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kickandglide

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 3, 2009
17
0
If you made the 2.26 and 2.53 uMBP 13" the same by upgrading the 2.26's HD and RAM what is going to be the real world difference btwn them? Will the 2.53 really be that much faster? The only application I need to use that may be slightly out of the ordinary is ArcGIS.
 
If you made the 2.26 and 2.53 uMBP 13" the same by upgrading the 2.26's HD and RAM what is going to be the real world difference btwn them? Will the 2.53 really be that much faster? The only application I need to use that may be slightly out of the ordinary is ArcGIS.

The speed boost from 2.26 to 2.53 is unnoticeable. Just get the 2.26 to save money.
 
i made the same decision to go for the slower CPU in the previous gen (2GHz instead of 2.4GHz). I used the money to buy upgrades... maybe there's a difference for very CPU intensive programs or games, but I'm really happy with just 2Ghz!!
 
Are you guys crazy? My gf has the 2.26 model and i have the 2.53 we both have 4 gigs ram. My machine starts up in 33 seconds, hers starts up in 42 seconds. Every app i click starts up one bump faster, not sure if its because she has the 160 gb hdd, and i have the 250. But you can definitely notice the difference in speed. Plus, if your going to be using final cut studio, a bigger processor will fit your needs.

Alot of people say that oh, you wouldnt tell the difference between the two, there just numbers. Im letting you know, that I Can tell a difference.

You probably couldnt tell the difference between the 2.23 vs the 2.4 or the 2.4 vs the 2.53 but the 2.23 vs 2.53 you can tell. just my $0.02...
 
Are you guys crazy? My gf has the 2.26 model and i have the 2.53 we both have 4 gigs ram. My machine starts up in 33 seconds, hers starts up in 42 seconds. Every app i click starts up one bump faster, not sure if its because she has the 160 gb hdd, and i have the 250. But you can definitely notice the difference in speed. Plus, if your going to be using final cut studio, a bigger processor will fit your needs.

Alot of people say that oh, you wouldnt tell the difference between the two, there just numbers. Im letting you know, that I Can tell a difference.

You probably couldnt tell the difference between the 2.23 vs the 2.4 or the 2.4 vs the 2.53 but the 2.23 vs 2.53 you can tell. just my $0.02...

The difference you notice is not from cpu speed, I would guess your os, programs installed etc, hers is apparantly loading much more then yours in the background or an app is stalling during startup perhaps. hdd size could make a small difference, or perhaps you have a higher rpm hdd as hers as well.
 
The difference you notice is not from cpu speed, I would guess your os, programs installed etc, hers is apparantly loading much more then yours in the background or an app is stalling during startup perhaps. hdd size could make a small difference, or perhaps you have a higher rpm hdd as hers as well.

same rpm and both computers are not even a week old.
 
Kinda OT, but has anyone had trouble finding the 2.53 GHz model in stores? I just visited 2 apple stores and both are out of stock, plus the official site ships them in 7-10 business days! Is that a testament that it is the more popular model?
 
Kinda OT, but has anyone had trouble finding the 2.53 GHz model in stores? I just visited 2 apple stores and both are out of stock, plus the official site ships them in 7-10 business days! Is that a testament that it is the more popular model?

I had to go to 3 different apple stores to find my macbook. Ive never had to do that before.

Did I mention, I grabbed the LAST 13" MBP from the third store? Crazy.
 
Are you guys crazy? My gf has the 2.26 model and i have the 2.53 we both have 4 gigs ram. My machine starts up in 33 seconds, hers starts up in 42 seconds. Every app i click starts up one bump faster, not sure if its because she has the 160 gb hdd, and i have the 250. But you can definitely notice the difference in speed. Plus, if your going to be using final cut studio, a bigger processor will fit your needs.

Alot of people say that oh, you wouldnt tell the difference between the two, there just numbers. Im letting you know, that I Can tell a difference.

You probably couldnt tell the difference between the 2.23 vs the 2.4 or the 2.4 vs the 2.53 but the 2.23 vs 2.53 you can tell. just my $0.02...

I just started mine up twice using a stop watch from power button to desktop...

27 seconds and 28 seconds... it's a 2.26 with 4gb ram.

I don't think my 2.0 umb took 42 seconds... that seems awfully long to me...

weird.
 
Surely start-up is not a CPU intensive task, and neither is application launching, so the difference in CPU speed is negligible. Both these tasks are reliant on RAM, HD speed, and the amount of apps and background processes that need to be loaded, so therefore these are not good tests of the differences between 2 CPUs.
 
The main reason the get the 2.53, is video encoding speed. I do alot of home video/ DVD encoding for import into itunes, for my iphone. The time of doing multiple encodes is really gonna add up. If you don't care about speed to do such tasks, then go with the 2.26.
 
I would wipe her drive and start over then lol.. my core i7 pc is default of 2.67 I have it overclocked to 4ghz and don't notice that much difference :)

Not much difference doing what? launching a web browser?

Of course, for everyday tasks, a i7 quad core at 2.67 is already OVERKILL and the only way to accelerate these tasks would be to have a 10k hdd, a ssd or a raid 0 setup because your hdd is probably the weakest link in your setup. Try rendering some complex effects over full hd videos in after effect and playing it back in real time... now you'll see a difference between 2.67ghz and 4ghz... Of course.. if you have 8gb of ram or less, it won't be enough to support your 4ghz of quad core.. it will then slow down the process, whether the cpu is OC'd or not.

There's no point OCing an i7 quad cpu unless you use very intense softwares and you have at least 12gb of ram imo... I'd go with 24gb and work on ssd drives.... that's without taking into consideration your graphic cards (then it depends what you use your machine for)
 
Take a loot at the benchmarks. You are talking seconds between the two. I'd go w/ the 2.26 and use the savings to buy more RAM and/or SSD -- things that will truly give you a performance bump.
 
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