I run Windows 7 64bit using VMWare Fusion 5 (similar to Parallels) and have no issue with lag on my i5/8gb/256gb MBA.
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Upgrade MacBook Air 2013 i5 to i7?
- Thread starter kuzzkuzz
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I run Windows 7 64bit using VMWare Fusion 5 (similar to Parallels) and have no issue with lag on my i5/8gb/256gb MBA.
i just got my upgrade yesterday
surprise, the difference was negligible for the super-basic stuff i used it for so far- but ill be doing more intensive things later.
im using the free 32 geekbench and saw my score go to 7300 (i5 was 6000)- still not the low 8x00s ive seen on here but maybe i need the 64 for that.
one thing i noticed was the heat- the fan turned on pretty quickly and it got pretty hot. im keeping an eye out for that, the i5 didnt do that at all
surprise, the difference was negligible for the super-basic stuff i used it for so far- but ill be doing more intensive things later.
im using the free 32 geekbench and saw my score go to 7300 (i5 was 6000)- still not the low 8x00s ive seen on here but maybe i need the 64 for that.
one thing i noticed was the heat- the fan turned on pretty quickly and it got pretty hot. im keeping an eye out for that, the i5 didnt do that at all
This is a little off topic, but I'm also in a quandary re: MBA 11. Will get 8 MB and 256 GB drive.
Besides the i5 and i7 differences already discussed, I heard that the i5 felt a little "laggy" in performance relative to the 2012 MBA (which I have). Could anyone speak to this?
Specifically some initial reviewers talked about the laggy performance seemed to be related to battery performance improvements. I suppose the performance will get better once Mavericks is released.
At any rate, using an i5 model, do people notice laggy performance when word processing, spreadsheets, and the such?
Besides the i5 and i7 differences already discussed, I heard that the i5 felt a little "laggy" in performance relative to the 2012 MBA (which I have). Could anyone speak to this?
Specifically some initial reviewers talked about the laggy performance seemed to be related to battery performance improvements. I suppose the performance will get better once Mavericks is released.
At any rate, using an i5 model, do people notice laggy performance when word processing, spreadsheets, and the such?
Music production isn't very processor intensive at all. I can run Logic on my 2008 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac fairly decently, it is definitely workable. Upgrading to i7 for music production isn't necessary the i5 with 8 (or even 4) gigs of RAM is sufficient.
+1
I'm also interested in this. I currently have a 2012 i7 and I don't want to notice a performance downgrade with the 2013 i5. I don't care about benchmarks but if real-world use is different that's a problem. I understand that web browsing/email will probably be the same on both but what about light photo-editing, working with large spread sheets, some xcode development etc.
I'm also interested in this. I currently have a 2012 i7 and I don't want to notice a performance downgrade with the 2013 i5. I don't care about benchmarks but if real-world use is different that's a problem. I understand that web browsing/email will probably be the same on both but what about light photo-editing, working with large spread sheets, some xcode development etc.
Newbie here. Surfing the web trying to figure out what I wanted in my MBA I found a link to this thread. Always feels good to know there are other people out there just as confused as myself. 
Future proofing is not my concern. Not knowing what I don't know is. I'm even playing with getting the 512 storage for "just in case" scenarios. What if I want to download movies or grand kids come along and I decide to pickup video editing. Don't "need" to do that now BUT what if? An i7, 8bm, 512 MBA takes away the what if concerns for $550. That's the easy way out. Then the conservative side of me kicks in and questions $300 for more storage when I'm only using 140G on my Lenovo T420 work machine. How much space do movies take up anyway.. ? Then you start hearing the i7 has problems with heat and is not "really" needed unless doing extensive programs? How is a person to decide what to buy?
curtoise - Are you the only one on this thread that has actually purchased both MBA 13"? 256? Bot have 8mb and one has the i5 & the other the i7 ? I believe you kept the i5? Was heat a factor in the i7 return?
Future proofing is not my concern. Not knowing what I don't know is. I'm even playing with getting the 512 storage for "just in case" scenarios. What if I want to download movies or grand kids come along and I decide to pickup video editing. Don't "need" to do that now BUT what if? An i7, 8bm, 512 MBA takes away the what if concerns for $550. That's the easy way out. Then the conservative side of me kicks in and questions $300 for more storage when I'm only using 140G on my Lenovo T420 work machine. How much space do movies take up anyway.. ? Then you start hearing the i7 has problems with heat and is not "really" needed unless doing extensive programs? How is a person to decide what to buy?
curtoise - Are you the only one on this thread that has actually purchased both MBA 13"? 256? Bot have 8mb and one has the i5 & the other the i7 ? I believe you kept the i5? Was heat a factor in the i7 return?
Granted my only source of comparison are some windoze pcs (mostly older Dells) but I'm not noticing any issue with lagging on my 13" 8/i5/256. And because I've never had a fantabuloso screen (like retina), I don't cringe and beat my head against a wall over the screen resolution either because what I have now is as good or slightly better than what I've ever had. I'm getting long battery life ... more than 12 hours a day, and the mba runs cool and silent.
I have the MBA 13 i7/8gb/250 config. And i think thats the sweet spot in terms of having everything at your finger tips. If i ever wanted more storage i can always but an external drive for less than 300 for sure. I dont think its worth the $300.
You always have other additional costs in terms of accessories as well to take into account.
The screen of the MBA is actually pretty good coming from a 16inch RGBLED. Theres alot of noise from people slating the screen whcih i dont agree. Day to day use the screen is perfect.
You always have other additional costs in terms of accessories as well to take into account.
The screen of the MBA is actually pretty good coming from a 16inch RGBLED. Theres alot of noise from people slating the screen whcih i dont agree. Day to day use the screen is perfect.
My Result
Earlier in the week I received both the i7/8/256 and i5/8/256 MBAs with the intention of not opening the i5 unless I had an issue with battery life on the i7.
Well... all the reading got the best of me so I opened up the i5 and ran some tests. Settings and running applications were the same on both units (screen 50%, KB +2, BT off).
Movie test - did something similar to the MacWorld test and got similar results, go figure Nothing interesting to report.
"Stress" test - I did some video encoding while watching Netflix and used more monitoring tools.
- iStat showed similar temperatures on both +/- 2*c BUT the i7 fan was typically spinning 1500-2000 rpm higher than the i5, there was certainly an audible difference.
- CoconutBattery had the i7 using 4w more than the i5 most of the time (22w vs 18w).
- Activity Monitor had the i7 with 3-9% more idle cpu reserve (iMovie used ~ 135%, Silverlight 45%, etc)
- Infrared thermometer used to take temps around the keyboard and bottom showed very similar readings between the 2 Airs, most often within 1*c
- Performance wise, the i7 finished encoding 44 minutes before the i5 (3:36 vs. 4:20), I plugged in both at 2:30 in as the i7 was at 5% battery and the i5 was at 26% (8min vs. 48min remaining). The i7 finished 44 minutes quicker but the i5 would have lasted about 40 minutes longer on battery, interesting trade off. Seeing that the fan rpms were higher on the i7 and it used 4w more power, it's easy to see where the battery goes. The i5 was impressive in that it handled the test with the fan hardly audible, although it did take more time to complete.
In regular use (web browsing, movies, MS Office, iPhoto, etc), the i7 seems to be lasting ~12-13 hours for me, the fan has never been audible and the bottom has never been warm.
What will I keep? I have been back and forth but I'm keeping the i7. Under my normal use there are no heat or noise issues and battery life has been great! It also bugs me that the i5 performance is very close to lasts years i5 in many tests, I would like to buy a bit more performance, even if I rarely use it. Stressing the machine as I did won't happen often and I don't see me needing to do extended heavy encoding type tasks while being cable (plug) free. Even if I did, it's almost a wash between battery vs. performance improvement.
These are my results and thoughts YMMV.
Earlier in the week I received both the i7/8/256 and i5/8/256 MBAs with the intention of not opening the i5 unless I had an issue with battery life on the i7.
Well... all the reading got the best of me so I opened up the i5 and ran some tests. Settings and running applications were the same on both units (screen 50%, KB +2, BT off).
Movie test - did something similar to the MacWorld test and got similar results, go figure
Nothing interesting to report."Stress" test - I did some video encoding while watching Netflix and used more monitoring tools.
- iStat showed similar temperatures on both +/- 2*c BUT the i7 fan was typically spinning 1500-2000 rpm higher than the i5, there was certainly an audible difference.
- CoconutBattery had the i7 using 4w more than the i5 most of the time (22w vs 18w).
- Activity Monitor had the i7 with 3-9% more idle cpu reserve (iMovie used ~ 135%, Silverlight 45%, etc)
- Infrared thermometer used to take temps around the keyboard and bottom showed very similar readings between the 2 Airs, most often within 1*c
- Performance wise, the i7 finished encoding 44 minutes before the i5 (3:36 vs. 4:20), I plugged in both at 2:30 in as the i7 was at 5% battery and the i5 was at 26% (8min vs. 48min remaining). The i7 finished 44 minutes quicker but the i5 would have lasted about 40 minutes longer on battery, interesting trade off. Seeing that the fan rpms were higher on the i7 and it used 4w more power, it's easy to see where the battery goes. The i5 was impressive in that it handled the test with the fan hardly audible, although it did take more time to complete.
In regular use (web browsing, movies, MS Office, iPhoto, etc), the i7 seems to be lasting ~12-13 hours for me, the fan has never been audible and the bottom has never been warm.
What will I keep? I have been back and forth but I'm keeping the i7. Under my normal use there are no heat or noise issues and battery life has been great! It also bugs me that the i5 performance is very close to lasts years i5 in many tests, I would like to buy a bit more performance, even if I rarely use it. Stressing the machine as I did won't happen often and I don't see me needing to do extended heavy encoding type tasks while being cable (plug) free. Even if I did, it's almost a wash between battery vs. performance improvement.
These are my results and thoughts YMMV.
Last edited:
I went for the 2013 MBA 11" i5 256 SSD 8GB RAM though was considering the i7, I decided in my everyday tasks (mainly iOS dev in Xcode and basic browsing/email etc) the i7 wouldn't make much difference. So I put the difference between the i5 and i7 towards the new AirPort Extreme where I would notice some difference on all my WiFi devices
Earlier in the week I received both the i7/8/256 and i5/8/256 MBAs with the intention of not opening the i5 unless I had an issue with battery life on the i7.
Well... all the reading got the best of me so I opened up the i5 and ran some tests. Settings and running applications were the same on both units (screen 50%, KB +2, BT off).
Movie test - did something similar to the MacWorld test and got similar results, go figure
"Stress" test - I did some video encoding while watching Netflix and used more monitoring tools.
- iStat showed similar temperatures on both +/- 2*c BUT the i7 fan was typically spinning 1500-2000 rpm higher than the i5, there was certainly an audible difference.
- CoconutBattery had the i7 using 4w more than the i5 most of the time (22w vs 18w).
- Activity Monitor had the i7 with 3-9% more idle cpu reserve (iMovie used ~ 135%, Silverlight 45%, etc)
- Infrared thermometer used to take temps around the keyboard and bottom showed very similar readings between the 2 Airs, most often within 1*c
- Performance wise, the i7 finished encoding 44 minutes before the i5 (3:36 vs. 4:20), I plugged in both at 2:30 in as the i7 was at 5% battery and the i5 was at 26% (8min vs. 48min remaining). The i7 finished 44 minutes quicker but the i5 would have lasted about 40 minutes longer on battery, interesting trade off. Seeing that the fan rpms were higher on the i7 and it used 4w more power, it's easy to see where the battery goes. The i5 was impressive in that it handled the test with the fan hardly audible, although it did take more time to complete.
In regular use (web browsing, movies, MS Office, iPhoto, etc), the i7 seems to be lasting ~12-13 hours for me, the fan has never been audible and the bottom has never been warm.
What will I keep? I have been back and forth but I'm keeping the i7. Under my normal use there are no heat or noise issues and battery life has been great! It also bugs me that the i5 performance is very close to lasts years i5 in many tests, I would like to buy a bit more performance, even if I rarely use it. Stressing the machine as I did won't happen often and I don't see me needing to do extended heavy encoding type tasks while being cable (plug) free. Even if I did, it's almost a wash between battery vs. performance improvement.
These are my results and thoughts YMMV.
Wow, excellent work sir. This is great to read. I am also torn between i5/i7 but leaning towards i7.
Not that I really do much gaming, but I would like to see some tests between the i5 and i7 when it comes to basic steam games like half life 2, and maybe even some of the newer ones.
I have tried WoW on my current 2011 i5 macbook air and its full blast on the fans/heat and the performance is choppy. Would be nice to play some mid-range (not latest and greatest) on a new 2013 air and not worry about fans/heat. Not sure if the i5 or i7 would be better for that.
You are joking, right? C2D is s.h.i.t. compared with Haswell. On the other hand, not much need for an i7.
Sorry to resurrect this thread: I'm still yet to buy a new MacBook Air, and I have another, more specific question regarding the i5 vs i7.
I've been umming and ahhing about getting a games console too (a first for me), but as I have a few steam games, I thought I'd try via an HDMI cable first.
So - does anyone have any experience/advice about playing Steam games via 'Big Picture' over an HDMI cable on an HDTV, with either an i5 or an i7 MBA? Would an i5 hack it? I wouldn't have much reason otherwise to upgrade to the i7 - and to be honest, for that money I might as well get an Xbox 360.
Cheers!
I've been umming and ahhing about getting a games console too (a first for me), but as I have a few steam games, I thought I'd try via an HDMI cable first.
So - does anyone have any experience/advice about playing Steam games via 'Big Picture' over an HDMI cable on an HDTV, with either an i5 or an i7 MBA? Would an i5 hack it? I wouldn't have much reason otherwise to upgrade to the i7 - and to be honest, for that money I might as well get an Xbox 360.
Cheers!
Get the Xbox - less hassle, and you know you are getting the most out of each game, without having to check system requirements, tweak settings, and so on.
First of all, excuse me for my bad bad english and my several grammar mistake
!
Then, I wanna to thank you for the very good quality of this forum!
I going to buy the MBA and of course Ive my doubts about which processor, i5 or i7; reading this 7 pages with yours good thought now Ive ideas more clear, but I would ask you one more thing, based on yours experience. Start by saying that my needs and my use (around 90%) is about web browsing, some streaming, mail, office work (word word word excel and word!), watching movies, listening music, i would like to know if in multitasking of all this thing the MBA needs to have no lag at all a i7 or if is enough a i5 processor. Now and, most important, in 5 years from now too.
I hope I was clear enough to explain myself and my doubt and I wanna early thanks you very much!!!
Then, I wanna to thank you for the very good quality of this forum!
I going to buy the MBA and of course Ive my doubts about which processor, i5 or i7; reading this 7 pages with yours good thought now Ive ideas more clear, but I would ask you one more thing, based on yours experience. Start by saying that my needs and my use (around 90%) is about web browsing, some streaming, mail, office work (word word word excel and word!), watching movies, listening music, i would like to know if in multitasking of all this thing the MBA needs to have no lag at all a i7 or if is enough a i5 processor. Now and, most important, in 5 years from now too.
I hope I was clear enough to explain myself and my doubt and I wanna early thanks you very much!!!
I am by no means the most knowledgeable person here but from what I've read on the forums over time is that RAM has much more to do with the ability of a computer to multi-task effectively versus the processor so it's overall better to get 8 GB vs. the standard 4 over upgrading the processor. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
For me the price difference (8GbRam/256Gb with educational discount) would be:
i5 - 1.314,06
i7 - 1.452,00
That's 138, just about getting an iPhone 5S instead of the 5C! My use is for college stuff, surfing the web, lots of writing, basic spreadsheets, watching movies, listening to music and a lot of flash streams (I am a big sports fan, have to watch through laptop, and streams are always on flash). Still wondering here!
i5 - 1.314,06
i7 - 1.452,00
That's 138, just about getting an iPhone 5S instead of the 5C! My use is for college stuff, surfing the web, lots of writing, basic spreadsheets, watching movies, listening to music and a lot of flash streams (I am a big sports fan, have to watch through laptop, and streams are always on flash). Still wondering here!
Anandtec did a pretty good review and comparison of the two processors. Bottom line is that the i5 has the best battery life of the whole range while having roughly having the same performance as its equivalent from last year, while the i7 has up to a 20% increase from last year's top dog while getting as much as an hour less battery life doing anything other but light workloads compared to the haswell i5.
Their overall conclusion was to buy the i5 if longer battery life was more important to you, and to buy the i7 if more performance was your priority.
Asking if you need better performance is like asking how much something costs at a really fancy high end restaurant: if you have to ask how much something costs, you probably can't afford it. Likewise, if you have to ask yourself if you need the CPU upgrade, you most assuredly don't.
Yeah, that's probably why Apple offers it as an option, Because nobody would ever notice it....