15-inch: Early 2011 2.2ghz or Late 2011 2.2ghz?

[mozhu]

How much of a performance difference will the Early 2011 2.2ghz(w/ 1gb VRAM) have with the Late 2011 2.2ghz(w/ 512mb VRAM).

I am looking into buying either the refurbished Early 2011 15-inch or the latest one. I'm leaning towards the Early 2011 one, but I also really want a Hi-Res screen, but then I would have to opt for the Late 2011 one. Thoughts?

 

[miles01110]

Depends on what you use it for, obviously. Since you're asking the question it probably won't matter at all.

 

[Epic Xbox Revie]

You probably don't the performance boost, I'd go with the improved screen...

 

[mozhu]

I'll be using it for things like Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Ableton Live, and of course web browsing(with many many tabs) watching videos, etc.

 

[shoppy]

On the apple refurb site you can get hi res screens. Also you have the extra 512 mb graphics card as well as a bigger hard drive.

 

[randomrazr]

I'll be using it for things like Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Ableton Live, and of course web browsing(with many many tabs) watching videos, etc.

well do u want to sacrfice screen quality or a bit of graphic performance

 

[Mersailios]

For your usage I would recommend a Late 2011 MacBook Pro with a high resolution display as it will give you more screen space to work with.

You won't notice a huge difference in the amount of video memory unless you're planning on playing a lot of video games on high settings while driving a larger display.

 

[mozhu]

How well would a MacBook Air handle Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, and Ableton?

 

[thundersteele]

the early 2011 2.2 GHZ has a faster CPU. The base speed is the same, but it has a higher turbo and can deal with 1600 DDR3 RAM

The difference is probably small, but this seems to be something that people are not much aware of.

 

[Mersailios]

How well would a MacBook Air handle Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, and Ableton?

It will run those applications, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend a MacBook Air for those sorts of tasks.

A MacBook Pro gives you the advantage of being able to upgrade the storage capacity and memory down the road (whereas with the MacBook Air you're a bit limited), not to mention it has a much faster processor and a discrete graphics processor.

 

[thermodynamic]

How much of a performance difference will the Early 2011 2.2ghz(w/ 1gb VRAM) have with the Late 2011 2.2ghz(w/ 512mb VRAM).

I am looking into buying either the refurbished Early 2011 15-inch or the latest one. I'm leaning towards the Early 2011 one, but I also really want a Hi-Res screen, but then I would have to opt for the Late 2011 one. Thoughts?

If you use Photoshop and its filters, 1GB VRAM is going to help you more. (I've ran out of RAM on my 2009 Mac Pro (512MB, ATi 4870) on using Pixel Bender filters on anything above 8.5x11" @ 300 DPI. )

Video editing, 3D rendering, and other apps - if they make use of video acceleration, they will benefit from the VRAM as well. (and if CPU temps bother you, don't worry - even more costly laptops like the HP Elitebook 8740w get just about as hot. (http://www.notebookcheck.net is a fantastic resource for thorough, proper laptop reviews...) they rate the MBPs highly as well... http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review...-GHz-quad-core-glare-type-screen.50346.0.html )

The high-res screen is nice - I usually lump the cost and stick with the 17" MBP model, as 1920x1200 is really nice for content creation, and the quality of the TN panel Apple uses (for both 2011-era models) is well above average.