not sure about your iMac's HDD, but I do know that the MBPs run 5400rpm HDDs (unless you custom-build otherwise) which are going to be slower than a 7200rpm drive.
 
PurrBall said:
I would definitely count on a performance increase, the CPU in the MBP is faster and the GPU is much faster than your iMac's 2600.

I'm not sure about your iMac's HDD, but I do know that the MBPs run 5400rpm HDDs (unless you custom-build otherwise) which are going to be slower than a 7200rpm drive.
Click to expand...

The iMac's HDD is the stock 7200rpm. Seeing that the SSD prices are droppig, I can see myself swapping it with a SSD down the road once the price moves to an acceptable level - If i were to go for the MBP.

Any other insight?
 
The MBP should be close to the iMac in performance (iMac might still have the edge due to a desktop drive and higher clocked GPUs). Otherwise you're not missing out on much besides downgrading from 24" to 15.4
 
increase in GPU performance
decrease in screen size
increase in portability
everything else i think is the same or too close to notice a difference.
 
I went from a 24" 2,16 iMac to a "classic" 2.5 MBP.
When editing HD, (and over all) my 2 year old iMac felt faster.
I was a bit disapointed when I started to use my MBP. I thought it would feel much faster.
I think it´s due to the 7200 hard drive and that the components are unerclocked in the laptop
 
Just because you can buy a laptop hard drive at 7200rpm, it will still be significantly slower than a desktop drive. This is why SSD's are big in notebooks but non existent in desktops.

Also Nvidia drivers on the Mac are so piss poor, that ATI 2600 card will outperform it under OS X.

Oh and the cache on the CPU is also smaller making it a slower processor.
 
If that's the case, would it make sense to just get a macbook for portable use and have a more powerful desktop (PC) for the more tedious work?

One of the reason for the switch is that my laptop is not powerful enough at times, which is quite frustrating!
 
Just an update - End up bought a macbook off a local fellow that will be receiving a new 17" MBP from his work (government).

It's a base 2.0Ghz model with upgraded 250GB HD from apple, also 3 year apple care for a good price. I went into apple store today and spoke with the manager and I was able to upgrade my ram for $150! It's running super with 4GB ram. I can say that it's as smooth as my 24" iMac 2.4Ghz due to the DDR3 ram and the new architecture. Only downside is the screen, which I can easily correct it with a external monitor.

Also ordered 2x Dell 23" LCD today from dell day of deals to be use with the PC that I will be building. 🙂
 
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