Which one is the better buy? - they come out at the same price if I choose 32GB/2TB as the other specs. I am not going to be doing that much with the graphics except play the odd game - 5300 is probably better there for heat/power fluctuation? All the talk of binning seems to imply that the 2.4 is the better chip and might even run cooler?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2.4GHz/5300M vs 2.3GHz/5500M
- Thread starter badsimian
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Depends what you use it for.. I went with the i9 because I do a fair amount of code compiling, which is helped by the extra cores. But if you're doing tasks that won't take advantage of 8 cores, then go the i7.
2.3 with the better GPU all day.
but at that point a few hundred is nothing
but at that point a few hundred is nothing
The gains of 2.4 over 2.3 are minimal, but there! Same with 5300 vs 5500. I'd personally go with 2.3 and 5300 and be done with it! Your gaming performance will be within a few fps of the 5500 for sure and you can use the money you've saved to pay for AppleCare+. If I was going to pick one of your two options I'd go for the graphics over the processor however as for my workflows that tends to be the bottleneck.
Here's how I'd rank the different options from a price/performance standpoint. For context, I actually went with 5500 8GB + 2.3 because for my workflow (programming, some games, some video stuff) it made the most sense!
1st choice: 5300 + 2.3
2nd choice: 5500 + 2.3
3rd choice: 5500 + 2.4
4th choice: 5300 + 2.4
If you watch some of the YouTube benchmarking, the 2.3 and 5500 with 8GB seem to be the way to go. Less thermal throttling provides better throughput.
Depends what you need it for. I have gone back and forth and settled on the lower end model to save the $300. I don't use my MBP for high end games or graphics - only for word processing/spreadsheets/web browsing and video. From all accounts, the 5300M handily beats the top end Vega 20 in the previous model. The 5500's performance is not that much better than the 5300M unless you do plan to do things on your machine that require 8GB of video ram.
I'd be interested where you saw that? I watched one by TallyHoTech and he found whilst gaming that the 5300 seemed better as it throttled a little less. I won't be gaming and don't do video. Really I want the cores and memory for coding and multi VM scenarios. So I don't think 8GB graphics memory is required for me. The only thing holding me back from the 2.3 is this talk of binning and getting a "better" chip with the 2.4GHz models but I'm not sure what that really means. 4.8 vs 5 GHz for short bursts is rather meaningless to my use cases I think.
Assuming we are talking about the exact same CPU architecture, binning is like grading fruit. They put the chips through a test rig and it says whether it is Ok to run a 2.3 or 2.4 (and 4.8 and 5GHz). Then at some point they stamp the chip and sending it out to the computer manufactures. But, just like fruit the number 2.3 or 2.4 is a guaranteed minimum for the chip. It does not mean a chip stamped 2.3 cannot run at 2.4. And sometimes they dump some of the ones that pass the 2.4 test into the 2.3 bin and stamp them with the lower speed, again like fruit, to fill out an order.
I looked at this same issue before ordering mine and came to the conclusion that the 2.3 was a good value. And I could use the money i saved to upgrade to 8GB of memory on the M5500 the system configuration came with. So I am getting a 2.3GHZ CPU, M5500 with 8 GB, 1 TB drive, and 32 GB of memory.
I don't plan on doing gaming, but do shot videos in 4K so thought that the extra GPU memory would help me in Adobe Premier and other products. But honestly, it was a $100, so I did not spend much time in cost/benefit analysis
Last edited: