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MacBook Pro 2010 vs. MacBook Air 2012

S

Sossity

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 12, 2010
1,358
31
I have a 2010 15 inch Matt screen macbook pro with snow leopard running, 4Gb ram, 500 notebook hard drive, and i7 processor, with a nivida video card.

I also recently acquired a 2012 13 inch macbook air running mavericks with 8Gg of ram, 256gb solid state drive, i7 processor with an integrated onboard video.

I am thinking of maybe selling one of these, as I am not sure I need 2 laptops, I am not sure which one would be better to keep and sell.

I mostly edit photos run Photoshop, rip Audio cds and dvd movies, encode audio, and maybe occasionally edit and covert encode video.

I would like to know that which ever one I keep could do a little video editing.

Which of these is more powerful, or future proof?

I am having a hard time deciding, the macbook air is lightweight, this is very handy, the macbook pro is much heavier. The macbook pro has a dedicated video card, the air has intergrated, but it has a solid state drive and more ram. The air also has more modern ports.

I know that I could upgrade the hard drive and ram in the pro, but would it be worth it?

as they are right now, they feel roughly equal in performance, although the air starts up and shuts down much more quickly.
 
Altemose

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
Sossity said:
I have a 2010 15 inch Matt screen macbook pro with snow leopard running, 4Gb ram, 500 notebook hard drive, and i7 processor, with a nivida video card.

I also recently acquired a 2012 13 inch macbook air running mavericks with 8Gg of ram, 256gb solid state drive, i7 processor with an integrated onboard video.

I am thinking of maybe selling one of these, as I am not sure I need 2 laptops, I am not sure which one would be better to keep and sell.

I mostly edit photos run Photoshop, rip Audio cds and dvd movies, encode audio, and maybe occasionally edit and covert encode video.

I would like to know that which ever one I keep could do a little video editing.

Which of these is more powerful, or future proof?

I am having a hard time deciding, the macbook air is lightweight, this is very handy, the macbook pro is much heavier. The macbook pro has a dedicated video card, the air has intergrated, but it has a solid state drive and more ram. The air also has more modern ports.

I know that I could upgrade the hard drive and ram in the pro, but would it be worth it?

as they are right now, they feel roughly equal in performance, although the air starts up and shuts down much more quickly.
Click to expand...

I would sell the Pro. The reasoning behind my statement is that it has a known defect that can cause GPU failure. Plus, the Air is going to be faster feeling overall, and has enough CPU power to do what you want. How did you acquire the Air?

To read more about the defect in the 2010 model MacBook Pros, review this Apple article.
 
H

happyfrappy

macrumors 6502
Oct 14, 2007
343
50
Location eh?
MacBook Air should be kept, you don't have to deal/worry about a GPU failure like the 2010, the built-in MBA Intel HD 4000 performs on par if not better with more efficient battery usage.

Having said that, I always kept my previous notebook(s) as it frees up the ability to get a certain job done in the background without impacting my other work. As far as GPU failures, I own a Thinkpad w/nVidia GPU(Quadro 140M, same family as the 8-series) which is prone to failure yet after almost 7yrs it hasn't crapped out yet.
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,554
43,530
The MBA will be more "future proof" thanks to its ram and processor, but the MBP does have a larger screen. If you're fine with working in a smaller screen then keep the MBA, being newer I think it will serve you longer.
 
F

Freyqq

macrumors 601
Dec 13, 2004
4,038
181
Air actually has a faster CPU but a slower GPU. I'd keep the air unless gaming is a concern.
 
T5BRICK

T5BRICK

macrumors G3
Aug 3, 2006
8,313
2,387
Oregon
Freyqq said:
Air actually has a faster CPU but a slower GPU. I'd keep the air unless gaming is a concern.
Click to expand...

The HD4000 in the MBA is actually better than the GT330m in the MBP. On paper at least.

Additionally, as someone else already pointed out, the NVIDIA GT330m has documented reliability problems.
 
F

Freyqq

macrumors 601
Dec 13, 2004
4,038
181
T5BRICK said:
The HD4000 in the MBA is actually better than the GT330m in the MBP. On paper at least.

Additionally, as someone else already pointed out, the NVIDIA GT330m has documented reliability problems.
Click to expand...

It's actually slower than the 330M with gddr3, which the mbp uses.
 
Last edited:
F

Freyqq

macrumors 601
Dec 13, 2004
4,038
181
T5BRICK said:
All the specs I'm seeing show that the mid 2010 MBP had 512MB of GDDR3.
Click to expand...

Yeah your right sorry. Gddr3. But it's faster than the other version of the 330M with ddr3, which many of the benchmarks rely on.
 
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