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Upgrade MacBook Air 2013 i5 to i7?

gpeden said:
I got my first MBA last September when my MBP died soon after the extended warranty. During my first expedition to the big city to price and compare, I stumbled across a manager's special at a London Drugs offering up the base 13" for $6 cheaper than an online purchase through an employee purchase plan, so I grabbed it. Like many, I was surprised how much I liked it, but soon enough I resolved to trade up within a year for the sake of getting 8g RAM and perhaps a bigger SSD.

I was on the road on Monday, but I probably grabbed the i5, 8g/256G within a half hour of the store being opened.

Once home I wished I'd ordered a TB cable and the only way to do add to the order online is to cancel and start over. What the heck, initial forum concerns about low clock speed had me reconsider and upgrade to the i7 while I was at it. I did that Tuesday night.

Then I read more, and considered what my heaviest usage would be - perhaps some FCPx once in a awhile. I like the cool running of my current model and started to wonder if I really needed that upgrade to i7. So guess what I did last night? I cancelled and went back to the i5, LOL @ me.

Cheers!
Glen
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Haha thats funny. Good choice either way!
 
strider009 said:
Article and image are junk. +price = +cpu, +ram, +hdd
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Had you read exactly 1 line more you would have gotten the full context of the price comment.

I don't find a discussion of i5 vs i7 on a DUAL CORE laptop 'junk.' Haswell notwithstanding, the i5 Haswell chip still has multi-threading on mobile products like a laptop. The basics don't change even though the individual benchmarks may.
 
The i7 is only $150 more, for a computer you might use for several years. That seems reasonable. So does the $100 extra for 8GB RAM.

(Prices in CDN $)
 
you cant justify the price by the how long you plan to keep it....

everyone knows the 4 gb upgrade is nowhere near 100 as the i7 is 150 more
 
This is a dilemma that I'm currently facing, but I find it hard to pin down what I want to use the machine for.

I'm currently using a early-2006 Mac Mini Core Duo, so my current computing capabilities involve MS Word, Photoshop CS4, Theme Hospital and not much else. The fact that I'm not currently gaming might be because I'm not interested, but it might be that I know there's no point me even thinking about it. I'm not really sure.

The i5 will probably be fine for everything I do. Probably. With the UK academic institution discount the i5 with the 8GB RAM would be £884. Do I really want to spend ~£100 more for a slightly faster processor that I might not even utilise? The cheapskate side of me says no, but the part of me that bought the highest spec Mac Mini in 2006 is saying: 'Hey, what if your next computer could also last 7+ years if you did the same?!' It's tricky. I was drawn to this update because I could get a decent laptop for £880. For some reason £980 just seems a bit too pricy.

Would an i7 really make my machine more futureproof? At all? Something tells me a laptop isn't going to last 7 years anyway!
 
I don't buy the "future proofing" logic. That extra little bump in benchmarks won't make much of a difference years down the road unless some crazy new game or video editing software gets released that you absolutely HAVE to run on your Air. Even then it might only make a marginal difference at best, and the i5 will still be able to run it!

If you have to run something like that years and years later, save the $150 now and put that towards a system then, when your money will go farther for the technology.
 
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A laptop probably won't be useful in 7 years, but I disagree that the i7 isn't much of a difference performance-wise from the i5. Average geekbench (64-bit) scores for the i5 are about 6500 and for the i7 they're closer to 8300. That's about 33% better. It may not be useful to your specific use case, but it's not minimal as many others have claimed.
 
Not all Geekbenches are 8300s for i7s. There are several in the 7000s. Even then, what does an extra thousand "benchmark points" translate into for real world, observable (noticeable) performance increases? Especially for a casual user? I doubt very much.

I might add too, if you're not gaming now but may, the i5 will be fine. There are videos of graphically demanding games playable at a comfy framerate on the BASE model without ram upgrades. Games aren't developed just for the high end serious crowd, you will still be able to play modern games at enjoyable settings for years to come with the i5.
 
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Neeyul said:
Not all Geekbenches are 8300s for i7s. There are several in the 7000s. Even then, what does an extra thousand "benchmark points" translate into for real world, observable (noticeable) performance increases? Especially for a casual user? I doubt not much.
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Those lower scores are 32-bit mode (the free version of the geekbench testing package). And I agree, for a casual user, a 20-30% performance increase may not be a big deal. But to say it's relatively meaningless isn't really accurate.
 
I know there are tons of threads on this, but do we know anything for sure about heat/battery on the i7 models vs. the i5 models? I know Intel's site says it's both CPUs have the same power draw, but does anybody have any in-person experience with the machines?
 
I was also debating i5 or i7, and I'm leaning towards i7 just for longevity. 8GB of RAM, 13" and 128GB SSD (I have a 3TB 3.0 HDD to store things) make it $1349, or $1249 in the summer with student discount.

My question is, how much battery life will be lost with the i7 and 8 gigs of RAM? I realize if I'm just browsing the web and just typing up a document where I'm not taking my i7 or 8GB of RAM to the full capacity then battery will be about the same, but could some please verify?

Anywhere above 9 hours is fine. It's going to be plugged in most of the time anyways.

THANKS
 
Suraj R. said:
I was also debating i5 or i7, and I'm leaning towards i7 just for longevity. 8GB of RAM, 13" and 128GB SSD (I have a 3TB 3.0 HDD to store things) make it $1349, or $1249 in the summer with student discount.

My question is, how much battery life will be lost with the i7 and 8 gigs of RAM? I realize if I'm just browsing the web and just typing up a document where I'm not taking my i7 or 8GB of RAM to the full capacity then battery will be about the same, but could some please verify?

Anywhere above 9 hours is fine. It's going to be plugged in most of the time anyways.

THANKS
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8GB of RAM vs. 4 is like at most a 10minute difference. i7 might be a tiny bit more for basic tasks since idle is slightly more. Very small decrease.
 
I have a 2012 macbook air 1.8hz i5 and a 2013 Air with 1.3 ghz i5 and I've noticed that the 1.8ghz is much faster. Little things like accessing the task menu are much faster. The 2013 seems to have a bit of lag all over the place. If I were you I'd get the Macbook air 2013 i7.

In addition I've run xbench and cinebench and the 2012 comes ontop almost every time.

2013 def has a better battery life, but at the cost of performance. Go for an i7 Haswell. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
 
also, i just impulse bought a MBA i5 as a bringalong computer for basic computing work and i'm pretty sure i'm going to sell my ipad 4 now. i love the ipad 4 BUT i just don't perceive it as a computer and i use my mini for the on-the-go type stuff like recording from a soundboard, and if i feel like sketching out an idea. word processing forget it. my ipad 4's currently just sitting by my bed and being used for passing out to netflix every night -- i can do that on anything.

i digress: while i love this MBA, dumb things like the scrolling lag are ever so slightly getting on my nerves. and while i bought this to do basic budgeting/emails/proposals and agreement editing, i plan to every once in awhile do photo editing and some very minor video editing on this.
my questions are:
1. is the i5 4g gonna cut the photo/video editing demands? with that $250 upgrade, how much more effective will real-time rendering be in fcpx or premiere pro CC
2. how significantly will that scroll latency be reduced just by spending $250 to upgrade to the i7 8g? and most importantly maybe;


thanks for indulging my long-winded question.
 
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Anyone know if the i7 for the new macbook air has a better GPU than the i5? I know they both have HD5000 but I am wondering if the i7 GPU is clocked higher or would provide better performance.
 
davideotape said:
Glen: where did you find a i5 8g in the store?
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OOOPS, I should have said "ordered" instead of "grabbed" :)
.... or "online store" instead of "store" :)

I was just going to type that I went back to the i7, 8G, 256G again, but can't change it anymore because it's being prepared for shipping. But as I was typing I got the email that it has shipped:)

Glen
 
Neeyul said:
I don't buy the "future proofing" logic. That extra little bump in benchmarks won't make much of a difference years down the road unless some crazy new game or video editing software gets released that you absolutely HAVE to run on your Air. Even then it might only make a marginal difference at best, and the i5 will still be able to run it!

If you have to run something like that years and years later, save the $150 now and put that towards a system then, when your money will go farther for the technology.
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That's an extremely good point. If/when retina makes it to the iMac I'd really like one of those, so I'll save that money until then.

advol86 said:
I have a 2012 macbook air 1.8hz i5 and a 2013 Air with 1.3 ghz i5 and I've noticed that the 1.8ghz is much faster. Little things like accessing the task menu are much faster. The 2013 seems to have a bit of lag all over the place. If I were you I'd get the Macbook air 2013 i7.
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This does concern me, though. Do I really want a computer that is slower than the previous generation?!
 
If the i5 doesn't do the trick for you, you have 14 days to sent it back and reorder a different configuration. No biggie.

The system will still be fast enough to enjoy day to day, I think. Remember, the i5 can turbo boost to 2.6 when needed - when needed. An extra few milliseconds of response lag (if it even noticably exists) is not a big concern for me.
 
Neeyul said:
If the i5 doesn't do the trick for you, you have 14 days to sent it back and reorder a different configuration. No biggie.

The system will still be fast enough to enjoy day to day, I think. Remember, the i5 can turbo boost to 2.6 when needed - when needed. An extra few milliseconds of response lag (if it even noticably exists) is not a big concern for me.
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True. I think I might stick with the i5. It's just not worth an extra £100 for a feature that I'm unlikely to ever even need, and to be honest, the Mac I'm currently using is essentially powered by a hamster running in a wheel, so anything will seem lightning-fast to me.
 
I personally don't understand why anyone wouldn't go for the i7 and 8GB of RAM. If you're spending $1000+ anyway, then is it really worth cheaping out over another $250? When it comes to processor and RAM, I would always rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
 
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