2.3 GHZ or 2.6 GHZ?

[Jack25]

Basically I need to buy a new MBP but the retina one does not interest me. It's a straight shot between a 2.3 GHZ or 2.6 GHZ legacy model.

I will be using it mainly for E-Mail, Internet, 100GB of music, basic photo editing, word processing, streaming, downloading and watching TV shows/Movies and playing the odd game or two (mainly Football Manager and GTA).

Do I need 2.6 GHZ or will 2.3 GHZ be fine? I'm swaying towards the 2.3GHZ model but I'm not sure whether I should get 2.6 GHZ just to be on the safe side.

 

[Fynd]

Is the price difference worth the theoretical ~12% performance increase when pushed?

When the 2.3 becomes obselete, the 2.6 will be too.

There also looks to be a case for a big battery life improvement in the 2.3 over the 2.6..

For what you're looking to do, I'd spend the money elsewhere.

 

[DTF]

Basically I need to buy a new MBP but the retina one does not interest me. It's a straight shot between a 2.3 GHZ or 2.6 GHZ legacy model.

I will be using it mainly for E-Mail, Internet, 100GB of music, basic photo editing, word processing, streaming, downloading and watching TV shows/Movies and playing the odd game or two (mainly Football Manager and GTA).

Do I need 2.6 GHZ or will 2.3 GHZ be fine? I'm swaying towards the 2.3GHZ model but I'm not sure whether I should get 2.6 GHZ just to be on the safe side.

For what you're doing on the computer save your money on the higher processor, you'll never notice a difference. More memory and SSD (if money permits) will be more noticeable.

 

[Jack25]

Is the price difference worth the theoretical ~12% performance increase when pushed?

When the 2.3 becomes obselete, the 2.6 will be too.

There also looks to be a case for a big battery life improvement in the 2.3 over the 2.6..

For what you're looking to do, I'd spend the money elsewhere.

I thought the 2.3 and 2.6 both had the same battery life.

And when you say you'd spend it elsewhere, what would you suggest instead?

 

[Himecchi]

I'm a poor so I ended up just buying the purely base model but now I kind of regret not getting the bump up to 16 GB of ram

 

[Jack25]

For what you're doing on the computer save your money on the higher processor, you'll never notice a difference. More memory and SSD (if money permits) will be more noticeable.

I was planning on getting 8GB of ram and 750GB ATA Drive at 7200rpm. SSD would be nice but it would cost too much to get anywhere near that kind of hard drive.

 

[J.L.Photography]

Online or in store? If online, it's probably 3-4 weeks, just edit the order.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Get the 2.3. The real life speed difference isn't going to be that great and better to spend your money on future RAM upgrade or installed and SSD. An SSD will really do wonders. I have an "ancient" Corsair in my current 13" and it still is loads faster than the best HD.

 

[maflynn]

Do I need 2.6 GHZ or will 2.3 GHZ be fine? I'm swaying towards the 2.3GHZ model but I'm not sure whether I should get 2.6 GHZ just to be on the safe side.

I don't think you're going to notice any appreciable improvement in performance jumping to 2.6 from 2.3. The cost for the higher end retina MBP is quite high, so much I struggle to justify the cost. If you need the larger SSD then it makes sense. If you want to order the higher end on just to be on the safe side, well I think you don't need too.

 

[Jack25]

Get the 2.3. The real life speed difference isn't going to be that great and better to spend your money on future RAM upgrade or installed and SSD. An SSD will really do wonders. I have an "ancient" Corsair in my current 13" and it still is loads faster than the best HD.

So it's okay for me to get the 2.3 with 8gb ram and upgrade the SSD in the future?

 

[Fynd]

I thought the 2.3 and 2.6 both had the same battery life.

And when you say you'd spend it elsewhere, what would you suggest instead?

"Despite all that performance, we were still impressed by the battery life. In our standard rundown test, which involves looping a video with WiFi on and the display set at a fixed brightness, we netted an impressive seven hours and 49 minutes on the 2.6GHz model. The 2.3GHz model lasted an average of nine hours and 22 minutes -- a runtime so long we at first thought it was a fluke. After repeated runs, though, we kept turning up similar results."

- Engadget review. Still waiting to hear more about this from others, as that's a huge difference.

Spend on storage or RAM, or even just keep the difference.

 

[Jack25]

"Despite all that performance, we were still impressed by the battery life. In our standard rundown test, which involves looping a video with WiFi on and the display set at a fixed brightness, we netted an impressive seven hours and 49 minutes on the 2.6GHz model. The 2.3GHz model lasted an average of nine hours and 22 minutes -- a runtime so long we at first thought it was a fluke. After repeated runs, though, we kept turning up similar results."

- Engadget review. Still waiting to hear more about this from others, as that's a huge difference.

Spend on storage or RAM, or even just keep the difference.

Do you have a link to that review? I've struggled to find reviews for the new Legacy models.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

So it's okay for me to get the 2.3 with 8gb ram and upgrade the SSD in the future?

Sure. The 13" is very easy to upgrade. It's just a few screws to remove the bottom and the drive and RAM are right there. (You'll need a torx driver to take the drive out...forget what size. Either 6 or 8 I think. Check with ifixit.com. They have a complete pictorial on how to do both installs. It's very handy.)

 

[Jack25]

Sure. The 13" is very easy to upgrade. It's just a few screws to remove the bottom and the drive and RAM are right there. (You'll need a torx driver to take the drive out...forget what size. Either 6 or 8 I think. Check with ifixit.com. They have a complete pictorial on how to do both installs. It's very handy.)

I might just do this then.

Is it possible to have a normal hard drive and an SSD installed at the same time? And how do you manually configure which is the primary hard drive?

EDIT: And 1 more question, is there a major difference between NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512MB of GDDR5 memory and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory?

 

[Chupa Chupa]

I might just do this then.

Is it possible to have a normal hard drive and an SSD installed at the same time? And how do you manually configure which is the primary hard drive?

EDIT: And 1 more question, is there a major difference between NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512MB of GDDR5 memory and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory?

Yes, you can do SSD + SSD or HD if you pull the optical drive. OWC (macsales.com) sells the kit to do this. This is the one thing I'll miss about the non-Retina MBPs. They are so flexible this way.

As to your video card question, if you play games w/ lots of motion or will be doing a lot of video composting with Motion or After Effects and/or using multiple monitors then 1GB is worth it. Otherwise 512MB is plenty.

 

[Jack25]

Yes, you can do SSD + SSD or HD if you pull the optical drive. OWC (macsales.com) sells the kit to do this. This is the one thing I'll miss about the non-Retina MBPs. They are so flexible this way.

As to your video card question, if you play games w/ lots of motion or will be doing a lot of video composting with Motion or After Effects and/or using multiple monitors then 1GB is worth it. Otherwise 512MB is plenty.

Thanks for your reply. Much appreciated.

 

[HyeRuL]

Mac Book Pro 2.3 or 2.6

Hii there..could you mind to give me an idea..which is better..Macbook Pro with 2.3Ghz or 2.6Ghz..for now, 2.3 have 4gb of ram and 500gb od HDD and 2.6Ghz have 8GB ram and 750GB of HDD..the price on Malaysia Country almost 19% differences between 2.3 and 2.6..please help me..