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15" Base Owner Experiences

U

Usquebaugh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 20, 2011
21
0
Seems like everyone on these forums has ordered the top-range 15" for the GPU slightly faster processor.

How about those of you with base configurations sound off on your experiences so far? From reading around it sounds like all the driver / heat issues are isolated to the higher-end configurations, has this been your experience? How hot do the base models run with the lesser GPU and CPU?

I'd also be interested to hear what machines you upgraded from, and how you're finding the performance in your day to day tasks compared to your previous computer.

I'll probably pull the trigger on a base 15" hi res anti-glare soon, and can't wait get developing on it. Coming from a 2007 15" C2D the extra space and horsepower should be a real pleasure.
 
Hello bud.

I bought a base 15" a couple of weeks ago. Here's my input.

I have a base 15" i7 with high-res screen and 7200rpm HDD BTO. Everything else is standard from the base model.

My previous computer was a late 2010 iMac base model, which was understandably quicker than my previous computer which was a 2007 MacBook Pro C2D (2.26GHz), I feel the new MacBook Pro I have is even snappier than my old iMac.

I haven't really been able to push the machine very hard, but from everyday tasks, it handles them all with ease. Burnt a CD in no time at all, boots up very quickly considering it isn't booting from an SSD. Multitasking is nice and flows with ease.

I did read up on these crashing issues that everyone was getting, so I decided to do the test involving opening terminal and maxing out each core (I think that's right as iStatPro was showing each core being used fully), the result was fans revving upto 5500rpm and I was able to listen to music and browse the web without any beachballs. Result I thought! This was prior to updating to 10.6.7.

I am a graphic designer so use Photoshop, InDesign etc, and it seems to handle and process work at a great pace. I am not a gamer, at least not on the Mac as that's what the 360 is for. LOL! So can't comment on gaming performance.

Overall I am extremely happy with this machine, and I hope to keep it for the next 3-4 years as the horsepower behind it should be more than enough to see me through at least that time.

Hope this helps. :)
 
I have the base 2.0 15 in with high res screen and 500gb hdd 4gb ram

It's flippin fast. I use indesign. Illustrator and Photoshop and haven't yet to beach ball. I don't game hardcore and the 2.2 was overkill :)


I love it. :)
 
As would I. All the recent problems have me scared to putt the trigger. I've beenbouncing back and forth on waiting for the iMac refresh, I think an iMac would do me wellbut, honestly, iMacs just don't induce the gear lust the mbp's do. I passed on the 13" and was set to spend the dough on the 15"....
 
I love mine! This is byfar the fastest computer I have ever owned, period. It's got more power then I will ever need. I always upgrade my MBP every 3-4 years anyway, so this thing is perfect for my very basic requirements (big screen mac laptop for browsing the net, store my music, light photo editing, and watching hd videos).

By the way I have yet to come across any heat-related issues. Before the latest OS update (10.6.7) iPhoto froze a lot. That's about it. The rest is running smoothly.
 
Last edited:
Shady Pioneer said:
Hello bud.

I bought a base 15" a couple of weeks ago. Here's my input.

I have a base 15" i7 with high-res screen and 7200rpm HDD BTO. Everything else is standard from the base model.

My previous computer was a late 2010 iMac base model, which was understandably quicker than my previous computer which was a 2007 MacBook Pro C2D (2.26GHz), I feel the new MacBook Pro I have is even snappier than my old iMac.

I haven't really been able to push the machine very hard, but from everyday tasks, it handles them all with ease. Burnt a CD in no time at all, boots up very quickly considering it isn't booting from an SSD. Multitasking is nice and flows with ease.

I did read up on these crashing issues that everyone was getting, so I decided to do the test involving opening terminal and maxing out each core (I think that's right as iStatPro was showing each core being used fully), the result was fans revving upto 5500rpm and I was able to listen to music and browse the web without any beachballs. Result I thought! This was prior to updating to 10.6.7.

I am a graphic designer so use Photoshop, InDesign etc, and it seems to handle and process work at a great pace. I am not a gamer, at least not on the Mac as that's what the 360 is for. LOL! So can't comment on gaming performance.

Overall I am extremely happy with this machine, and I hope to keep it for the next 3-4 years as the horsepower behind it should be more than enough to see me through at least that time.

Hope this helps. :)
Click to expand...

How hot does your machine get under load? I'd expect it to run decently cooler than the higher specced incarnations.

The quad core processors are going to stomp on most CPU intensive tasks, as long as you're not looking for a gaming laptop the jump to the high end doesn't seem worth it to me.

Keep those impressions coming!
 
I bought the base 15" (4GB RAM, 500GB 5400rpm, low-res glossy) the day they came out. It's my first mac and I was coming from a 5+ year old Dell laptop. As you can imagine, this thing absolutely flies compared to what I was using. My day-to-day activities include web browsing, ripping/burning dvds, photoshop, and running WinXP in VirtualBox.

The only issues I've run into is that I need to boot up in 32-bit mode for VirtualBox to run smoothly. Of course that's a virtualbox issue, not a MBP issue. As for heat, I was getting burnt thighs while just browsing the web. However, I've since come to find out that's mostly due to primarily using Chrome as my browser. Once Chrome encounters Flash content, the MBP switches over to the the discrete graphics card which means more heat and more battery usage. It stays with the discrete graphics until you quit Chrome. Using Safari, the MBP stays with the intel integrated graphics, which runs MUCH cooler. Here's a thread about that: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1106716/
 
Base 15 2.0 here.....

Use for Pro Tools (pro audio), CS4, Office, web, mail.....

Did a bit of stress testing at first. Even under pretty heavy audio program load only hit 25% system use. Temps in the 70s fans around 3500. The same stress on a 13" i7 2011 MBP hit 60% (marginally stable) maxed the fans with temps at 90. During normal use I run an external Apple 24" LED display in clamshell mode and average about 40 to 45 ...... with chrome and flash content make that around 60 with fans barely kicking in. 1080p video looks great. I am not a gamer or 3D video guy though........

Great machine.

-Lee
 
Usquebaugh said:
Seems like everyone on these forums has ordered the top-range 15" for the GPU slightly faster processor.

How about those of you with base configurations sound off on your experiences so far? From reading around it sounds like all the driver / heat issues are isolated to the higher-end configurations, has this been your experience? How hot do the base models run with the lesser GPU and CPU?

I'd also be interested to hear what machines you upgraded from, and how you're finding the performance in your day to day tasks compared to your previous computer.

I'll probably pull the trigger on a base 15" hi res anti-glare soon, and can't wait get developing on it. Coming from a 2007 15" C2D the extra space and horsepower should be a real pleasure.
Click to expand...

My 2.0 with antiglare, and 121.33GB SSD (Apple's 128GB spec is BS) has been flawless thus far aside from one programs (serato) software being behind this new hardware (kernal panics via USB removal). I haven't seen the temps go beyond 70C, but I haven't pushed it with anything graphically intense either. No video rendering. Ripped one DVD just to test speed. Just audio track analyzing, and running several tracks with reverb/effects in Ableton. Battery life has been better than expected with me seeing no less that 4 hours, and up to 7.5 hours while just web browsing. Not much else to report....

Oh, I did notice the CPU drop to around 35-37C from 40-41C at idle after installing 10.6.7. Fans stayed the same.
 
Usquebaugh said:
How hot does your machine get under load? I'd expect it to run decently cooler than the higher specced incarnations.

The quad core processors are going to stomp on most CPU intensive tasks, as long as you're not looking for a gaming laptop the jump to the high end doesn't seem worth it to me.

Keep those impressions coming!
Click to expand...

Did the test, here are the results:

CPU: 81°C
GPU: 60°C
Fans (L&R): 5032rpm
 
I have the 2010 base 15" model, which has a dual core i5, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB 5400 RPM HDD, and Nvidia 320m or 330m (I'm not using it right now so I don't remember) graphics.

It has handled everything I've thrown at it just fine, including HD video from Netflix, 1080p video using Quicktime or VLC, and it handles anything that uses Flash without stuttering or slowing down (but Flash does consume more battery life and get warmer). I haven't tried gaming on it yet, but if the base 2010 model is good enough for all tasks that I've thrown at it, then the base 2011 model will most likely be fine for you since it's quad core, better graphics, etc.
 
I had a chance to mess around on my friends. The temps got really hot from what i saw (albeit running furmark and prime95) Gpu around 70-80C and Cpu mid 90's. I ran 3dmark vantage in performance at 1280x1024 and got around 21000. This i found weird as my own computer mid 2009 macbook pro 15" got around 20000 on the same test. However the cpu scored at least 4x that of my core2duo. Apart from that as an everyday computer it was really snappy, fast boot up times, application starts and best of all Mac Os :)
 
I just recently got a base 15" with no upgrades and it runs great. The hottest it gets when converting an HD movie through handbrake is around 80 degrees Celsius. When just online it usually averages around 45 or so.
 
My base 15in was getting the beachball while doing basics like surfing (I made a thread about it at the time.) A few days later, I had SMART status informing me of catastrophic drive failure and to backup ASAP. I took it back to an Apple store, and naturally they swapped the whole MBP out instantly. It did feel a little hot to the touch, too.

My drive failure happened exactly two weeks after purchase, so it was a surprise to everybody who knew about it.
 
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