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15" rMBP, worth $180 to upgrade 2.3 GHz to 2.6 GHz?
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I was wondering this as well, considering the jump is only $180 with student discount. I'll probably end up going 2.3 and putting the $180 into something else.
There are three differences between these CPU's the one you already know of the 300MHz base clock increase. There is also a Turbo increase from 3.5GHz to 3.8GHz and a Graphics boost clock difference from 1.2GHz to 1.3GHz.
Me personally I found the differences to be worth the extra cost and I went with the 2.6GHz upgrade. If the difference had only been 100MHz I wouldn't have done so but to me 300MHz when the clock speed is already so low (2.3GHz) was worth it. The cost wasn't as high as previous years either.
Me personally I found the differences to be worth the extra cost and I went with the 2.6GHz upgrade. If the difference had only been 100MHz I wouldn't have done so but to me 300MHz when the clock speed is already so low (2.3GHz) was worth it. The cost wasn't as high as previous years either.
I think it depends on the length of the video. When you're doing your final exporting that 300MHz difference probably won't shave many seconds off a 60 second clip. But if you are exporting lets say a 20 minute video you may well shave a minute off that export operation.
But is that minute worth $160? And really we don't know how much of a difference it really will make this is a guess obviously.
For me I thought it was worth it but our perception on worth all depends on how much money we make.
I know it's not popular in today's day and age with credit cards and financing.... but what people really should be asking is this:
What can I afford RIGHT NOW?
And how much longer will it take me to earn the $90 or $180? If it will take me 2 weeks of disposable income longer, is it worth it to me to wait 2 weeks to buy the computer?
I know this sounds retarded and incorrect from a standpoint of technology, but if we put it simply: going from 2.0 to 2.3 yields you and 0.3/2.0 =15% speed increase then it MIGHT be worth it for some, but not worth it for me, at least. All I do is basic stuff like iLife, iWork etc. and I do gaming which taxes more on GPU than CPU.
Completely agree. If money is an issue whatsoever, and to me it is, the processor increase would not be worth it.
Besides, it's hard for me to imagine that the increase in speed is all that noticeable.
Numbers, just in case it helps. Based on the Geekbench scores, the 2.3 scores 3094 in single core while the 2.6 gets a 3334.
3334/3094 = 1.0775
So there's a 7.75% performance gap based on those numbers. Of course, there can be small variances in performance of individual chips simply due to thermal and voltage performance (some can boost slightly higher than others) so there's going to be some wiggle room here (for example, my 2.3 scored 3112). Calling it 7-8% probably covers that variance range.
2580 / 2400 (educational pricing) = 1.075, interestingly enough. So your price increases by almost exactly the same percentage as your performance. If that was intentional it's very clever.
If raw performance were the only concern I'd say that sounds like an acceptable deal. However keep in mind that the faster chip will also use more power and heat up a bit more (which in turn uses more power keeping the fans at higher RPMs). Usually this power increase is not linear with performance, since we're talking about the same CPUs (i7 Crystalwell) at different clock speeds. How much the impact actually is could only be answered by proper benchmarking, but I'd expect it to be higher than 7.5%.
I'd imagine the Iris Pro GPU has a similar performance gain (though you'd want to check the GPU clocks on Intel's site to be sure), however the 750m runs at the same clock speed with either processor. You may still see some performance advantages if your graphical application is CPU bound (Skyrim comes to mind when thinking about CPU-bound games).
I can't specifically give any advice on which one is better (I picked the 2.3 because I will be working on battery fairly often), but I thought a bit of analysis might help anyone trying to make a decision.
3334/3094 = 1.0775
So there's a 7.75% performance gap based on those numbers. Of course, there can be small variances in performance of individual chips simply due to thermal and voltage performance (some can boost slightly higher than others) so there's going to be some wiggle room here (for example, my 2.3 scored 3112). Calling it 7-8% probably covers that variance range.
2580 / 2400 (educational pricing) = 1.075, interestingly enough. So your price increases by almost exactly the same percentage as your performance. If that was intentional it's very clever.
If raw performance were the only concern I'd say that sounds like an acceptable deal. However keep in mind that the faster chip will also use more power and heat up a bit more (which in turn uses more power keeping the fans at higher RPMs). Usually this power increase is not linear with performance, since we're talking about the same CPUs (i7 Crystalwell) at different clock speeds. How much the impact actually is could only be answered by proper benchmarking, but I'd expect it to be higher than 7.5%.
I'd imagine the Iris Pro GPU has a similar performance gain (though you'd want to check the GPU clocks on Intel's site to be sure), however the 750m runs at the same clock speed with either processor. You may still see some performance advantages if your graphical application is CPU bound (Skyrim comes to mind when thinking about CPU-bound games).
I can't specifically give any advice on which one is better (I picked the 2.3 because I will be working on battery fairly often), but I thought a bit of analysis might help anyone trying to make a decision.
If you think you'll make use of that much storage I'd say it's a better upgrade than the 7% faster CPU. Getting things done in 93 minutes instead of 100 vs using external storage that will either be expensive but still potentially slower (SSD) or 1/8th the speed of the internal disk (HDD).
If you don't know that you need that much space and just like the idea of having it, then maybe the CPU is the better choice. Space you never use (like RAM you never use) is worthless.
Walrus,
Thanks for your response; it definitely helped me. I have loads of music, games, and videos totaling to ~380GB. 1TB will be a better option for me. Cheers.
For me, if I end up getting the new rMBP, the 2.6GHz will be last on my list.
As far as I can see, both options have the same bells and whistles - no difference in core count, cache, hyperthreading etc. That just leaves the frequency - less than 10%. Having said that, with CPU power increasing very little between generations at the moment, there is every chance that the current upgraded chip could be as powerful as the standard one in the next round of updates.
I do wonder if the higher end chip will cause more heat and battery drain than the standard one, and if so this will be the biggest deciding factor for me.
David
As far as I can see, both options have the same bells and whistles - no difference in core count, cache, hyperthreading etc. That just leaves the frequency - less than 10%. Having said that, with CPU power increasing very little between generations at the moment, there is every chance that the current upgraded chip could be as powerful as the standard one in the next round of updates.
I do wonder if the higher end chip will cause more heat and battery drain than the standard one, and if so this will be the biggest deciding factor for me.
David
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1660603/
I am wondering the same. Please let us know what you order!
I would say that money is better spent on doubling the ram.
Can you explain how i5 to i7 would make a difference here? They have become essentially marketing terms. Even the disabled hyperthreading doesn't apply to notebooks. All I can think of is that all notebook i5s are dual core.
Or both
If you're already spending like $2,000 on a laptop I'd stretch for the max on RAM and CPU.